Goodbye Aunt K

Today was Aunt K's memorial. It was quite lovely, yet sad. On display was pictures of her, her and her friends and some of her art. They read one of her poems, and some passages from her diary. They were lovely, artistic and sweet, like her. My sister had the best comment on the day. "We have to figure out a better way to have family reunions". Grandma and Grandpa K, came up, and we meet Grandma and Grandpa C at the services.(Yes, I know how great it is that I have both sets of grandparents and how I wish that I had more time to spend with them. They are all amazing people who I dearly love) We saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long long time. Some I remember, some I didn't. My Beautiful Wife has been there all day for me. I truly appreciate her. She never got to meet Aunt K, and I really wish should could have. I think they both would of really liked each other.

I have come up with something that have made it easier to deal with her loss. The saying we've lost someone, when they have died. I like the idea that we have simply misplaced them, like your car keys or watches and will someday find them in the last place we looked (of course it's the last placed we've looked, after we find something we typically stop looking for it, but I digress). Someday things will be right back like they were. I have hope that I will see Aunt K again and she won't have any of the pain she had in this life. Also you never really lose someone that has helped you be the person you are, they are always a part of you, so they are always with you.

After the service, we met up at Mom and Dad's. We had dinner, and watched T.V. and talked about funny TV commercials, and things we had done in the past. We told jokes, and funny stories. This is how my family deals with these kind of things. We replace tears with laughter, we always have, and I kind of like it that way. Is like some sort of unwritten rule. Laughing is always better than crying. We didn't talk about Aunt K much tonight, but between the jokes, stories and food, you know that everyone still was thinking about her, I know I am. I'll miss her.

First Impressions

Today I got to spend some time in the code of the new Home Banking system. Spending time in the code is when a developers come up with their first impression. Mine is a good first impression. After spending two days with the Developers installing the product and looking at the code, I am looking forward to working with this product. I know you are thinking you, just bough the product why would you have to work with it. Well the way that most of these kind of things work is what you buy is very vanilla. So we don't buy the product for what it can do today, but what it will be able to do tomorrow.

 

Got a little bad news

Yesterday was the long day of meetings. It went as well as those kind of things go. Afterwards my boss, the people with the new homebanking system and I went out to dinner. We went to the place we always go, the steakhouse established in 1947 across the street from the WB lot. After getting there and getting seated I got a call on my mobile from my brother J. At first I sent it to voicemail because we were talking about implementation strategies and that kind of stuff. However I got a funny feeling about the call so I excused myself and tried to call him back. First time, I got his voicemail, so I check my messages and he just said to call him back in a somber tone. Now this J, he is the one that leaves me voicemails pretending to be someone else, and yelling at me for dating his daughter, or stealing his cat, or driving thru his house. So the tone of his message really meant something was up. I got nervous, so I called him again.

One of my favorite thing about J is that he doesn't sugar coat things, he just says them.  He told me that a really close friend of the family had passed away. She was someone us kids called Aunt K, because well she was like an Aunt to us. She was one of those people in your life, that lets you know that you are pretty cool just the way you are. I mean your family tells you that as you grow up, but somehow there is more validation when someone else says it, we expect our family to say that we are great. I remember that Aunt K use to say that I was a "neat kid". Well, I always thought that she was a "Neat Lady". She didn't have any kids of her own, which was what it was.  She was a very artistlc person, she would draw and write. She was the one that taught me that it was okay to be a Sci-Fi geek (mostly because she was one too). I remember going to lots, of Star Wars and Star Trek Conventions with her. I have a picture at home that she took of my brother K and me standing infront of the "Galileo" from the orignial Star Trek series. She always made me feel like I was fine, just the way I am. That is kind of a big thing for a kid, especially, when the kids at school and everything on the TV is telling you the exact opposite.

