O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Step #1 to Adulthood completed!

Today at 5:20 pm EST, I received my first set of business cards.

Wicked.

-T

Ho Hum.

Waiting for my computer

So I'm finally getting Visio 2002 Professional.

To be honest, I really don't know how to use Visio very well, but it's considered a necessary tool when you're doing IA and Usability. I'm interested in how it tracks website flows (one of it's new features...and perhaps the most important in my line of work).

So that's 20 minutes of time I can dedicate to "Admin", you know, that wonderful "misc task" time that you have to dump stuff into because your computer crashed, or for instance, the IT guy is installing Visio.

I didn't bring a lunch today. Went back to old McDick's for the McChicken Wednesdays.....a McChicken Sandwich, a Salad and a Drink for 5 bucks flat. Not too bad (Cheaper if you go with the standard fries).

This time I ordered a Sprite� (thus, no brown spot) and wedged it between the handbrake and gear shift.

I'll be in Detroit next week. Wow, I'm haven't even been here for 3 weeks and now I'm on a business trip.

-Tai

Great Weekend: Golf, Dinner...Kev's B-day

I wish I was the Naked Chef

Perhaps I should start off to say that Kev's B-day was a nice, low-key intimate affair.

I spent Friday evening dressing $60 CDN Prime Rib Roast. Triple A, Canadian Beef, Baby!

In hindsight, I wished I had taken some before and after pictures of the food.

I showed Jen my workplace on the way to meet Clem and Leo (and John, Ann and Dominic) at Spezzo's. They were finally graduating from Kinesiology at Waterloo. Congrats to both of them! Clement is in Chiropractic College and Leo is in Medical School.

On the menu for Saturday evening:

• Salad: Baby spinach leaves and a spring melange, topped with Saut�ed Red Pepper, Canadian Chevr� (Goat Cheese), and Walnuts. Dressed in a Balsamic Vinegrette
• Main Course: Garlic and Butter Stuffed Prime Rib Roast with Honey-Red Wine Deglaze, served with roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes, roasted honey-glazed Butternut Squash, and French-style asparagus (wrapped in Bacon).
• Dessert: (prepared by Ruth Tshin) Hand-made Chocolate Truffles and Birthday Cupcakes with lemon icing.

I have to admit, I really did outdo myself.

I also avoided some near-disasters (well, culinary disasters at least).

I had intended to make Mashed Potatoes. However, I realised that I had forgotten to bring milk after I had boiled the potatoes. You can't have mash without milk or cream. So I decided to roast the potatoes in the bacon drippings from the asparagus (French-Style).

The second "near-miss" was the deglaze. Normally I make the "gravy" with beef-stock. However, I wanted to get fancy and used Red Wine (that Nirvan had been so kind to purchase at my request) instead. Once the alcohol had been boiled off. I was left with a red-wine, mashed onion, baked garlic-reduction. It tasted horrible! Very bitter and acerbic. So out of desparation, I added about 4 good squeezes of honey. That really "mellowed" the taste. Hence the "honey and red-wine" deglaze. In hindsight, perhaps something like Quantro or Cherry would have been a better choice. Hmmm..

The roast turned out spectacular. Nice and pink, but not overly red.

The only thing that I didn't really like was the aparagus. The bacon really overpowered the asparagus. It really weighed down the pallette in my opinion. A better choice would have been to go with steamed/blanched aspargus in butter. We could have had the bacon for breakfast.

Here are some pics of the food:

Special thanks to Ruth for making dessert (she wasn't able to stay for dinner). Special thanks to Nirvan and Florence for putting the salad to plate.

My Temperamental Mistress

Kev, Flo, Cris and I played golf immediately after check-in. It was an 18-hole course, par 4. It was DAMN COLD to play golf. Not only that, but we were sucking eggs out there.

We only played 9 holes of golf, and had a dubious "challenge" hole on the 10th. If your count only 1/2 course, I would have won. However, with the 10 hole, I got stuck in the "mother of sand traps" and added about 12 strokes to my game.

So the B-day boy won.

The challenge hole was at first "doing cartwheels"--I'm quite good at that, having done many when I was young. I even atempted a one-arm cartwheel. We decided to spin around our clubs until dizzy and then take our shot. We all shot poorly, except for Cris who had a great shot (dead straight) and ended hitting her best hole that round with a double-bogey.

