Welcome

This is the second example of bad usability that I have seen with a PayPal integration. I am trying to decide if this is the way PayPal wants things or something else.

From Woot.com:

Once again the PayPal button is closer to the credit card entry area than the selection of the credit card option. I thought maybe it had something to do with the hiding of the text boxes since that can be tricky cross browser. Switching the position of the radio buttons shouldn't make any difference in this case.

I did work on one integration project like this during the summer but the vendor I worked with with didn't have this setup for payment selection. I am not picking on PayPal because I interned there this summer if it was any checkout system that was doing this I would be equally critical.

I am a huge fan of Southwest airlines they get you where you need to go for a reasonable price. A few weeks ago I tried to book my flight home and kept getting this error message "The purchaser's first name was not entered. Please return to the previous page and enter the purchaser's first name." So I check to make sure my passenger info is entered and try again. Same thing again so I gave up thinking there was a glitch.

I saw the form pictured below and thought that part was only for people using PayPal to checkout so I guessed the next page would have the information for those of us not using PayPal.

So tonight I tried again filled out the form and got the same error. Here is the payment part of the form.

After staring at it for a little while I realized I was supposed to enter my credit card information in the boxes below the PayPal button. Ok, I see now but this doesn't make sense.

Out of curiosity I clicked the PayPal button to see what it would do. Here is the result of that.

My confusion was in the fact that indented below the PayPal button was the form for the credit card info. This is an easy fix I think.

That is much clearer to me. Click the credit card button and fill in the info below it. Click the PayPal button and poof it is gone and you go through the PayPal checkout.

Tonight I had an interesting discussion with a group of first year HCI students regarding the CHI 2008 design competition. We are all working on it as part of different classes but face similar problems.

The part of the discussion I found the most interesting was how people design and where their inspiration comes from. For some it comes from research others from the actual subject themselves or a population close to the subject at hand. It is really interesting to watch these students start to find who they are in the design realm. Everyone has their own ways of finding inspiration and these first year students are just starting to develop their design processes and voice.

Something I have really started to internalize over the past few days is my design inspiration and voice. I have realized that I am really a human-centered designer. The reason I came back to school was to learn more about usability which is a very human-centered field. I have learned so much more than just usability in the domain of HCI in the past year and a half. I have realized people are my inspiration. This is how I helped my team come up with our CHI solution. I saw a problem some interesting points and found a possible solution.

Much of my research for capstone has been papers that talk to people or statistics about people. My capstone is about a group of people and I am waiting on Human Subjects Committee approval to survey this group of people. It is kind of funny when you finally internalize something that was there all along.

Another topic was the PRInCiPleS framework and its merits as a design system. One of the students debated that this was not a useful way to design and that his team had thrown it out. Other people from other teams talked about how they are using it and how it is helpful. The PRInCiPleS are not intended to be a end all be all solution for everything they are just a framework that helps you make sure you have everything covered to create a solid design argument. Also as someone else said if you get stuck it is a good place to come back to and say ok where am I and can this help guide me toward a solution. Thinking about my capstone project I started to try and fit things in to the PRICPS as we lovingly call it and realized that I am doing it without really thinking about it.

As has been said many times before design is a very non linear process. I believe everyone has to take the ideas that are out there regarding design and find their own way to design.

Find your own process and run with it.

Probably the most interesting piece of research I have found for my capstone so far is a dissertation from 1959 about International student adjustment. Interestingly I am working on pretty much the same topic.

Did you know that Indiana was one of the top schools for International students in the United States in the 50s and 60s? Back then IU had around 400 students which was really large for that time.

Many of the things I have read over and over again in more recent research is also noted in this dissertation. The question is are these problems that we are doomed to have to deal with or is it that everyone just talks about the problems but doesn't try to solve or at least reduce them. Some of the issues discussed in this dissertation have been addressed by the international student center but many of the common ones haven't.

Do I expect to solve these problems with my capstone no but I hope to make some improvements at least within the Department of Informatics.

This little glance back in time is really very interesting and even with how old it is I think I has some interesting information.

Right now I am waiting on my HSC to come back and then I need to set up my online survey. I am also planning on meeting with someone from the International student center so I can understand the orientation process more. Maybe I can observe orientation in the spring.

Much of this year will probably be spent thinking about jobs and trying to find a job.

With my internship I thought what I wanted to do would become much clearer but it didn't. Unfortunately this is because I didn't get to do what I wanted to do on my internship which was very frustrating. I was really excited about my internship when I went out there but it did not live up to expectations. Work wise I wonder if I would have been better off in St. Louis.

Outside of work I am glad I went to California because I had a great time and met some really great people.

Tonight I worked on my resume adding my internship and AI work. I took some stuff off, debated on whether I should add other things. I don't really have anyone to review it so I'll probably just have to go with this one for the career fair on Monday and then fix it later.

Which brings me to my current dilemma as I was writing my objective. What do I want to do? I toyed with the PhD idea for a little while but I have decided that I do want to get a job and work for a while. Partially because I owe money from undergrad and grad school. Also because the professors who had the most impact on me had a good amount of work experience in the field.

But that brings me back to what do I want to do, what type of a job do I want to get? Do I want to do user research since I do enjoy doing research? Do I want to do more user interface design work? Where do I want to live? Do want to move to California, head back south, go toward the Texas, Nevada, New Mexico area? Do I consider trying to live with the snow for a good job? Do I want to do consulting? What about the downturn in the job market today? (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/business/08econ.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin) When I graduated with my undergraduate degree I walked into a horrible job market and got lucky to find a really good job. I am a little afraid that is going to happen again. So it brings up all of these what ifs and not a lot of answers. Granted I do have until May, well technically August since that is when my lease in Bloomington is up, but not knowing where you are going to be in a more permanent sense in a year is a strange feeling that I haven't had in a little over 5 years. After I finished my undergrad I was pretty sure I wanted to stay in Florida which I did but now I don't know where I want to be.

My friend who is an MBA will most likely know where he is working by December at the latest. It which would be nice to have things squared away by then so all you would have to worry about is finishing up and moving.

I don't know of anyone last year who had a job by December in the second year group last year. I know I am getting way ahead of myself now since no one really hires for HCI people until after January but it still something that is going to be lingering in the back of my mind.

Where will I be this time next year? Only time will tell.

The semester started on August 27th with a whirlwind of activity. This semester I am working as an associate instructor for Introduction to Informatics which requires me to be in lecture on Monday's and Wednesdays, hold office hours twice a week for an hour, teach two labs and help teach one. Getting used to that along with my new class schedule has been interesting.