Aunt K had a great laugh, it was one of those laughs that made you smile. You knew it was her from across the room when you heard her laugh. I am really going to miss hearing that laugh. It's sad to know that this person isn't on this planet anymore. I could get into the whole argument of the unjustness of such a good person dying when there are so many bad people keep on living, but I think that would taint my memories of her, and I just don't want to do that.  I will miss her. She was one of those people that is a part of me. She really had an positive influence in my life, and my self-respect.

A light drizzle

Yesterday was much more of the light drizzle before the storm. We only had one hour long meeting. Which isn't too bad, and I was kind of charged and looking forward to the project from it. I did leave the meeting with homework. My homework that I am still working on this morning. I am install windows 2000 server in Virtual PC on my XP workstation/Laptop. That way I can have the Home banking server software running on my machine. So far it is going pretty smoothly. Though it takes a lot longer to load up then a regular machine.

Today the downpour will start. I came in early (6am) to finish up the install and have a couple of hours before it all starts. Meetings are scheduled from 8:30am to 5:30pm. It is going to be a long day. I am not looking forward to all day meetings, but I am looking forward to getting some time with the Home Banking Developer.  He is a C# guy too, even though the product is written in VB.NET. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

One of the things that cleared the clouds away last night was reading with the Little Boy. We have about 4 or 5 books that we read every night, one of them being Green Eggs and Ham. And it is one of his favorites. Well last night, we read it together for the first time. He would pick one page and "read" (recite from memory) what was on the page, and I would read the other one. It was amazing. It really made my heart glow. To see him growing and learning is just one of the most wonderful things in my life. There is something really terrific about ending the day laying in bed with my Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy and reading them to sleep. So this is going to be my umbrella today, every time I feel a drop of rain, I will think of them and be dry and warm.

 

The Calm before the storm

This weekend was the calm before the storm. Today starts three days of meetings. The first in many steps in the Home Banking Platform conversion. This is going to be the biggest project our E-Commerce department has ever taken on. I am excited and nervous about it at the same time. But enough about that, lets talk about this weekend.

Saturday morning My Beautiful Wife and I snuck out and got a cup of coffee at suckerbucks (That's what the Little Boy calls starbucks) and got to sit outside and read a newspaper. I know that doesn't sound terribly exciting, and it wasn't , but it was amazingly calming and something we hadn't done in a long time. (Since we lived in Pasadena about 3 years ago)

Upon returning home, the Little Boy was Up and full of.... Energy. So we loaded the Little Boy and Max the wonder dog up in the car and headed out to the sports park. We got there, and what did we see, people playing sports at the sports park. Honestly what did they think they were doing, we were going to have the The Little Boy and the Dog run amuck in those fields. So we couldn't let the furry that is the combination of The Little Boy and Max the wonder dog loose there. So we decide to take them to San Dimas creek. This was a good choice as no one was there. So after walking down the trail a little ways we let Max off of his leash. This had about the same affect as launching a rocket horizontially. That dog ran up and down the trail, though the streams and over the streams and up the hills and down the hills. He would jump so far down the hills that he would just about swapping head and tails except that his speed would keep him moving forward. Well after this little adventure, everyone got bath.

Sunday I had a lot of serious sitting around to do. Some of it was even done in Mom and Dad's Jacuzzi. There was also some serious gaming that needed done. So I played a couple hours of Red's Dead Revolver.

My favorite moment of the weekend was The Little Boy riding his bike with amazing speed down the driveway and skidding into the garage, and hit my Beautiful Wifes bike. He knocked it over, and startled himself.  I walked in the garage, and picked the bike up, and looked at the Little Boy, and said "A Little to fast, huh?" to which he responsed, "just a little."

 

The long weekend

I took Friday, Monday and Tuesday off of work. Mostly because if I didn't, I wasn't going to get any time off till the end of the year. It turned out to be good to have some time off. I worked hard at not checking me work email too often. (Once or twice a day) I took care of some of those things around that house that needed done. Overall pretty good.

Yesterday, we got to go down and see my Grandma and Grandpa. It was so nice to get to see then and spend time with them. They are such sweet people and they really mean so much to me.