I have some video tape of the "challenge". I'll upload that as soon as I can.

They want me to join the "boys" class

Sunday was a rush to Jen's dance class (I did not go willingly). I sat through the entire dance class. With all of Jen's balance bar work, I now realise why she always wants me to massage her calves after dance practice. Damn...I definitely can't do what she was doing. I'm especially impressed with the women in the class...they range from mid-30s to late 40s. They're in great shape...extremely flexible.

While I was there, the dance instructor tried to convince to join the "boys" class.

Uh, no.

-T

Prime Rib Roast Weekend.

It's a Prime-Rib Roast Weekend in Collingwood, Ontario.

Oh yeah, it's Kev's B-day this weekend.

Tai

How Embarrassing

Went out to lunch to pick up some McDonald's Drive-thru.

I had placed the cup of Coke in between my legs while driving.

By the time the car ride was over, I had this nice brown wetspot to the right side of my groin.

To add insult to injury: They didn't pack a straw with my drink.

Tai

Jen and her Folk Dancing

Hi guys,

Every Sunday, Jen participates in a cultural folk dancing class. I took some video on my digital camera about 2 weeks ago.

It's an Apple Quicktime Movie, so if you don't have it, you should get the latest plug-in for your OS and browser. Downloading Quicktime 6 is pretty simple.

Here's the movie:

I stored the file on Webspace provided by Rogers High Speed Internet, Unfortunately, the server doesn't support streaming of live media...so you'll have to do either of the following:

1. Right-click and select "Save As...", or
2. click and wait for 8.6 MB to download.

-T

Update

Hey Guys,

Well, I'm not sure if you have all heard, but I recently started a new full-time job with OnX Enterprise Solutions. They are an IT consulting firm.

You've probably seen their sign, on the building near the Leitch building while travelling on HWY. 404/DVP.

I'm working there as a Usabililty Specialist. I'm Ecstatic about the position

I think it's a pretty funny story about how I got the job. My friend Felix (we worked together at Critical Path) and I had been unemployed for about the same time. I had been been working on small contracts, he had been working with a new start-up. He and I have similar qualificaitons (he's more skewed to UI design, while I specialise in UI analysis and Usability), and about the same working experience.

In my final visit to Critical Path, my co-worker Peter Rogers (one of the funniest people I have ever had the honor of working with), had mentioned a UI design opening at a company called OpenCola. They were located in Markham, and seemed to be an ideal position for me.

Anyways, right before I submitted my resum� to OpenCola, Felix and I were chatting. The conversation went along the lines of the following:

Felix: Hey Tai, how's it going?
Tai: Not too bad, looking for a job, but I found this sweet position in Markham.
Felix: Really? I just started working in Markham, at a place called OpenCola.
Tai: Really? Well, I guess I won't be applying to them...HA HA, since you just got the position I had in mind.

Brutal, but it gets better...

Tai:Congrats man! When do you start?
Felix: I started today actually [Monday, Oct 7th].
Tai: Cool.

Fortunately this conversation was over Yahoo! Instant Messaging; he couldn't see my envy. He went on to talk about his final round interview with CIBC; I didn't even get passed the first rounds.

Felix:Hey, did Onx.com call you?
Tai: No, why?

I'm thinking, "They called you and they didn't call me?! ARGHH!" I was frustrated.

Felix: Really? I thought for sure they would call you. Take look at their website, you can apply there.
Tai: Yeah, I will. Definitely. Thanks for the Tip.

In a nutshell, I applied Monday, received a call from the HR representative Tuesday, interviewed on Friday, and received and accepted an offer to work Friday afternoon. Felix, to his credit, even called the HR guy mid-week to chat them up about me.

The night before the interview was particularly bad. I had went to sleep early at 11:30 pm. Jen called at 1:38 am. The phone call went like this.

RING! RING!
Tai: <silence> Hello?!
Jen: Oh my God! You're sleeping and you have an interview tomorrow. I shouldn't have called
Tai:Bye.
Jen: Bye. <click, dial tone>

After that 10 second conversation, I was never able to fall back asleep. I was so pissed at Jen. If my lack of sleep screwed up this interview--I didn't know what that would do to the relationship.

So with a scant two hours of sleep, I went into my interview. It was good. I was very happy with it--even with the lack of sleep. They loved my turkey stories. You could say that they ate it all up.