Plus last weekend I met a friend in Fort Wayne at the last minute. It was important that we see each other and this coming weekend was out of the question with grading for two classes due next week and meetings Sunday night.

Fort Wayne was about half way between where we live and that is the only reason it was chosen as a destination. We quickly discovered there is nothing to do in Fort Wayne so we ended up going to Berne, a Mennonite town outside of Fort Wayne. There wasn't much there either since it was a Sunday. We knew that going in but the options in Fort Wayne were non existent on a Sunday too. I was happy to see him again even if only for a brief time. I don't know when we will see each other again but hopefully this won't be the last time.

One of the silly things I wanted to do while in Indiana was see the birthplace of Jim Davis creator of Garfield. I have been a fan of Garfield almost all of my life. We are the same age. :) On my way to Fort Wayne I took a brief detour to Fairmount, Indiana, also the home of James Dean. I got there too late in the day to see the museum but I did take a photo of the Garfield statue out front.

This week was pretty normal. I am starting to see where I have time to work on things and where I will just be rushing to get from one place to the next. Next week I am going to work on using that free time a little better.

I had a lot of fun this summer and was quite busy therefore very limited blog posts.

Here are some photos I posted on facebook. You should be able to access them even without a facebook account. http://indiana.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2279767&l=5d6ff&id=6852332
http://indiana.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2303510&l=e7ca7&id=6852332

After Yosemite Steve and I visited Sonoma where we spent two days going to different wineries in the area. I bought 5 bottles of wine. One I gave to my roommate when I moved out, she was really nice to me. The other Steve and I drank one night and the rest are now in the wine rack of my apartment.

Our next trip was Gilroy Garlic Festival/Carmel and Monterey. The garlic festival was a bit of a let down I was expecting more for $12 per person. We saw it and that is about all we can say about it. Carmel was nice the main attraction was a shopping area. We had a nice lunch at a small Italian bistro. Most of the shops were a little out of our current price range. It was still fun to look at the galleries and shops in the area.

From there we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium which I thought was pretty fun. We saw all sorts of sea life displayed in a really nice way. That sounds odd to say but zoos and aquariums are all about displaying the animals properly and in an interesting manner. I posted some of the cool jellyfish photos I took at the aquarium.

Our final trip was Las Vegas. We left the day after finishing our internships. We stayed at Treasure Island. It was a nice hotel nothing fancy but also not a crazy place like Circus Circus. We saw a few shows including Penn and Teller and Blue Man Group. We were disappointed with the Blue Man Group show since I had seen essentially the same show in Boston and Steve had seen many of the acts on a dvd.

Besides shows we did a little gambling. I lost two dollars and Steve won over a hundred. We also saw a lot of the hotels on the strip. If I were to go back I would probably stay at Paris. I liked the way the hotel looked. Funny thing about Paris and New York, New York. Both have fake streets inside that are supposed to replicate city streets from their respective cities. In NY,NY the bottom floor is normal scale but the upper floors are squished. You sort of feel off walking through these "streets". Paris has everything on a decent scale where you don't feel weird.

The weekends we were not out of town which were pretty few we spent exploring San Francisco. I feel like I a good feel for the city. I lived in the Marina and spent time in many of the different neighborhoods.

I really loved the city. The only thing I didn't like was how cold it was.

All in all I had a great summer and got to see more of California than most of the other people I know who were out there for the summer.

This morning somewhere around 4 am I was sleeping soundly in my bed in San Francisco. All of the sudden the bed started to shake then I heard the shutters on my window flapping and the door squeeking. At first I didn't know what was going on then when I woke up fully I realized it was an earthquake. I stayed in bed till the room stopped shaking and then got up and wondered if I should do something. I listened for my roommate to get up but she just rolled over and went back to sleep. No lights went on in my building everyone acted almost as if this was normal.

I talked to a few people this morning who didn't even feel the quake in the city. It was an odd experience but luckily all is still well here.

Yeah I have been a bit busy so I haven't posted in a while.

What have I been up to you wonder well I have been spending most of my weekend exploring different areas of California.

To catch up from my last post I moved into the Marina area of San Fransisco and it is pretty nice. I have a view of the Golden Gate bridge from the roof. This was also nice for fireworks last week since they shoot them from barges on the bay. I had a great view of the fireworks and apparently one of the warmest 4ths in many years.

A few weekends ago we went to Lake Tahoe. There was a group of about 6 interns and me as the only female. It reminded me a bit of the Smokies experience. :) The first day we had breakfast in downtown Tahoe City, we then went and rented water toys. Steve, one of the other interns, and I rented a canoe which was very difficult to keep from being blown out to the center of the lake due to the high winds. We had a few moments where we had to paddle really hard just to stay close to shore. Steve also lost his balance and we almost ended up in the cold lake, fortunately he was able to regain his balance so we didn't tip. We had rented things for an hour but only made it half an hour.

The next day we decided to take on a hike. The visitors center recommended the eagle lake hike on the south side of the lake. This seemed to work out since we could use an alternate route to get home that would leave from that side of the lake. The trail went past a waterfall and then to a small mountain lake. After hiking to the lake we spent a little time there and then turned around to head back to the cars.

As we got to the trail head we saw strange clouds over the lake. We realized these were not clouds but smoke from a fire. We hurried to get on the road so we could make it out before the fire spread and closed roads. The traffic crawled along the road around the lake and fire trucks kept whizzing past us toward the blaze. We continued with our plan to use the alternate highway to get home but when we got to the split to get on it a sign told us the highway was closed due to the fire. We had to take an alternate route which added a significant amount of time to our trip.

The weekend before last Steve and I went to Yosemite. We wanted to go before the waterfalls were completely gone and it got too hot to hike. Google maps gave us some crazy directions down this two lane road through the middle of nowhere. We got a little turned around a few times and lost a lot of time that we would have spent in the park that day. When we did get to the park we were fighting darkness to see things. We did get to see pretty much everything we wanted to see in the Yosemite valley.

That night we drove through the park to the other side near Nevada to spend the night. We stayed in a small hotel in the same room John Wayne stayed in. http://virginiacreeksettlement.com/motel.html The next day we went to visit the ghost town of Bodie, CA, http://www.bodie.com/. I was pretty interesting many of the homes still had furniture and other interesting items still inside. The town is being preserved as a state park.

After grabbing a quick snack we headed back into Yosemite to hike a few more trails and then head back to San Fransisco. That day we got in at a more reasonable hour.

We are planning a few more trips this summer which I will hopefully recount the stories from sooner rather than later.

PayPal is an interesting place to work, much different from the New York Times Co. The dress code is jeans and a nice shirt/sweater etc. I think they call it office casual.