I have to go to work tomorrow, and I really don't want to. But being an adult means I have too.

100 miles later

last night riding to Mom and Dad's I finally broke 100 miles. So since I started riding again in June I have ridden 100 miles. It kind of feels like an accomplishment. I told My Beautiful Wife last night, that when I break 10,000 miles, then I can get a new carbon fiber bike. Till then, me and my steel framed steed will keep pedaling down the road together. I think will name my bike Hildalgo. The little painted pony that could. And it kind of fits, because of the blue paint overspray that is on the frame from one of my brothers paint projects that went awry.

The interesting thing is that after 100 miles, I want to ride more not less then when I started. I'm feeling better and like I can handle stress a little better too.

Riding In The Dark

This morning I woke up very early. Well, that isn't exactly true, I was woken up very early this morning. It seems the Little Boy snuck in to bed with us last night. I found this out after being kicked repeatedly. Apparently he was either dreaming about riding his bike, kicking the ball, or kicking the dog. (My vote is for the latter) So about 3:30am I move down to the floor, but never really got back to sleep. At about 4am I decide to stop trying to sleep and just get up. Mostly because I couldn't get the endless loop of "Five little Monkeys Jumping on the bed" to quit playing in my head.

Well, what is there to do at 4 in the morning? I couldn't work because I had left my computer at work. Humm, I know I will go for a ride this morning, I think to myself. Now I haven't ridden my bike at 4am since I was a teenager. I use to get up early and ride for an hour before going to work with Dad. I had even gotten them to gotten him to go with me. We had our mountian bikes and I would go to the local park and race down the stairs, and then try and race back up them. (We never made it back up to the top of the stairs)

After a shower and getting dressed, I head out to the garage and adjust and fit my new helmet (The dog ate my other one) and got on my bike. Okay, I am ready to go, I decide not to do any hill climbing as those streets don't have any lights. So I start riding and I notice how quiet it really is. I had forgotten that riding at that time of the morning is so nice. The sound of the pressurized tires (110 psi) rolling along the asphalt. Birds just waking up, chirping as if to say good morning to the day. It's interesting how with the lack of light your other senses really come alive. The smell of the bakery down the street, of the trees, and flowers. Riding through some sleepy little neighborhoods, seeing the occasional person turning on the kitchen light to make coffee.

It really gave me a good outlook for the day. I got myself home, and had some breakfast. (I almost never eat breakfast before 10am), watched the news and got ready for work. Driving to the train station, and waiting for the train, I had a poetic narrative of the morning going in my head, and I wanted to write it down. However I didn't have an pen in my bag, so the revelations of the morning are gone, and I am settling back in to work.

The Tale of two stalls

I am a guy of average height. I don't consider myself to be extremely tall, but not short either. Lately however I have notice a trend that need discussed. You see in the restroom at work we have two urinals. (I know the post has gone in the toliet by the second line). For those of you who don't know about the two urinal configuration, they are set at different heights. Usually the one on the left is a foot lower then the one on the right. It is your basic short guy, tall guy configuration. Being that I am about 5'11" using the tall guy urinal is my right. Why, well because the short guy urinal makes anyone over 5'8" feel like they are peeing on their shoes, not a terribly good feeling. Now that I have set the ground work lets discuss this disturbing trend.

Almost every time I go to the restroom there is a short guy at the tall guy urinal. Some of these cases have  been extreme, as in the short guy is tippy-toeing to reach the tall guy urinal. Now, I don't care what kind of short guy neopolen complex you have, if you are a short guy, use the short guy urinal. I am not willing to pee on my shoes to make some short guy feel better about himself. Look if you are a short guy, just accept that you are close to the ground the some of us. There is nothing bad about that. Short guys don't have as far to fall and there are some very interesting advantages as far as eye levels and the opposite sex. Relish being a short guy. Be short and proud! Be short and proud and use the short guy urinal.