As you know, they called back in the afternoon. I started work on Wednesday, and that's about that.

Exciting stuff is happening at OnX.com, and I've already learned a lot...but I'll talk about that later.

So this year's Thanksgiving felt especially appropriate.

Thanks a lot Felix, I don't know if I would have found this job without the tip you give me.

Tai

Bushwhacking in Rouge Valley

"I wanna be an Adventure Racer! Living the Life of full of..."

Hey all. Yesterday Afternoon, my brother and I went for a hike in Rouge River Park. We hiked for about 2 hours up and down the Rouge Valley. Not a bad hike, but nothing compared to the terrain in Algonquin.

I think my next big camping trip will be Killarney Provincial Park--5 days, 100 Km. A little bit extreme...but then again, Win knows a guy who did the loop in 19 hours.

Anyway, I took some shots of with my digicam. I'm afraid nothing really turned out--I know nothing about photography. Oh yeah, that fuzzy thing is a catepillar.

Win and I talked about his store's Adventure Racing Team [Team Running Free]. They came 3rd in the Canadian Qualifications and are competing in this years 2002 Eco-Challenge in Fiji (which incidentally begins in a few hours...). I hope they do, they're a bunch of swell guys.

Good luck and a safe race to John, Marijke, Bob and Ted!

I wonder how Hayden Christensen and his family will do?

Oh by the way, while in the brush, i stepped in a pile of feces. That really ruined my day.

Tai

Open Source Software Usability

It's so true, so true -- Open source software is difficult to use

Matthew Thomas is a UI programmer for the Mozilla Project. He has written an insightful list of rules for why the ease-of-use for Open Source Project tends to suck.

Why Free Software usability tends to suck

He also wrote a follow up article based on reader response:

Why Fre Software usability tends to suck even more

It's so true.

Tai

Temptation of Tech: .Mac

I'm so tempted to buy....

Hi guys,

Just want to write about one of the things that I'm going through. Recently I've been tempted to upgrade my .Mac account (it is pronounced dot Mac). It would be $49 USD for a a single year subscription (that is about $75 CDN).

This is what I would get:

• Mac.com IMAP email with 15 MB of storage space
• HomePage, a web-page builder for easy web publishing and hosting
• 100 MB of online storage (shared with webspace for homepage)
• Backup Software for archiving files to iDisk, CD, or DVD (that requires an Internet connection for you to sign into .Mac first before it will work--that's just stupid, if you ask me--it should be part of the OS)
• Virex� - Industry-leading Virus Protection from McAfee�
• Web-Based Address Book, iCal calendar integration (publish my calendar online), iPhoto integration (publish photos directly to the web) and iSync integration (synch my contacts and schedules across different appliances (PDA, computer, cellphone) and use .Mac as a central repository -- computer to computer synching needs .Mac, as it cannot do this via LAN (which is stupid, IMHO)).

As a bonus, I get 100 Free Kodak digital picture prints (a Retail value of $49.99 USD). Not to mention that the Virex� Software is worth $50 already (not that it matters any, Macs don't really get viruses). So in other words, I would come out as a winner in this deal, right?

I've been holding off .mac services for several reasons. I won't go into details, but I will say this: I already pay for most of the functionality of .Mac through other people (email, Webspace, FTP, etc.). $75 CDN a year is a great deal for all the .mac services if you don't have any of these services already. I would jump all over this if it were not redundant. Hell, I already spend $150+ CDN for my domain and webspace from BlackSun Inc. I just can't justify it. Did I mention that the $49 USD membership is for the first year only? It's $100 the 2nd year onwards (or for any new subscriber for that matter).

The thing that irks me though, is the tight integration between certain iApps (iCal, iSync, iPhoto, AddressBook, Backup etc.) and .Mac. Does that mean I'm not getting the 100% of the experience that I spent $230 CDN for with my purchase of OS 10.2 Jaguar? Should I be required to spend another $75 CDN for .mac? Is the operating system crippled without a .Mac account? It's a point of contention that has gripped a lot of the mac community of late.

I know I don't need .Mac to enjoy my iBook, but I guess, in the end it's about my faith in Apple. Can Apple make .Mac into a viable, "cannot-live-without" service? What other features will they add over the next year?

Be strong Tai. Be strong.

Cheers,

Tai

e-Book Reading

My First Ebook

So I finished my first electronic book yesterday night. I've been reading it on and off for 3 weeks.