The buildings on both the eBay and PayPal campuses have themes. I am in the music building so the conference rooms on each of the floors are named after composers and rock bands. We have our weekly staff meeting in a room called Metallica.

The lobby of building I work in is decorated with all sorts of random things like lunch boxes, pez dispensers, board games and other random things. One of the other buildings is fashion themed. That building has skirts, belts and shoes on the walls. The conference rooms have different designer themes. The funniest conference room was the Brooks Brothers room which has full suits on the wall.

On each of the floors there is a different type of snack food that is free for the taking. The top floor is cereal and milk, the second floor is Chex mix, pretzels and trail mix, the first floor is fruit. All of the floors have free soda, water and juice. They also all have espresso machines on each floor. The top floor has a coffee machine that dispenses different kinds of flavored coffees as well as hot chocolate also for free.

We don't get free lunch like Google but the eBay cafe has pretty good food and it is average price for restaurants nearby.

I have been tossed around a bit with desks. They have someone new starting tomorrow so they took the first desk I was working at to give to him. It makes sense since he is a full time person. So I am temporarily sitting in another desk until I move with the risk group that I am working with right now.

They are apparently going to move all of the UI teams into the new building when it is finished early next year. That is why they are getting pushed around a bit right now.

Last Friday was big eBay Co. summer festival on the soccer fields at the PayPal campus. They had a live band, lots of food and games. They played the eBay song by Weird Al that I hadn't heard before. It was funny. Here is a video that someone made of it. The second photo of a building with the eBay sign in front is the one I work in.

It has been a busy last few weeks hence no posting. Last weekend I looked at a few places and ended up finding one in the Marina neighborhood of San Fransisco. I am living in a 3 bedroom 2 bath condo with one other lady. It is pretty nice since I have almost one whole have of the condo to myself. I moved in on Saturday and spent most of that day finally unpacking after being in temporary housing for the last few weeks. I have all of my stuff out of boxes and suitcases and it feels pretty good.

Today I went to the Union street festival which was just a few blocks away from where I am living. I intend to do some more exploring out side of the neighborhood next weekend.

Last weekend was busy beyond the apartment hunting on Saturday. Sunday myself and another intern went to Monterey. We started sort of late so we only spent half of the day down there. We had dinner by the water and then did the 17 mile drive. It was a fun day. I have photos that I need to off load and post.

Monday we went to the Winchester Mystery House. He said he had been there before when he was younger and he remembered them talking more about the ghosts that Ms. Winchester was trying to build her way away from. It was worth seeing once.

Tomorrow I get to take the shuttle to work for the first time. I start my day at the eBay campus for orientation after only two weeks. :) Then head back to PayPal for work.

The first few days in San Jose have been pretty good. Sunday I went to San Fransisco using public transportation. It took me about 2 hours. I started out at my apartment getting on a bus, then a light rail train, then the CalTrain. I was supposed to get on another bus after I got off the CalTrain but I turned the wrong way out of the station and missed it. I took a cab from there to the apartment I was going to look at.

The apartment ended up not being what I wanted so I am still looking for a place. I have a few appointments set up on Saturday and I am hoping to have something locked in by the end of the weekend.

Monday morning I attempted to take a series of buses to work but got on the wrong one so I had to turn around and go back to the apartment where I caught a cab to work.

I met a a few of my fellow interns who were starting that day. I was also told that there was a shuttle from the apartments where I am staying now to work everyday. They neglected to tell me that when I checked in.

After getting my badge one of the other interns and I went to the PayPal campus which is about 10 minutes by car away from the eBay campus.

My boss met me in the lobby and took me to my desk. I have my own cube and found a brand new laptop and docking station at my desk.

I am working with the global platform and risk teams. I will be doing six weeks in each of the departments. From what I have been able to gather over the last few days. Global platforms works PayPal sites in other parts of the world. Risk works with Phishing, Spoof, Fraud and helps develop things for the customer service representatives in another office.

I have a mentor from each area that is going to help me with my projects for the summer.

Today they told me what projects I will be working on this summer. I have a few long term and a few short term projects this summer.

I am really excited about the things I will be working on.

I started my day today at 3:30 am Eastern in Bloomington and arrived in San Jose around 12:45 pm Pacific. It has been a pretty long day of travel.

The trip was fairly uneventful. I went back through the Dallas airport today where I was just last weekend. I almost felt like I was retracing my steps.

After I got into San Jose I checked in to my temporary apartment. I have two weeks from today to find a more permanent place to live. I am hoping since I am out here I will be able to get something. Apartments out her go so quickly.

My corporate apartment is nice, it is a good sized place right off of the pool. The closest grocery store is a Japanese grocery store. It is about the size of a regular grocery store unlike the Asian grocery stores in Bloomington. They had a few American brands but pretty much everything was not in English. I bought a few things of noodles and some tiny frozen fruit popsicles that are exotic flavors.

The closest American style grocery store is about 8 blocks away so I am going to go there tomorrow to get some things like cereal etc.

The area I am in right now is very car centric. I am hoping to move someplace where there is more stuff within walking distance.

I start work on Monday. I think that is when it will stop feeling like a vacation.

This week has gone by so fast. I leave very early tomorrow morning for San Jose for three months.

It is sort of a strange feeling since I haven't even been in Bloomington a year and now I am taking off again.

I shipped 3 boxes of clothes and kitchen/misc stuff to San Jose this morning and I have two full suitcases and a backpack of my tech gear that I am taking with me on the plane tomorrow. I don't know what I will need for three months since the weather varies. Since I don't know where I am staying I don't know if they will have the knives, pans, measuring cups etc that I need to cook.

Today I was thinking how strange it is going to be adjusting to another new place. Two completely new places in less than one year.

I am also car less from now until I get back. I stored my car at a friends house for the summer. It is going to be strange not to just get in the car and go to the grocery store or Target etc.

I don't have a more permanent place to live yet but I am going into corporate housing tomorrow for two weeks.

I start Monday morning at 9 am and I have to make sure I leave in plenty of time to get on the bus/light rail to get to work.

It is exciting and scary all at the same time. This feels a lot like when I was getting ready to come to Bloomington but there are a few more uncertain factors. The housing thing is a big thing to me since I am not sure where I will be living in two weeks. It has made forwarding mail a huge mess.

I am going to miss my friends but luckily I do have a few friends who are going to be in the San Francisco Bay area this summer. I am sure I will make a bunch of new friends at eBay/PayPal.

So have been off of the radar for a little over a week. So I will be posting a few catch up post of the events of the past few weeks.