So you are asking yourself, what is the height requirement to use the tall guy urinal. Since it isn't like disneyland having a sign with a "you most be this tall to ride this ride", I have done some informal polling and it seem to be the concensus among most average height guys that 5'8" and up can use the tall guy urinal, while 5'7" and down should use the short guy urinal. Now you are asking yourself, why in the world did he write about this. Well, It needed to be done, and being that guys don't talk in the restroom (it's an unwritten rule) it needed to be somewhere guys feel comfortable talking about this stuff. Which would be anonymously on the internet.

Where's the tech

So you have probably noticed that I haven't had any recent post here or at twocsharpguys on any techie stuff. I know I have a few that can be called techie, but I mean the post that explain a problem and the source code I used to solve it. Those post always garner the most visits from the search engines. So why haven't I done any...cause I don't feel like it. Well that and I haven't been doing much coding lately. We have a really big project coming up. We are converting home banking platforms. With this there are lots and lots of meetings. In fact I am sure that we will have meetings about meetings. This always reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I read, it said that with any subject or project that requires more than five meetings, then the meetings become more important then the project that the meeting was called about in the first place.

Now with this big project looming in the near future, don't you think I should be getting to know the new system. Familarize myself with the code base? Me too but, that's not what I am doing. I'm doing a bunch of "back burner" projects. Which leads to my next question, if they are "back burner" projects, why are they the first on my plate over the HB conversion. Anyhow most of these projects are server software configurations. Not terribly hard things, but terribly time comsuming.  In other companies I worked for, we web administrators to do these things, but being a Sr. Web Developer, in a small IT department means that you get to wear many hats. Todays hat should be bowler I think! 

Monday Morning

This morning I hit the snooze bar 4 times, and my alarm clock is on the other side of the room. Now that is pretty tired. I get myself up, showered and shaved and hug and kiss my Beautiful Wife. Its one of those days that you just want to stay in bed. Its one of those days that you want to call in sick even though you aren't really sick. Anyhow get my stuff together and walk to the train station. I walk kind of slow, since I didn't expect to catch the 7:21am train. Its August 2nd and I still need to buy my august monthly train pass. So I get to the station at 7:19 and the train is still there and I am kind of surprised. I figured it will leave any second, as I walk up to the ticket vending machine. There is a metrolink "Ambassador" standing there helping people. As I walk up I see two people per machine, so this makes me think that I am right, I will catch the next train. As I get close two people walk away from the machines, and one woman tries the second machine because the first one isn't taking cash. The Ambassador asks me if I am using credit card, I say yes, and walk right up to the first machine. I do my order (there is about 5 buttons you have to press in the correct sequence to get your ticket/pass) and it goes through in record time. I mean I had my pass in like 30 seconds. So with pass in hand I walk right on to the 7:21 at 7:21 and the doors closed behind me. I really couldn't of timed it any better.

So why did I write a post about catching the train? Well, its because I have been in this whole running late and trying to catch the 7:21 and missing it. I would power walk to the station, rush out of the house and miss it. Today, I figured, there was no way I was going to catch it, so might as well not rush and what happens? I catch it with 10 seconds to spare, and had to buy my pass. Maybe this is going to be a good monday.

Getting the Most from your IT Department

My Sister send me the following list. I nearly fell over laughing. I personally have had 30 of the 35 experiences listed. Enjoy!

 

1. When you call us to have your computer moved or fixed, be sure to
leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed
animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't
have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of
yours.

2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages
from here.

3. When an IT person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That
way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us
to remember 300 user passwords.

4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping
you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your
mail because your computer won't power on at all.

6. When IT support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it
at once. We're just testing.

7. When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and
spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

8. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and
flags it as a rush delivery.

9. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's
electronics in it. Ditto for the microwave, timeclock, and coffee maker.
Hell, if it plugs in, we're probably in charge of it anyway.

10. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer
support. We can fix your telephone line from here.

11. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call
computer support. We're collectors.

12. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person's
chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem.
We love a puzzle.

13. When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have
cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

14. When an IT person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a
scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by
shortly?". That motivates us.

15. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times.
Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

16. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to
all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

17. Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly
what you mean by "my thingy blew up".

18. Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.

19. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your
dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were
designed to have 40lb of computer sitting on top of them.

20. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail
upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin
crumbs and nail clippings in them.

21. When you get a message saying "Are you sure?" click on that Yes
button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be
doing it, would you?

22. When you find an IT person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited
on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't
have any money to speak of anyway.

23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about
that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of
professional expertise referred to as crap.

24. When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT
support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and
Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional
engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

25. When you can't find someone in the government directory, call IT
Support.

26. When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call IT
Support. We love to hack.

27. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary
to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a
third party who doesn't know anything about the problem.

28. When you receive a 50MB movie file, send it to everyone as a mail
attachment. We've got lots of disk space on that mail server.

29. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller
chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the
queue.

30. When an IT person gets on the elevator pushing $100,000 worth of
computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice: "Good grief, you
take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?" That's another one that
cracks us up no end.

31. When you lose your car keys or go to lunch, send an email to the
entire company. People down in Las Vegas like to keep abreast of what's
going on.

32. When you bump into an IT person at the grocery store on a Saturday,
ask a computer question. We do weekends.

33. Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own.
Computer names are just a cosmetic feature.

34. When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office,
leave the documentation at home. We'll find all the settings and drivers
somewhere.

35. In no way do we believe that end-users are ungrateful. It hurts our
feelings that one could even think such a thing on the basis of the
above statements. In truth we wish to express our deepest gratitude to
the hundreds of wonderful end-users portrayed herein, without whom none
of this would have been remotely possible.

Fun filled Week Part I

I know that It's been more than a week since my last post, by boy what a week it has been. I guess it started last saturday, when we got a call from my Beautiful Wife's niece, saying, "hey, we are on the way". The way to where? we asked, "Well, your house". So hey cool, we are going to have some company! It's going to be my Wife's Niece, Her Daughter, and her Daughters friend. So My Beautiful Wife and I got to work immediately in making the house presentable. I tackled the dishes, she took on the laundry. All in all we got like 8 hours worth of cleaning done in like 3 hours. Yeah, were rockin. So now the house is clean, where are we going to put everyone. Hummmm, we may need some help on that one. So I let my Folks know what's going on, and they come up with the brilliant idea of bringing their motor home over to our house, and our company can stay in their. Now this was a plan that really came together. My Dad and Brother brought it over showed our guest how to use everything and we charming as usual!

Sunday, or should I say sunday lobster sunday. Being that our family guest from Airzona, first place we have to hit is going to be the beach. After getting the necesarry things (Dr. Pepper, Umbrella, boogie boards, Dr. Pepper, sandwiches, chips, Dr. Pepper, towels and sun screen.) we packed the car and where off. We went down to Santa Monica beach, and to our surprise so did everyone else in LA. We finally get down PCH enough to find some parking. We ended up at part of the beach that my Dad and I use to go surf fishing at all then time when I was younger. We set up our spot, and the girls going boogie boarding and My Wife and her Niece went for a walk. I kicked back and watched the girls like a hawk. You see my Beautiful Wife's Nieces, Daughter and her friend are both 11 years old. So of course the Oldest Brother thing kicks in. After we have some lunch I go in the water, now I don't think I have actually been in the ocean for 3 or 4 years. I've been the the beach but having gotten in. When I was a kid you couldn't keep me out of the water. It was nice to do a little body surfing with the girls. Of course being the manly man that I am, I didn't put any sun screen on, and I did get some sun, fortunately It just turned to tan, but it was sore for a day or two.

 

A Childhood on Ebay

Is it just me, or does it seem that everything ends up on ebay? I was reading some rss feeds and ran across a post on K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand) from Knight Rider being on eBay. I remember as a kid, that this was one of my brothers and my favorite shows. It was on Friday nights at 9pm, on NBC. I remember this so well, because our bedtime growing up was 9pm. With Friday nights being the exception, we were allowed to stay up till 10pm to see the end of Knight Rider (What can I say we were rebels through and through).