I decided to start off with Robert Jordan's Book 1 of the Wheel of Time Melodrama - The Eye of the World. I thought that the ending was a little rushed, but not a bad read once you get past the superfluous and wordy parts of the book. It�s a pretty good fantasy novel.

I used to be big into reading fantasy books back in high school, but I drifted to grittier, edgier forms of fiction and non-fiction since then.

Reading from an e-book is very different and not nearly as tactile as say, reading from a nicely hard-cover book. My Palm Vx isn't an ideal e-book reader, the pages are too small (requiring a mind-boggleling amount of scrolling), the screen contrast too low, and the glare can be troublesome too. I think Kevin or Eric's PocketPC would be a more ideal screen for reading a 500 page paperback novel.

Some advantages: The Palm remembers your page in the book--a nicety that I'm sure everyone without a bookmark can appreciate. You can also read in the dark by using the backlight of your handheld (which I'm sure is bad for the eyes, but to be honest, it's probably the highest contrast that you'll ever get out of a palm Vx).

I admit though, although my Palm Vx is an infinitely better PDA than my old Palm Pilot Professional, the backlighting in the Vx is crap. It's only really useful in a completely dark room, whereas my old Palm Pilot Pro backlight could be used anywhere, under any lighting condition, when more contrast was needed.

Will I read Book 2 on my Palm?

No.

I have installed it on my Palm Vx, but I would rather read it on my iBook than on my palm. However, if I'm traveling and I need something to read, it's a great compromise.

Tai

I'm Back.

My absence

Hey All,

I took a break from writing in my blog. It has been more than two weeks since I last wrote (on my Birthday actually).

Turning 25 was okay. Not that great. A lot of things were weighing heavily on my mind as my birthday approached. I guess they decided to reside in my brain for the last two weeks. <SMIRK>.

My birthday was a quiet evening with Jen (although we had the chance to Garage 416 that evening). We had dinner at the School, and then spent the rest of the night at my house. Fortunately there wasn't any alcohol involved, so there wasn't a repeat of the "most expensive take-out dinner" experience I had last April during our anniversary.

It's great to see most of my friends move on and experience the success that I knew that they were capable of. However, I'm forced to confront my own aspirations, fears, and mistakes as they walk pass me.

I wonder if everyone feels like this?

My birthday wasn't a joyous occasion (although the proximity of my friends and family certainly did help). Technically I'm not suppose to even celebrate my birthday (on account of my grandmother's passing last January) this year. So I purposely kept it low key and on the sly. All in all, it was very understated.

Thanks guys and gals for being around me. Next year we'll have more fun.

About a week before my birthday, I got a call from Mike Kurtz, my on-again-off-again manager, at Critical Path. He confirmed something that I already knew. He said that the budget reports were in and that there was no room for usability testing for the rest of the year.

So that's one chapter of my life that I can close the proverbial book on.

OFFTOPIC: Looking to refresh the site...it's a little soft for my tastes. It needs more lines...yes, more lines. This time I'll try to build a site that validates....ha ha ha, yeah right.

So after the call from Mike, I was pretty disappointed, I mean, I worked hard for CP...too bad things didn't work out the way I planned.

I had an interview yesterday with a recruitment firm. It was downtown and it went very well. The HR rep. from the firm was very impressed. I was the most "clear and concise" usability specialist she had ever talked to. I'm replied, "I have a low tolerance for BS. I'm probably the most jaded usability specialist you'll ever meet." Question: How can a usability specialist not be "clear and concise"? Are these people actually getting hired?

Anyways, I dropped by Critical path after the interview to see some folks and drop off my Pass Card and Keys. Chatted with some former coworkers, and had lunch with Peter. I found out a few things about my position at CP. It turns out Mike went beyond the call of duty to try to get me there full time, he even approached other departments to cement my position on the team. However it wasn't meant to be.

I think I'm finally starting to accept that. Yeah. Finally.

So long Critical Path Inc. You were a temperamental mistress, I'll say. Farewell and keep in touch.

So I've been bummed for a the past few weeks. I keep reading how well Canada's economy is doing and how we're a "Northern Tiger". It's funny, but the things that are doing well--mining, lumber, manufacturing, etc.--have always done well. Too bad the TechSector is still getting raped.

That is all. Continue on.

Tai