New York City ... Wow

I'm impressed... and I had a great time. Really big thank you to Mom and Julie for hosting and taking me along. Such a great experience.

School will probably pay the price for the trip... like already tonight I have done no school work... I can't really explain where the time has gone... but its almost time for Heroes.

So about New York then... we hit a lot of the popular sites, did the whole tourist thing. Also had some amazing food. NY Cheesecake and NY Steak, top the list... but also had, NY Pizza and NY Chinese food... mmm yummy.

Been there, Done that:

Saks 5th avenue
Bloomingdales
Tiffany's
Nintendo World
Apple Store
FAO Schwarz
Trump Tower
World Trade Center
St. Paul's Church
Pier 17 - Including the Bodies exhibition
The NYC Gift Show
Carnegie Hall
Times Square - Including M&M World and the Hard Rock Cafe

Next time I think I would like to see the Met. and hopefully it will be warmer and I could go hang out in Central Park.

Everything was good.. and a little overwhelming. Times Square was great, visual overload for sure. Enjoy the pictures.

NYC Teaser

Having a lot of fun so far. Will actually post later...

Household Quotes of the Week (Episode 1)

So heres the thing... My house is really funny. I'm sure as with any house of 4, 20 somethings there are many classic quotes. So heres the first of hopefully many installments of our random quotes.

"I know how to work all men..." -- Michelle

"Your boobs make that shirt look good" -- Tyler

"Now I'm going to be trying to hard to be quoted" -- Tyler

" We are two girls on IRC lol'ing on the couch together" -- JL

"We have some flat 7-up in the fridge" -Michelle
"Take that and go on a killing spree" - Tyler

"Man-tastic" - Matt

"Solid 4 inches" - Unknown...

Birthday, New Years and GReunion all-in-one!

Alright... so that was a good party.

In celebration of my birthday and in general to have a party in the new house that I'm actually around to attend we had a really great party last night. Scheduled on Saturday night so that Vince and Mark (and Emine), former GInterns could attend and join in. GReunion 2.0 for me! (3.0 for Vince... he gets around more). Invited some people who haven't been to any of our parties before and of course all the regulars as well. It was a very well attended party ... a full house! Wii upstairs, drinking games downstairs, and random conversations in the limbo areas like at the bottom of the steps. Tyler came up with an awesome idea, at Midnight we celebrated new years 2007. Since my actual new years was spent in Chicago with the airport. I got a second chance. It was awesome and really thoughtful!

Went to bed finally at 6 am .... and the waffles in the morning were great! But my head is killing me.

Thank you to everyone who came out and had a good time celebrating. I hope you had as much fun as I did and I hope to see you all again at the next party.

Pictures

Matthew Ruston Video

Gender Roles - Psych 101...

So I'm sitting in my very full psych class of course pondering my life and why I do what I do, and the new subject starts... Gender Roles and our society. Now I'm the first to admit I don't fit in to most models of femininity but I do have my moments.

The listed traditional masculine traits: decisiveness, assertiveness, independent, leader
The listed traditional feminine traits: sensitivity, warmth, nurturer, passive

Humm... quite the list to pick from there... anyways... I tend to lean towards the Androgyny model... where I have some of both (as most people do) I just think that my masculine traits are more developed based on my career and personal attitudes. And I'm not sure that how I really want to be portrayed all the time.

I love that I can be just one of the guys and that its not awkward when I'm the only girl in the classroom. But lately I've been feeling... overlooked as a girl... many of the guys seem to forget that I am in fact a girl. Comments along the lines of "there are no girls in CS" are funny to a point... but tend to get below the skin after a while. Don't get me wrong I don't want to be singled out and I don't want the wrong kind of attention... but I don't want to lose my identity either.

Sigh... more cleavage shirts I guess.

23!

It's hard to believe I'm 23 now. I saw a lot of family this weekend and have a pretty good birthday at home (even without my Bailey). There are others in my family who also have birthdays that we were celebrating this weekend... Uncle Wayne turned 50 and Uncle Mark turned 37. (Happy Birthday again) and I realize that I am still the young one in the family but I'm kinda feeling old. University is almost done and big decisions are coming up soon.

While talking to my Uncle Bill (yes I have lots of uncles), he offered a theory that life really begins at 20 and thats when you are slowing down and you start to really pay attention to the world around you. And this theory make a lot of sense, by the time you are 20 you have a pretty good grasps on parts of the world and you are quickly realizing how fast time has gone by. The first 20 you spend your life wanting things to hurry up... you want to just get older. Now... we sit around and think about the future and about the real world. We start thinking about things like "when our parents were our age they were {married, with child, with children...} and here we are..." Even 5 years is leaps and bounds now. Where I was 5 years ago at 18 is hugely different from now at 23... and I can only imagine where I will be at 28 and who I will be then.

The second half of the theory is now... we spend our time trying to slow time down and really enjoy every year as much as possible. Making events as memorable as possible, taking lots of pictures.... starting a blog...... joining social networks to keep tabs on people. yeah... so anyways. I'm very much looking forward to my party this coming weekend, at which I will take lots of pictures of all my friends and undoubtedly will blog the day after.

I still can't believe I'm already 23...

Bailey

Shortly after my post last night, Bailey passed away. Being a Doberman of 8 years she had a long life. She was the only dog that we ever got as a puppy in my lifetime anyways. She was very smart always crafting a new plan to get herself into trouble. I remember the first time I came home from university in first year... She got so happy to see me and then a few minutes later she was so mad at me for leaving her like that. I wish I could have been there to see her, but this is life I suppose.

She was a great dog, with an amazing personality. She will be missed very much.