It seems like there isn't any toy or electronic from my childhood that I can't find on ebay. The CEDs we use to watch instead of having a VCR. All the game systems that my brother K has had over the years are there. (Yes, folks he is a gamer. Don't play grand turismo 3 with him unless you feel like losing by a lot. We are talking he will lap you in a less powerful car then you are driving) I am sure that with enough eBay searches,  I can find the "Incredible Hulk" bike I had as a kid, that was stolen out of our yard. Now, I don't mean one like it, I mean the one I had.

So it gets me to thinking, should we really buy the toys, and object of our childhood? Does the nostalgia bring back the same feelings or does having those things as an adult change you prospective on them. I think somethings are nice to have. Your baseball glove that you had when you were a kid, you know things that remind you more of spending time with your family. The electronics have come so far, that you will be sorely dissappointed. And as for your favorite TV show from when you were a kid, I would suggest skipping the reruns. Awhile back I got to see an episode of Knight Rider, and as an adult, I have no clue how that show stayed on the air for as many seasons as it did. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for the car from the show. I wonder how you ask a loan officer for a 50-60 thousand dollar loan to buy K.I.T.T. off eBay?

Staying up late...Paying for it in the morning

Last night, was a bit of a long night. I was here till 1am with two of my co-workers trying to migrate to a new Database server.  Fortunately or unfortunately we ran in to some serious issues. I personally think it was a good thing. I rather have the problems with the machine before it is put in production that way we can have it fixed and reliable, instead of trying to make it limp along.

One of my co-workers from our impromtu night shift had taken the train in to work. Of course at 1am the trains in Los Angeles just don't run. So I took him to his car in Irvine. I just didn't see any reason for him to stay at work overnight. It turned out to be one of those great car ride conversations that you learn alot about the other person and they learn a lot about you. It was really quite nice, and I came away feeling good about people in general.

The ride home was nice and uneventful. So at 2:30am, very drowsily I get home, change into PJs, but the little boy in his bed (he is asleep on my side of the bed), set the alarm, and then fell asleep within about 20 seconds after my head hit the pillow. So then what feels like about 45 seconds later the alarm goes off. It's already 7am. So I get up, turn the alarm off, take my shower, shave, brush my teeth, and I suddenly realize that I have done the whole  "getting ready for work" ritual with my eyes closed the entire time. I figured this out when I actually had to open my eyes to pick out my clothes.

I drove today, so that hopefully I could get home early. I get here about 8:30am, not so bad. So I am working away a little bit, trying to get my eyes to focus on the screen, and the phone rings. Its the other web developer. He's got some things going on at the house with the paint contractor he has doing work and lets me know that he will be rolling in to work around 11 to 12 today. I just had to laugh. Since 6am on thursday morning I have been home a grand total of 5 1/2 hours, while in the same time period he has only been at work a grand total of 5 1/2 hours. So I realize what I have to do, I need to paint the house.

Users Fixing Website Design Flaws

 This morning I ran acrossed a very interesting article on wired.com. (actually in is from the rss feed) Apparently a math student named Matt who found the web site of his favorite movie theather chain hard to use, so he made a version that was more usable and hosted on his site.

 So I took a look at the orignial site, and the truth it, the site is amazingly hard to use, even for me. The site takes a long time to load and has a lot of competing elements.  And of course the page doesn't even render properly in Mozilla (the javascript menus don't even show), I didn't even bother to try viewing the site on my Mac.

 So in my opinion Matt did a good thing. He created something that should of made the theather chain reconsider the design of their site and redesign it with usability being the first consideration and design being the second right? Nope, they sent Matt a cease and desist order. Okay so why did the lawyers get involved and not the web developers/designers? There is a disheartening trend among corporate websites. The flash intro/Ad, and navigation that is almost hidden. These sites take an extremely long time to load and even more time to find the information you desire. The other trend I have noticed is that many site are virtually "IE Only Sites", meaning that if you are on a browser other than Internet Explorer that you either can't view the site at all or have limited functionality with the site.