I enjoyed the last few days of CHI even though we didn’t win the student design competition we had two finalists and the competition was really strong. The question for next year seems interesting looking at homeless people. That has to be a difficult group to get human subject committee clearance to work with. I know some of the professors are going to write to the coordinators to see if they might consider changing the question or adjusting the population group. It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

On Friday I went on the tour of the Berkeley Information school, Yahoo Research Berkeley and the Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD). The first stop was BiD they had a lot of really cool projects they were working on. http://bid.berkeley.edu/ The ones that really stood out to me were: the cell phone that you could use motion from the camera to control. A video conferencing setup where you could see the other people in a more realistic way, gestures were not reversed and it was easy to refer to a specific person, http://bid.berkeley.edu/papers/chi_2007/multiview07/. The other one that I connected with more than the others was looking at group design processes. The student was looking at the possibility of putting together a design process that would make it easier to avoid the pitfalls that groups often fall into. This sounds like an interesting project to follow since we are taught that there really isn’t a method for design there are just structures that can help you.

The information school talked to us about their masters and doctoral programs. They also had a few students come in and present their final projects. The professor who talked to us had been working on a project looking at flickr and the social implications of it. Another student had created a map for organizing social activities that would allow people to nominate and vote on where they wanted to go. http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/

The culture of the I school seemed a lot like IU Informatics. The professor who talked to us about the program told us how the students were friends and enjoyed doing things together. The school is not computer science and doesn’t have anything to do with computer science. Instead they are the evolution of the library science program.

Yahoo research Berkeley was an interesting place. They showed us a few of the projects they have developed. My favorites were Tag Maps they used flicker tags and mapping software to display text to show you where there were photos tagged with a certain label. http://tagmaps.research.yahoo.com A related development was the zone tag photo uploaded that allows you to upload photos to flickr with tags, http://zonetag.research.yahoo.com. http://www.yahooresearchberkeley.com/

All in all it was a good day and I saw a lot of interesting things.

In the last two weeks there have been two squirrel attacks in two parts of the country. While I was in San Francisco I heard about a squirrel attacking three people. Squirrel enters S. San Jose classroom, attacks two adults and a student - San Jose Mercury News

Today there is a story out of Orlando where a squirrel attacked a lady at a shopping center. Squirrel Goes Nuts At Shopping Center - WESH.com — Orlando, FL

What is going on here? Have the squirrels gotten tired of being chased and hit by cars. Maybe it is a cross country squirrel revolution. ;)

Just two really odd stories fairly close together.

This morning I woke up and had to think about where I was. It was sort of odd to not realize that you are home. I have been in four different hotels in two cities in the last two weeks. I got in late last night, technically early this morning since I didn't get in until midnight.

Since I was the last person on the Bloomington Shuttle the driver was nice and dropped me off at my house. I was planning on calling a cab from the Courtyard Marriott.

I am in town until the 19th packing boxes, cleaning and wrapping up other loose ends before leaving for California for the summer.

I have a backlog of stuff to post from my trip and I will scatter that through out the week.

I haven't had time to post since I have been busy attending the conference during the day and working/going to parties at night.

In general the sessions have been pretty good. I have been to a variety of different presentations which have triggered a lot of thoughts for me about my research for next year.

Monday - The CHI finalists were announced after the poster session. We had 2 teams move on to the final round. A bunch of us went out as a group that night to celebrate. We had a few professors with us and a few Informatics alums with us.

Tuesday - The first of the parties. A large number of us went to the eBay/PayPal party. It was held at the tech museum which was really nice. The food was quite good and there was an open bar with good drinks. I got to talk to a lot of interesting people and meet some of the people I will be working with this summer.

Wednesday - IU placed 3rd and 4th in the design competition. Everyone was very happy about the showing we had and the teams both got a lot of really good feedback from the judges.

That night some of us went to the Adobe party. This was defiantly the best party. Adobe held their party in their newly redesigned studio. I wish I could have taken pictures because the space was so awesome. Before I went up there I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement so I couldn't.

They had a bunch of offices and cubes on that floor and decided to tear those down to put in open cubes, white board tables, a white board that ran along the wall with magnetic markers and really cool flat panel boards that you could write on using special pens and they also work like TVs since they had Wiis set up. From their windows you could see mountains off in the distance. They also had nice snacks. I got to talk to a few people who worked there about some of the stuff they were working on in a very vague sense.

After the Adobe party we headed to the Google party at the Tech Museum. Everyone was invited to this party so it was a madhouse. The whole museum was open and packed. We explored the exhibits and since there were so many people there I didn't get a chance to talk to any Google employees. I got a chance to ride a segway. I'll post some photos of it later.

When they kicked us out of the museum we went to a bar in San Jose with most of the professors and just about all of the IU students. We had a bunch of the other CHI student design competition finalists join us at the bar.

After identifying myself as being from IU many people said wow you guys are everywhere. I don't even know how many students we have here but it is almost all of the first year class.

Tonight we are going to see Spiderman 3 at midnight and then just about everyone is leaving. I am going to take the tour of Berkley and Yahoo Research Berkley before spending next week in San Francisco.

We left Bloomington this morning around 6:15 am to make sure we were at the airport with plenty of time to catch our 9:30 am flight.

The flight went from Indy to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. In Chicago we got off of the plane to stretch our legs before the 4 hour flight to San Francisco. American doesn't give you anything to snack on during the flight just drinks. Other airlines I have been on recently at least throw you a bag of peanuts.

We got into San Francisco about 12:45 pacific time and then had to figure out how to catch the Caltrain to San Jose. Luckily the route was fairly well labeled and we took the airport tram to the BART and the BART to Caltrain. We almost lost Adam Basey and Matt Henry at the BART stop since the doors closed before they were able to get on. Luckily the conductor saw them standing there and reopened the doors to let them on.

The Caltrain was a double decker train and I hadn't seen that before. We all managed to get on the Caltrain with no problems. We rode all of the way to San Jose and then had the task of finding the hotel. I forgot to print directions to the hotel so we ended up asking a few people. We walked a long way to get to the hotel from the Caltrain stop. On the way back I am going to figure out how to get on the light rail to take that to the Caltrain and then back to SF.

The only tragedy we had was loosing one of the tubes with a few CHI posters in it. Luckily a few people were carrying copies of the poster so everything is ok.

After getting checked into the Ramada we went to get dinner and then to find the convention center. We are really close so the walk tomorrow won't be that bad.

Tonight we are probably going to have 5 people in a room meant for no more than 4 and honestly 3 comfortably. We are hoping to be able to relocate the two roommates we picked up a few weeks ago to another room since our room is so overcrowded right now.

Tomorrow is the first official day of the conference. Our CHI teams have their poster session tomorrow and will know by the end of the day if they are presenting on Wednesday. I just have to figure out what talks I want to go to tomorrow.