Bailey Weber
Aged 8 years 18 days
Jan 11, 2007

The Art of Usability

How do you tell someone that their product sucks and it will take weeks to make the product usable including a redesign of many aspects the they know and love. And its not just showing and proving something is wrong, also telling them how to fix it.

This is the hardest part of my job.

Engineers, Programmers, Designers... I love you all, I respect and even try to emulate some of your work. And I can even respect your love for your product. I know I would feel the same way. But my job now... is to try to make it better for everyone, trying to find the problems that you don't always see. And while work leads to a lot of subjective and qualitative results I take it every bit as seriously as you do your products.

So how do you do it? Obviously I could try to speak their language... math, stats and hard facts... Sure, that makes the study longer, more expensive and much more involved. Then I come out with stats and facts... but at the end of the day I still have to make the recommendation on how to change it. Not to mention the fact that chances are they know how to bend stats better than I can. So what I've found that works well so far ... is giving the positive first... build them up, make them feel good... then work on tearing them down and making them feel small... but end on a positive note or they won't make the changes and they will never read the report.

I've had my ups and downs with this part of the job. And it always feels like I'm preparing to go into the fire when I'm into the analysis and report writing. Just waiting for them to shoot the messenger. Some people get it more than others they understand what I'm trying to do, but ... there there are the people that think I will magically fix the product and that the testing is all they will ever have to do to have a wonderful product. Anyways, thats all I have to say about that.

Also, My dog Bailey is very sick and not eating. I'm worried and really sad. She's getting pretty old and now isn't responding to the medication. She will probably get her own blog post soon.

Schools In...

I'm back in Windsor, my jet-setting holiday is over and I'm feeling very broke and tired. The flight back from Cali was much better than getting there, but still at the same time very rocky. There were many clouds in the sky that day and the plane doesn't like that. It was sad as always leaving Sean there, but I'll be back soon enough I hope. All in all the vacation was at least 12 hours too short and I still haven't seen the end to happy feet... (long story).

It's time to get back to school and attempt the winter semester. I'm not sure I'll have the same motivation I had last semester since my grades weren't any thing to celebrate over. This semester I have quite a few challenging classes and I'm starting my undergrad thesis..... which reminds me I need to pick my thesis topic soon. I wonder what it will be.

I don't really have anything interesting to write about... but I don't really have any homework to do just yet... I suppose I could do some more work work, but I did a lot of that today.

Photos

Some of my pictures I just like to stare at. They can take me back to the place they were taken and they make me happy looking at them. I'm not the greatest photographer but I do enjoy and appreciate it. It's one of my part time hobbies that I'm going to keep working on.

New Years...

Another year. It's hard to believe it's 2007 now. Seems strange to think about the year 2000 being 7 years ago. Someone on the CS Forum asked "What does New Years mean to you?" and its a pretty interesting question and I think this year has changed my opinion on the issue. I used to think that what happed over new years and the first few days was a pretty good indicator of how your year is going to be. Of course... this was when I was having good new years celebrating with Sean or Friends and family. This year... I spent my new years alone stuck in limbo. It would make me very sad to think that thats how I might be spending my whole year. So I'm working on redefining my answer to the question. I think New Years is like a new beginning, It can give people a chance to start clean or change a behavior. Now I think its a good time to do that... I don't think its the only time that people can change. And I really don't think that people should wait till the new years starts to change.

At the same time... there are many people that purpose a change at this time of year that is too drastic. That even they know that they won't keep up with. If you want to change your life it takes many small steps and continual dedication.... if thats your new years resolutions then so be it but there are many people who think up their resolutions and never see them through.

Having said all that... I haven't decided on my resolution yet... I need to go back to the gym and I need to not take my laptop to my hard classes, I'd like to read more books and learn a new language, I need to stop biting my nails too. We'll see what I finally settle on.

Happy 2007

{Blog post from Dec 31 finally being posted}

This is not a good way to start 2007.

I’m currently spending the night in Chicago… I don’t even have my AC for my laptop since it was in my checked luggage. So I’ll do this for a while, then I guess I’ll listen to music for the rest of the night. I’ve finally stopped crying tho, so maybe things are looking up? How do I begin? It was just like any other time I’ve traveled. I crossed the border no problem, left in plenty of time, check in and security was a piece of cake. I even waited at my gate peacefully while the flight was delayed…. 10 minutes… 20 minutes…. 30 minutes past the scheduled departure time. Finally we are told that the plane is having technical difficulties and we will have to go to a new gate to board a new plane. Fine… I’m calm. FINALLY we get in the air. It’s a short trip, only going from Detroit to Chicago after all. The rain slowed us down and the turbulence was rough but I’m still calm. We arrive about 30 minutes later than we were supposed to, the same time I’m supposed to be checking in in Chicago. … shit … So I boot it to my next gate and come to find that I’ll be second on the list for stand by. Fighting the tears…. I wait for that flight to load; it was about an hour late from when it was supposed to take off. So I guess I could have celebrated new years in a plane alone if I had actually got on the flight. Yeah this is pretty bad… So I wait in the customer service line… they can put me on stand by in the morning to San Jose or I can fly at 9 am to San Francisco. Screw this stand by stuff… So I’ll be arriving in SF about 12 hours after I was originally planning on arriving in SJ. … But the kicker is that my bags will still (hopefully) arrive in San Jose tonight.

It’s almost midnight in Windsor, there is a happening party going on at my house now. It’s almost midnight in Grand Bend where my sister is having a small gathering. It’s almost 9 in San Jose where my boyfriend is and where I’m supposed to be arriving. Its almost 11 here in Chicago… same as in Minneapolis… Where I’ve spent my past two new years. Maybe that’s the kicker… I have to celebrate new years in a central time zone now.