 These trends can't continue and I don't believe they will be allowed to continue for several reasons. First, the statement that the Department of Homeland Security made about Internet Explorer. "There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME-type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different Web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites" The recommendation was to using another browser like Mozilla. The second reason would be Section 508 accessibility. It is going to become necessary for financial institution to make sure their sites are Section 508 compliant.

 The question that pops into my mind is, why is it that websites in 1997 were easier to use then sites in 2004. I can come up with a couple of reasons. First, there were some elements that all sites had. Everyone had a links on the top and bottom of their pages. Another element was site maps. Site maps helped you cut through the paths that the design team/marketing department wanted you to go through and get right to the information you needed. Also Flash wasn't as prevelent. While Flash is a great web technology, it doesn't always have designers that create the most usable web interfaces.

 Something that I have found interesting is that usability and easy of publishing are coming back around again. Blogs have been at the for front of this movement. People are using pre-build, simple yet effective designs, and the easy to use publish tools that are offered. This is reminds me of what made the Web great to begin with. That just anyone with a text editor and a couple of hours could learn to write their own web page and express themselves in this "new media".  I hope that the trend of usability and easy of use, so that everyone can publish to the web continues.

You can find anything on the Internet

Some how I stumbled across this site and had to share. It seems that it really is true that you can find anything on the internet. My favorite thing about it is the  image of the operator waiting to take your call on the bottom right hand side of the page. The reason I got to the page was a link to a Jet Engine plans. This is a great page that features images that look like they are a mixture of a young boys imagination and a Road Runner cartoon. However I couldn't find a ACME Rocket Bicycle logo anywhere on the images.

Will Ferrell - Afternoon Delight

I can't stop watching this, it is so funny. Will Ferrell and the cast of "Anchorman The Lengend of Ron Burgundy" doing their rendition of "Afternoon Delight"

The Switch from IE to Mozilla

So I have made the Switch from IE to Mozilla Firefox. For the most part, it is a good change. I love the fact that I can download a theme and make Firefox look like Apple's Safari browser. The search bar next to the address bar is saving me loads of time. Instead of going to google, and then searching, I just search google from there. Now that is a nice feature. The other nice thing about Firefox is that there are Extensions. Extensions for Mouse Gestures, for development, and all sorts of other stuff.

So does this mean that I never use IE anymore. I wish I could say I don't , but there are some applications I still have to use it. Some of our intranet and web applications are IE only. However I think that I will start working to change that. Well, excuse me won't you, I have to run some new security updates for IE.

45 miles and counting

Well so far since I started riding again in June I have racked up 45 miles as of tonight. Yesterday night I got a new schwinn bicycle computer to help me keep track and measure my progress. Believe it or not I got it at walmart for $10. Of course I have no idea where the bicycle computer I bought 10 years ago for $75 is, not that it did any thing more than the new one does. (In fact it didn't do as much as the new one does.) Now I know how fast I am going, how far I have traveled and how long I have been riding. It's really rather like having all the stuff from your car dashboard, as far as speedometer, odmeter and clock right on your handlebars. I have been keeping a log, making educated guess as to distance using mapquest and lenght of the ride and coming up with my average mph. (Actually Bikelog will do the calcuation for you.)

I think I have mentioned it before but there is a great application called Bikelog. It comes in Windows, PDA and Web Flavors with the most expensive (the Windows version) being only $12.95. It really is a bargin and it really makes it easy to keep track of your progress. Some of the other things it does are give you ways to schedule and keep track of up coming rides and bike maintenance as well as some really cool charts of your data.

The one on the left is my Calories burned versus watts produced. I thought this was a great view, because it helps you to see what a great workout you are getting and how much energy you are producing on each ride.

Also if you are kind of competative you can upload your data to the http://www.netcyclist.com website and see where you place. I am currently 32nd. Not that I'm counting.