The more pressing thing for me right now is to get my video edited down for Jeff's class and to write my two reflection papers. I am hoping to get at least one of these done this evening.

There are a lot of students at the Ramada. It is really noisy and I am sure there will be a lot of parties here. Tonight I am just exhausted from the trip. It is 9:30 here and 12:30 in Bloomington so it is getting close to my bedtime.

Today I started thinking about what software I need to transfer to my Mac before moving in a few weeks. I am leaving my windows desktop here since it isn't worth shipping for 12 weeks.

Most of my software is windows based since I have always had Windows machines. Even when I replaced my Adobe stuff I purchased the Windows version of it since my main machine is a Windows box.

The nice thing about my laptop is that it runs both operating systems and does a pretty good job of it too. I am upgrading boot camp right now hopefully it will get even better with this upgrade.

I will admit one of the main reasons I purchased a Mac over a PC laptop is the ability to run both operating systems. It has been really nice to be able to play with the Mac OS but still have the Windows OS if I can't get something to work in Mac or have something I prefer to use in Windows.

The only thing that occasionally throws me off is remembering to use the ctrl key instead of the apple key for shortcut commands. Since I am looking at a Mac keyboard I often find myself using apple in Windows.

I always get really reflective right around my birthday. Asking questions such as where am I going, am I on the right track, am I happy with the direction I have chosen, among others.

Asking those questions of myself over the past week I have had a lot of thoughts.

A year ago today I was living in Tampa, FL, working for the New York Times Company and keeping my move to Indiana a secret. I had already found the apartment I am living in now and had made the arrangements to move my stuff.

On the evening of my birthday last year I went to the beach where I sat on some rocks along the shore and watched the sunset.

As I sat there I thought about the road ahead of me. A move to a place where I knew no one, almost a thousand miles away from family and friends. A climate I had never dealt with before and would have to figure out how to survive in. I had visited other places but had never lived outside of Florida until now.

I remember the day I told my bosses I was leaving. I was really nervous about it since I really did enjoy my job and the people I worked with. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it but I wanted to let them know a month in advance since I had been with the company for so long. I worked for this company for 4 years. I was hired by one of the divisions a few months after I graduated from college. This is the only company I had known.

My direct supervisor had a party for me at his house. It was really nice and all of my work friends showed up. After everyone left it was just me and my boss sitting out by his pool talking. I remember talking to him and both of us getting upset. He started crying and then I did. That is when the reality of moving hit me. It was scary for me but not nearly as scary as the experience that the international students have had being hundreds of thousands of miles away from everyone they know.

The next day the movers showed up at 9 and started packing up everything in my little apartment. I was really going to do this, it was happening.

At the end of the day I looked at all of my stuff on the truck knowing the next time I would see it would be in Indiana. I came back the next day to clean out my apartment and pack up some things I would take in the car with me.

The next day my mom and I left for Indiana. We stopped in Atlanta for the night and then drove the rest of the way to Bloomington. I remember crossing the bridge over the Ohio river in Louisville in to Indiana and feeling somewhat relieved to be in the state yet strange at the same time. The drive down the windy road from 65 near Columbus to Bloomington seemed really long. At that point I was anxious to be there and settled again.

I picked up the keys to my apartment that Sunday hoping my stuff would show up on Tuesday. My mom helped me run errands while I was in orientation and had planned to be here when the movers brought my stuff. Unfortunately that plan did not work out since she left Wednesday and the movers came on Thursday.

The morning my mom left was difficult for both of us. She had to take the shuttle to the airport because I had orientation activities that day so we said our goodbyes and she left for the airport.

When my stuff finally showed up it was a mess and I had only a few days before school started to unpack.

The semester started off with a bang. The first week we had two projects due in two of our classes and it would continue this way for the first few months of the semester.

The last few months have been full of uncertainty at first as to whether I would get an internship at all, then where would I end up going, would this company get me an offer before another one did. I was very happy when this was all settled a few weeks ago.

Through my work with the Women in Computing outreach program, JustBe, I have been inspired even more to teach. I am hoping to get an assistant instructor position next year to work with undergraduates. I think I have a good shot since the professors like me and I am well thought of by many people. The idea of getting a PhD to become a professor has come back into my mind. I know I can't do that now due to my pile of debt from my undergrad and first year of my Master's program. It is not a done deal but a possible path for me later.

Many people set goals such as I want to be married by the time I am a certain age. My goal was to have my Master's degree by the time I turned 30. This is something I could control. I am going to miss it by a few weeks due to the graduation date but I am going to consider it accomplished.

Looking back at the past year I would say that yes I am on the right track. I know generally where I am going and I am happy with the decisions I have made. I have come a long way in the past year. The path has been difficult and frustrating at times the thoughts of giving up did cross my mind but were quickly dismissed by my determination.

My loneness for people I knew back home and the area I grew up in was quickly replaced by the joy of making new friends here and exploring Bloomington. I really care about my friends here. They are some of the greatest people I have met in a while.

Now on my 29th birthday I find myself looking into the horizon seeing a new adventure. Three months in California for an internship. Back to Indiana for my last year of school and then who knows where I will be working next summer.

One thing I do know is that I will not be sitting here on my 30th birthday saying I wonder what would have happened if I would have taken the risk of going back to school.

Today I attended the Little 500 women's race with a friend. The Little Five is a big part of IU and I was excited to see one of the races. I am not going to tackle the men's race tomorrow, maybe next year. More on the Little Five from Wikipedia.

It was really nice day outside not too hot or cold. The group I was with ended up in the bleachers directly in the sun. I got a bit of a sunburn today nothing that bad though.

Since I don't have time to post the photos to my website I put them up on Flickr if you are interested in seeing the rest of the set. Little 500 photos

For my statistics class I ran a quick usability study of 10 subjects to gather some data. Often when you run tests you have to connect a web cam and microphone to your laptop. The camera has to be positioned so you can get the facial expressions of the participant this can take a little adjusting. Plus you have to make sure you remember the camera, microphone etc.

I have found an easy way to bypass the web cam.

If you use Camtasia on a MacBook running BootCamp and Windows. It makes it so much easier to set up your test since the only external thing you need to connect is your headset. The built in microphone might be strong enough to pick it up but I didn't want to take the chance of loosing audio.

It is nice to offer your user an external mouse since running Windows on a Mac is a little odd when it comes to finding the keys that need to be pressed and understanding how to right click.

The nice thing is that you can carry all of this equipment around in your backpack without adding any more weight than you already carry if you bring your laptop with you everywhere.

