ICantThinkOfAnythingWorse--So last year we bought our 2001 Dodge Durango from the local Dodge dealer. We were greeted by a weird little guy who barely spoke English, who was kind of your typical car salesman. We ended up doing the deal with the owner and just using this salesman as the not-so-helpful let me screw-you-on-this-deal guy. Turns out this salesman
killed a buyer at the dealership the other day by mistakenly backing his new truck into him. The poor father who was killed was probably
saving his 2 year old son. This really freaked me out. What a terrible course of events for everyone involved. I'm going to resume trying not to think about it now...
Usabilitissimo!--I had the pleasure of having free lunch at
Maggiano's yesterday. Ivan and I had great appetizers of stuffed Mushrooms and Spinach-Artichoke Dip. We then had a big helping of Eric Schaffer patting his own back on how to institutionalize usability using his Usability Central
product. OK the guy is good. But he's used to hearing that from many people. The idea is cool. I could buy all the usability documentation from him and put it on my intranet so I don't have to build all that stuff from scratch. It will be cool when I come up with the $14,000 for it.
BeVeryAfraid-- Christina Wodtke posted an
excellent article on
boxes and arrows talking about Information Architects not being considered designers. Amazing that people would find what I do not to be design. Furthermore interesting to note that Christina understands so perfectly the difference between one who defends his work (designer) and one who does not (the majority of other people on any given project). I
ranted about it. Now I'm over it. Returning to my exquisitely undefined job now...
StrangelyBeautifulInferno--OK so I don't get to the blog too much...when I do, it's quality. Memorial Day was a week ago, and I still can't believe how strange the final hour of it was. We put together our new
firepit and stacked it high with the usual kindling and logs, then lit 'er up on our back porch. Soon the fire was crackling. The air was full of that campfire smell, and Trish and I were chatting about the weekend. We put the cover on thinking that it would be better for the house if it weren't quite so hot. After about a minute I start to hear sizzling.... sizzling.... sizzzleFOOM! All of the sudden the outside of the cover spontaneously combusted!
I hate to admit it, but I froze. I stood there thinking, "Wow, that's a really big fire." Me, the Boy Scout who is supposed to Be Prepared. My wife, the practical one who didn't want the house to catch fire went for the fire extinguisher. By the way, fire extinguishers work! We put the cover out, then had a hearty chuckle as we thought of the friends who declined to come over that night. They'll have to wait for another time to come "wind down the weekend with us."
