•
Since I’m not sure where I should move to, or if my work will stay near public transportation for much longer, I’m hoping to live a gypsy summer. I have offers from five different sets of folks to come and visit and stay for a week to a month in various guest rooms and couches. I’m hoping to spend more time with friends and family this way, and use the time to figure out where I’d like to live ultimately.
I’m finding the process of ‘thinning out’ my possessions both troubling and inciteful. Many things I obtained when I had the space to hold them, but without much thought or care. Now storing them will take effort and expense. I’m reconsidering everything I own. This brain energy is exhausting. For each possession, I ponder what it means to me and why I hold onto it. I’m reminded of the narration early in Fight Club:
“Like everyone else, I had become a
slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.
If I saw something like clever coffee
tables in the shape of a yin and yang,
I had to have it. I would flip through
catalogs and wonder, “What kind of dining
set defines me as a person?” We used to
read pornography. Now it was the Horchow
Collection. I had it all. Even the glass
dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections,
proof they were crafted by the honest,
simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of
wherever.
If you're new here, thanks for visiting! Please subscribe to my RSS feed and consider visiting my design-related blog and my meditation-related blog.
•
I should have done more packing this weekend, I need to move things into storage in about a week. And there is still much to sell and give away.
Yesterday I spent about twelve hours though with another sixty folks repairing this wonderful woman’s home. She has lived there for seventeen years, but has not been able to maintain it herself and could not afford to hire help for repairs. We decended on her house en masse.
This was part of the Rebuilding Together project, and apparently more than thirty homes were worked on in my city alone this weekend. I heard about it from two friends, who’s company signs up as a group for this each year. I’m hooked though, I’d like to do more of this…
Since I professed some skills in taking care of a home, and some confidence leading people, they made me one of the autonomous team leaders and gave me an assistant. We were responsible for plumbing repairs and safety devices. We fixed a toilet, snaked out drains and installed drain covers, installed non-slip material on stairs, helped install hand rails, installed smoke detectors, and a fire extinguisher. That didn’t take long though, mostly we helped clean, saw, drill, nail, paint, and carry things here and there. In one day, sixty people replaced hardwood floors, recarpeted a bedroom, painted every ceiling and most rooms, completely cleaned out her back yard installing new stairs down to it and a stone walkway, installed a laundry room with donated washer and dryer, remodeled a bathroom, and installed a new oven and microwave in a newly built alcove in her kitchen. It was a tremendous amount of work.
It was also tremendously rewarding work. Each time I’d look in a room, with busy people doing this and that, I would imagine coming home there after we’re done. Feeling more secure and safe, with more conveniences and comfort, and all because of strangers who showed up yesterday and worked incredibly hard until after dark. All from the kindness of strangers. How amazing.
•
Even notice that the ‘thumb’ in a scroll bar moves in the opposite way that the page does that you’re scrolling? Try that now, grab the thumb on the right of this window and drag it down to see the page scroll up! Seems backwards to me. Like a better approach might be just a band along the right side of the page which you can grab like fly paper and when you move the mouse UP the page moves UP. Like that part is part of the page that you can grab and move physically.
It’s nice in some systems that the thumb also tells you how large the document is, as a proportion of the window. NeXT might have had that first. But I think I’d prefer a direct manipulation approach instead of the abstract control arrows and thumb to manipulate what I’m seeing. Give me a hand icon and let be ‘grab’ the page and move it the way I want to…
•
So a bunch of friends organize monthly pot lucks, really just an excuse to get together and drink too much wine and gossip. But last night I brought over some port and snacks and met up with eight friends for banter and belly laughs. Paid for it a little this morning, darn that port was good…
Wednesday night I went dancing again, and got back my favorite sweater that I accidentally left at the club the week before. Thank Goddess! Alethia is that goddess for saving it for me from the lost and found and making sure it didn’t disappear. She’s having a fundraiser this Sunday, I have to go to thank her again. I love finding nice people randomly, I’m glad I lost the sweater so I could gain a little more faith in humanity.
Spent more time today packing and pruning things from closets. Moving day is less than two weeks away. I’m considering just giving older furniture away that I don’t like. I know it has value but there would be such time saved in posting a “free furniture” ad on craigslist and watching things disappear magically. Leave them on the curb and voila. Some things I bought for under a $100 and got many years of service.
•
Today I was asked if I could focus on some contextual analysis and user testing for our next product release. The goal is to have a more defined usage model up front to reduce development churn along the way. Some of the features for the next release are very similar to things that other products have done — so it will be easier for me to study them.
The biggest hurdle I have though is convincing the engineers and others at the company who are ‘advanced computer users’ that we’re not building a product for them. we’re building a product which is intentionally way beneath them and it takes a constant vigil to avoid letting complexity and abstraction sneak in which will confuse novices. This must be one of the perennial challange for usability designers: working with engineers who doesn’t realize the depth of their own sophistication and abstract reasoning skills.
•
My cold never materialized, even though I had to work later than planned today. Stirred up some discussion at work, which I think pissed off my friend Max. Or he was already tweaked about something else and I just picked a poor time to make waves. We’re getting close to finishing the first cut at our product and there’s not enough time really to get done what we’d ideally like to get done.
Talked to my folks today, we’re all heading to Arlington, Virginia next month to bury my grandfather. He died a couple years ago, and he was cremated. But he was also a war hero and has a plot in Arlington cemetery. So we’re taking his ashes there. He’s getting the 21 gun salute, parade, and everything. For me it will be an opportunity to think about him more and how large of an impact he has on me. It will also be an opportunity to meet some younger cousins that I don’t know.