The last few days I have heard a few songs randomly that in my mind have connections to other events. This evening as a bunch of us were in the Informatics basement dancing, singing and working to the music from an iPod.

An Oasis song came on that I recognized some of the lyrics from but hadn't heard the song before. Then I remembered a drunk friend singing these two lines over and over again "Don't look back in anger, I heard you say". At first I was going to say hey do you remember when... to my friends but I realized that it had happened at my former boss's house back in Tampa. It was a funny evening and we ended up having to prevent this guy from driving home and keep him from falling in the pool. We took him in to the living room and had him lay down on the couch so he would go to sleep and stop singing the same two lines over and over again.

During spring break at the cabin one of the girls there was talking about her connection to the Talking Heads song "Everybody wants to rule the world" Every time I hear that now I think about how passionate she was in her description of what that song meant to her.

"No Rain" by Blind Mellon is one of my songs. I remember hearing it on the radio of the car I was learning to drive in Driver's Ed. Since then randomly hearing it has always brightened my day and has often been a precursor of good things happening that day.

Every time I hear Justin Timberlake's song "Sexy Back" I think about my friend Basey. We joke about that being his theme song. If you know him you will understand it.

There are other songs that bring back sad memories, some that inspire me and others that I heard for the first time in an interesting place or at a poignant moment. I am sure other people have these songs too.

Take a look at the picture below, don't these two objects look very similar?

The one on the left is a Shrek KNight light the one on the right is a Bluetooth headset. The KNight light came out of my box of Rice Krispies today and I immediately thought it looked like my Bluetooth headset. The directions that come with it even make it look like a child's version of a Bluetooth headset.

I think there is a headset that does look a lot like this one. I could see a child liking this because it is similar to something that their parents have. I can also see a major annoyance factor here since the child can turn on the light and shine it at anyone they are looking at.

It is actually sort of an interesting toy since you are supposed to wear it on your ear and it shoots a red light out of the end. Today so many cereals don't have toys in them. The light wasn't even in the bag with the cereal it was on the top so when I opened the box I took it out. I remember when the toy was at the bottom of the bag of cereal and you had to eat all of the cereal to get to it.

For the record I didn't buy the cereal because it had a toy. In fact I didn't even realize it had a toy until I picked up the box to pour a bowl of cereal. :)

Last night I went to Uncle Festers, a local Bloomington bar/concert venue, to see a band that one of my friends is friends with.

In Bloomington most bars require that you produce two forms of photo ID one of which is a driver's license or passport. I don't think it is an Indiana law but I am not sure. I usually give my driver's license and student ID. Bouncers are usually pretty confused since my license is from Florida and I don't think they see too many of those. So they feel the need to really study it and check for a holograph etc. I have gotten used to it by now.

The bouncer last night seemed to think my driver's license was a fake because he quizzed me about what county I live in. I was sort of shocked and it took me a minute to answer. I have never had someone quiz me about the information on my license before. After answering his question correctly and paying the cover I asked him how old do you think I am? He said no older than 22. I sort of laughed and said thanks I am actually going to be 29 next weekend. To which he said really I would have never guessed.

So either he thought I was cute and was trying to flirt or he really did think I was 22. I am going with the latter.

Tonight as I walked home from the library at dusk I noted what a nice evening it was. Still a bit on the chilly side for me but all in all not that bad.

As I walked past the Rose Well House I saw two lovebirds kissing. It would have been even more poignant if it would have been midnight. According to legend a woman is not a co-ed until she is kissed in the Rose Well House at midnight.

I thought about things I have to do and things I have done. With three weeks left in the semester I am still amazingly keeping my stress level fairly low. I am trying to keep things in perspective and not get overly stressed out.

I am really starting to get excited about going to CHI out in San Jose. I'll then come back for a week to wrap up things here and then most likely hop a plane back to San Francisco.

A year ago I would have never thought I would be preparing to spend the summer in California on a really good internship. A year ago I was savoring my last few months in Florida and planning my move to Indiana. It is really amazing what I have learned since August and how much more I have to learn this summer and next year.

This made me laugh today "Manatee Gang Gunfire Worries Local Deputies". Taken out of context it sounds like a gang of sea cows firing guns. Take a minute to picture that in your head.

If you are from the Tampa Bay area you would know that there is a county called Manatee so that is what it is really about. But it is still an amusing picture.

Today I accepted an internship position with PayPal in San Jose. I will be working in the user experience department.

I have never been to California and now I will be spending 12 weeks living there. I am very excited! The internship sounds really great. From what PayPal told me they seem to be working on some really important revisions to their software this summer. I'll get to work with people from various parts of the user interface department.

As part of the general intern program they also have social programming with interns from other parts of the company. We will also get to participate in brown bags lunches with the top execs from PayPal, eBay and Skype.

Now I just need to find housing, preferably in San Francisco.

I got my third internship offer today. :) I already turned one down so I now have two on the table. I have until Monday to decide but I am pretty sure I know what I want to do. I am not going to announce it here yet since I haven't told either company yet and won't do so until Monday. Ask me off line I will tell you though.

I have been really lucky with the internship process. When I was an undergrad I had to take an unpaid internship that turned out to be pretty crummy. This time I have had interviews with a lot of great companies and three offers. Two of which are what I am looking for in an internship. As I have said before hopefully this is a good sign for my job search next year.

Once I have let the companies know I will post here and let you know.

How unheard of is it to have two teams play for the national championship in basketball and football? That is really saying something about both schools.

I am very excited that we repeated as national champs in basketball.

I wish I was in Gainesville tonight they must be going crazy there.

I did find a few non bandwagon Gator fans to watch the game with tonight at Yogi's, a local bar. We were severely outnumbered by Ohio State fans understandably due to Indiana's proximity to Ohio. One guy got really out of hand at the end of the game and started yelling all sorts of things. All it all it is just a game.

Go Gators!!

Update: This is interesting. Since Florida won and I had them winning in my Facebook bracket they gave me an additional free gift to give someone on their profile. The gifts are a can of whoop ass, toilet paper with basketballs on it, a troll doll looking at a basketball and a ninja.

I also finished 8th in my Facebook pool, only because I picked the national champion. I got lucky on the others.

A company called Spark Parking has developed a system that can make finding an open space in a garage much easer. The core technology is a sensor that is placed in the space and senses whether there is car over it . If the spot is empty it sends a signal through the garage which can be used to let drivers know where an empty spot is, parking patterns in a garage among other things. When a driver parks in one of these smart spots they can pay for it using their cell phone. The driver enters the number of the spot along with their credit card information. When they leave the spot they are charged for that time.

This is an interesting application of technology to make finding and paying for parking easier.

Via Discovery Channel http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/03/30/cellphonepark_tec.html?category=technology&guid=20070330091500&dcitc=w01-101-ae-0001

...is much like Qdoba at 2pm except the patrons are drunk.

I just wish I had a picture from last night.

This was my favorite ride at Universal Studios, Orlando. I can understand why they are closing it since it takes its theme from movies that came out in the late 80's early 90's. So many younger people may not think it is that cool.

I remember riding it when there was nothing there except the main park. My mom, brother and myself visited the park before they had built all of the other things like islands of adventure and city walk.

Part of what I really liked was the way they built up the experience. The story was Biff has stolen one of the time traveling DeLoreans to wreak havoc throughout time. From the moment you get in line it starts building this story. When you get inside you are put in a room with 7 other people filled with replica memorabilia from the films. A video of Doc tells you that he is going to let you test out the new 8 passenger DeLorian to go chase after Biff. In order to get him back you have to hit him with your car.

The door opens into a garage and you see a realistic looking DeLorian sitting there. They do an excellent job of making you think it is just you and your group. When the ride starts the DeLorian lifts up out of the garage where you see a huge screen. The car moves with the actions on the screen. If you look to your left or right in the car you can see the others. At the end it brings you back into the garage.

Images from the ride http://www.giveneyestosee.com/bttf/

Brief article about the closing http://www.wesh.com/news/11453443/detail.html

I have had a lot going on recently. Today I received my second internship offer, interviewed with two more companies and turned down one internship. I am really flattered be being pursued by so many companies. One of the companies seems to be stepping up their process since they now know I have an offer on the table.

On the other hand my brother left for Iraq today. When I talked to my mom this afternoon and she told me he called her before he got on the plane. We thought he was leaving tomorrow but maybe he wasn't sure or maybe they were running on Iraq time.

It is sort of a strange feeling. This is my only sibling. I think it makes my mom feel good that I have so many good things going on right now so I think that helps. Plus we are looking forward to our trip to San Francisco at the beginning of May.

I know having him over there will make me more conscious of what is going on in Iraq.

I have been really busy and not able to post the past few days so this is going to be a conglomeration of a bunch of stuff.

The next five weeks are going to be hectic. Looking at the schedule for my classes I think it is going to be a bit like the first month of last semester. I think we have at least one thing due every week for the next 5 weeks. Then I leave for CHI on April 28th.

Little 5 is coming up and people are getting really excited about it. I want to go to a few parties and possibly to a race. I think I am going to end up going to the women's race since I was offered a free VIP ticket to the event.

My friends had a big cook out on Saturday since it has been so nice here. We had a lot of fun and if you have Facebook I posted a bunch of photos taken by a few different people. That night I went to Indy with a friend to see a concert. It turned out to be a really great show. It was funny watching some of the drunk guys dance.

Today I did the JustBe presentation for A110. JustBe is a presentation designed to get more people interested in computing. A110 is an introductory computer science class that many students take. I really enjoyed talking to those students and I think we actually reached a few of them with our presentation.

After doing that presentation the professor career route sort of pulls at me a little more. Doing a masters for me was my way of seeing if I might want to go further as well as getting the advanced degree I wanted. I am hoping to get an AI position for next year where I can teach an undergrad lab so I can figure out if I do want to teach. Hopefully it will work out. I don't think I will go straight to the PhD since I am in so much debt and I'd like to get some more industry experience but it has jumped back into things to think about.

Upon deeper reflection this evening I realized that the thing I really like to do is help people. That seems to be a constant theme in just about everything I do. I try to inspire those who are close to me to go for what they want to do and not give up. I know I helped one person I used to be very close to who was thinking about giving up on his dream but was inspired by me pursuing mine to keep going. That made me feel like I made some sort of impact in his life.

One of the things I really liked to do when I was working was the training workshops where I taught new hires to use the content management system. I was always happy when people started to finally get the system. It was fairly complex and usually took 6 months to a year to really be able to do anything beyond the basics.

On the internship front I now have five companies currently considering me. I have three interviews this week so that has messed with my schedule a bit. I am looking forward to the interviews and hopefully getting an offer or two.

My posting may get really light through the end of the semester since I have a lot of stuff going on along with school.

My internship search experience has been interesting. In mid February I spent almost a whole weekend looking for internships and applying. I can't even count now the number of places I applied to. Since then there has been a small trickle of internships coming over the HCI listserv, CHI Jobs listserv and a job alert I set up with Indeed.

For a while I heard nothing but starting around the end of February first week of March I started getting e-mails. The first company I talked to was out of Minnesota they seemed to really like me but ended up having the funding pulled for their internship program. Then another company e-mailed me out of the blue after I had talked to them in the fall at the career fair. I didn't think it would go anywhere but it did. I interviewed with the them and I am currently waiting to hear back.

I had a interview with a really great usability firm in Boston that I was pretty sure I was a long shot on. I was just flattered to be interviewed when some other people I know were not.

I had sent out a few resumes around the beginning of January and had heard nothing in return. I decided to follow up on both of them. One lead to a no and then later a question of whether I would be interested in a position that did some programming. I asked for some more information and heard nothing in return. The other lead to a phone interview and the promise of a decision next week.

I had gotten to the point where I thought I was down to two internship possibilities when I was contacted tonight by another company to set up an interview for next week.

Needless to say it has been interesting and has given me a few options in three states.

Now the question is, where will I be in May?

Today was the official start of spring. I don't think I have ever been so happy to see spring as I have been this year. The winter was long and hard for me. A few days when it was in the teens and twenties I though I was going to freeze to death. Thankfully that is behind me for now.

A real spring after winter is really sort of an amazing site. On my travels today I saw flowers popping up out of the ground that only a few weeks ago was covered in snow. The tree outside my window has the beginnings of leaves on it. The weather is not bad still a little chilly for my taste but much better than it was.

I enjoyed walking downtown today to the Buskirk-Chumley where I had a group meeting this morning. We stopped by the new noodle place to pick up lunch and then headed to Informatics to hang out before class. The new noodle place is quite good by the way, very vegetarian friendly since anything can have tofu in it.

Tonight after class I saw people playing soccer on the field across from Informatics, people running, throwing Frisbees, footballs and baseballs. It was really a nice day to be outside walking around.

Last week a 13 of my Informatics friends and a few others rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge Tennessee. The group ended up being mainly guys which was interesting to say the least.

We were there for 5 nights. It was a lot of fun. The cabin we rented was really nice. The bottom floor had a pool table, foosball table and air hockey table. The second floor had the big tv, all floors had a tv, the stainless steel kitchen and a bedroom. The top floor had another bed, a loft with two futon mats and the hot tub. Here is the website if you are interested in pictures of the cabin.