Lawrence J. Evans, Jr. was a monumental figure in our family. He saw the world as very black and white, he had a tremendous amount of energy and presence, and he never liked to hide his opinions. He was a commando in WWII, and would be one of the first on an island cutting communications lines before its invasion and working with local guerillas fighting the Japanese.
After the war he decided to become a regional specialist, and the Army taught him Arabic. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan now has reminded me of my grandfather often. His specialty was the Middle East. He spent much of his career there, as a military liaison to Saudi Arabia and other countries. I think he was also a training officer, teaching their armies the latest methodology. My dad’s family lived in the Middle East for awhile, I have a picture on my bookshelf of my dad when he was about one - sitting on the ground in diapers in Jordan.
One of the greatest accomplishments to me in his service record was a literacy program in Saudi Arabia. I’m sure he was tasked with the training program for their army, in the late 1950’s. But the enlisted ranks were illiterate. To solve this the junior officers were trained as teachers, and sent to every town in the kingdom to create schools for reading and writing. The literacy rate skyrocketed. For this, he was awarded one of the highest honors by the Prince.
My grandfather joined the green berets later in his career, he was twice the age of the rest of his class. That reminds me of Marlon Brando’s character in Apocolypse Now. Martin Sheen’s character is reading the background of Colonel Kurtz dumbfounded that he joined the green berets at age 40, and completed the qualifying course that almost killed him when he was only 20. I held my grandfather in a similar sense of mystery and awe, and would have had the same fear if it wasn’t so obvious how much my grandfather loved me.
He was a strange bird when I knew him. Though long retired from service, he always had a sword cane or knife belt buckle on him. He was always packing some sort of weapon. After the army he went to law school and tried to practice law. But he couldn’t deal with how irrational and unintentional his clients were. Then he was elected as a judge, and in his courtroom they called him the ‘colonel’. He ran his court like a military unit. But even judicial life drove him crazy, the same irrational and unintentional people were still there just now in front of his bench. When I met him he was basically retired. A bookshelf of law books sat behind the lounge chair which I always found him in. But he always had a charming and mischievous grin.
I found a reference to him on the web today, an echo of his voice. The photocopy list of the Infantry School Quarterly from July 1953 has an article of his titled “The Desert is No Obstacle”. A really poignant title given what is going on in the world today.
•
Lack of sleep this weekend, combined with spending time with friends with colds, is now putting my immune system into overdrive. I’m going to only work for part of today, and probably skip class tonight, to let my immune system do it’s thang.
•
What I said earlier about middle-of-the-week dance clubs not being meat markets I take back. Last night at another 80’s club hundreds and hundreds of people were primarily trying to pick up each other. Perhaps Thursday’s are a warm up, practice session for the weekend. The music was fun though.
I’m heading out to a hot springs retreat this weekend. This is a yearly planning get together for my tribe of friends. We’ll have break out discussions for current group issues, activities to get to know each other better, plus spiritual practices like a sweat lodge, meditation, and visualizations. I’m really looking forward to my first sweat lodge.
•
I listened to Noam Chomsky on public radio tonight, in a segment called “Collateral Damage: War and Propaganda.” He and interviewer David Barsamian talked about new terms in our lexicon, inserted into the US collective mind by the government public relations team. But they also talked about the long standing history both in the US and elsewhere to use this technique, and to use fear most generally, to control popular opinion.
I went to a good university, the same one in fact where Professor Chomsky teaches, yet I was never really innoculated against propaganda. I developed good critical thinking, but only focused on analytical problems. Over the years I’ve developed more critical skills when dealing with people, but hearing some of the things in this radio broadcast highlighted that there is still so much that slips under my radar.
History examples: three months before the US invaded Panama, drugs were not considered high in the public issues list. Bush Sr. declared that drugs were the single largest threat to our social fabric, the family, and our security. One month after these statements and government focus on that issue, it was number one in the public consciousness. Two months later, we invaded.
In 1985, Reagan declared that the government of Nicaragua was a clear threat to our security. They were a two days drive from San Antonio. They would destabilize the region. We had to do something about them. He declared a legal state of emergency, which was renewed each year. We carried on an ongoing war in that country during this period.
In the current Iraq war, the ‘threat’ of Iraq was described in nearly the same language used to describe Nicaragua then. But if Kuwait and other countries don’t consider Iraq a threat, why are we so frightened? Clearly the spin is designed to scare us, so the population will support a foreign policy decision.
Lexicon example: we hear Iraqi’s who drive car bombs up to US checkpoints described as terrorists, and fedayeen who hide in mosques and hospitals similarly. Yet these people are defending their country from an invading aggressor. They would be more accurately described as members of their own homeland defense.
Related note: I really enjoyed the movie Bowling for Columbine as propaganda vaccine: anti-propaganda. But it should really be taught in schools at a young age. If we did that, then people wouldn’t be so easy to control, eh?
•
A friend from Friendster suggested a trip last night to a gothic / new wave dance club. Years ago I would dance at an industrial club each week, and I’d occasionally make forays to goth events. Clubs here have different events each night of the week, and they can vary wildly between different nights. 80’s pop one night, then heavy metal the next, then a transvestite drag contest. If you show up on the wrong night you’ll likely be dressed horribly, horribly wrong with music you hate.
I liked events in the middle of the week, even though they’d leave me looking ghost-like at work the next day. Events in the middle of the week tended to have unusual people who were more interested in dancing and music than on scamming and getting drunk; main stream, booze swilling, meat markets are reserved for money generating Friday and Saturday night time slots. Sure every event will have sexual energy and lots of alcohol. But a Wednesday night crowd was much more palatable.
I had a blast. I haven’t danced to those songs in a long time. The people were mellow, fun, and you could tell they enjoyed getting dressed up and going out. Using my new age lingo, “there was good energy there.”
monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for