During the day we hiked a few different trails in the Smoky Mountains park. At night we made dinner and drinks, played games, watched movies, hung out in the hot tub among other things. We have a lot of fun stories none of which I will share here. :)

The trip was a lot of fun. I have posted all of my good pictures on my photos page. The one photo on here is a picture of me on the Alum Cave Bluffs.

The main focus of the news casts tonight was the 3rd anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. I remember when it started. I had almost been out of school for a year and was working for a newspaper in Lakeland, FL. Everyone in the newsroom knew we were going to war it was just a matter of when. I remember my boss telling me to keep an eye on the news and be prepared to come in to the office when war broke out.

I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom where I had my small TV and watching the bombs fall on Baghdad. I called my boss and asked him if I needed to come in. He said no but the next day would be busy and it was.

Now on this anniversary I am thinking about my brother who is leaving for his first tour of Iraq next week. He is a second lieutenant in the Marines and has told my mom that he will be on a secure base outside of Baghdad but that still doesn't keep me from worrying. After he leaves I am probably going to be glued to the news.

It is sort of a strange feeling.

I spotted this on a message board today. It is pretty funny and yes they do rip on my beloved Albert. Here are a few of my favorites.

18. University of Nebraska's Lil' Red (Big 12)

I envision Lil' Red as Big Boy's jealous, bitter younger brother, who tried to open his own chain of restaurants but failed, and is now reduced to shooting Slim Jims and children's coloring menus out of a t-shirt cannon to fans during Nebraska games.

Florida had an inflatable alligator called Ollie that was really freaky looking. I still don't know if it was a person or a robot under that inflatable outfit. It was really odd because he would sort of jerk around the field. He walked like a robot but that could also be because he had no appendages. I don't know if he is still around.

    
12. Saint Louis University's Billiken (Atlantic 10)

According to Wikipedia, a billiken is:

a charm doll created by an American art teacher and illustrator, Ms. Florence Pretz of Kansas City, Missouri, who is said to have seen the mysterious figure in a dream. In 1908 she patented the Billiken, who was elf-like with pointed ears, a mischievous smile, and a tuft a hair on his pointed head.

Thus, Saint Louis University took it upon themselves to pick a mascot that is based on some hippy art teacher's acid trip. It looks like Bat Boy.

    
4. Xavier Univerity's Blue Blob (Atlantic 10)

The Blue Blob looks like what an alcoholic single dad would craft for his son for a Halloween or school pageant costume. "Look son, it's the Cookie Monster!" No, it's not. It's the personification of a failed father.

Plenty more here http://www.drivl.com/posts/view/738

I tried Googling for the Hoosier mascot but all I found was the rock that is at the football stadium. I read that the athletic director tried to come up with a mascot but I didn't find any mention of what they came up with. Unfortunately I didn't get to any football or basketball games this year so I wasn't able to see for myself.

I loved this show when it was on Fox. It was my favorite thing to watch on Sunday nights.

MSN is slowly posting the episodes of this great show. We watched a few of them in the cabin last week.

Here is the link if you are interested in a great time waster. http://arresteddevelopment.msn.com/

A company called Empora based out of Austria has created a cell phone that is targeted to the 50+ market. The Life phone is very basic the features include calls, text messaging and an address book. Something very basic that should be easy to use.

A few of the special things about this phone are the large red button on the back that when pressed calls one of the emergency numbers, a high contrast screen, large buttons and a speaker.

This sounds like a good design making things less complicated. I am not sure if 50+ is the market though. My parents both fall into this category and they are fairly capable with technology. Probably the market is more of the 60-65+ but I guess it varies by the capabilities of the user. I could also see people who wanted a simple phone with not a lot of features being drawn to this phone.

This would be a great device for my grandmothers if they also pared it with a really cheap cell plan or a pay as you go plan where the minutes wouldn't expire. This way they could have an emergency phone to carry with them and not have to worry about contracts and minutes.

BBC Article

Another blog let me know that Times Select is now free for students and faculty with a .edu e-mail address. This service is normally about $50 per year.

Times select is essentially access to columnists, NYTimes online archives, customized e-mail alerts among other things. See here for a full list.

The trouble starts after you have submitted and verified your university address.

The verification link takes you to this page. Can you figure out quickly how to create an account?

I have a NYT account but it doesn't use my .edu address. At first I thought about logging in using that account but that wouldn't make sense. The box on the left says "Upgrade to Times Select". I don't think I want to do that since I already have free Times Select I think. The button on the left says upgrade and not register so I am not sure what to do. I check my verification e-mail for a password but I don't see one. I spend a little more time staring at it and then decide to just click the login button on the right. Hoping for a good error message.

This time I get some helpful red text that tells me to register by clicking on the button on the left. I then see in small gray type "Not a NYTimes.com member yet?". Now I understand what to do and was able to register for the service.

I created a registration system based off of the NYTimes.com design a few years ago so I know it wasn't this confusing previously.

The key things wrong here are: labeling the button upgrade instead of register, making upgrade to Times Select the largest things on the left and overshadowing the only hint that you should use this link to register.

How this could be fixed: go back to having people register and then make your Times Select pitch on the registration page, another option is to make it smaller than the "Not a NYTimes.com member yet?" text.

I wonder if anyone else has run into this issue.

Trees are starting to get new leaves. Flowers are sprouting up from the ground. The days are not as cold as they were. It is starting to look like spring around here. We are going to get a small cold snap over the next few days but hopefully the cold is coming to an end.

I have lots from spring break but I need to collect the photos and write up post about it. Hopefully tomorrow.

I am off to the mountains for a few days with a group of Informatics students and friends. It should be a lot of fun. I doubt we will have internet access so I probably won't post but I know we will have tons of things to do.

So it is internship season from what I can tell. Most companies seem to be making up their minds regarding internships. I had a good interview with American Family Insurance in Madison, Wisconsin but the ended up pulling the money from their internship program. I had a phone interview this morning with one company and I have an in person interview with another company next week.

I still have a bunch of applications out that I am going to follow up on over break since it sounds like people are going to start making offers soon. It would be nice to have my internship secured by the end of the month so I can make my summer plans.

I bought a MacBook in January. I have spent a lot of time trying to learn the Mac OS. Sometimes it has really frustrated me but after working with it for about 2 months I am starting to get the hang of it.

What is funny to me is that when I pull out my Mac laptop people automatically assume I am one of the fanatical Mac people. I have had people ask me questions about how to do something on Mac and I often don't know much more than they do.

I am not a huge Mac fan, I actually still prefer Windows but I am warming to the Mac OS. I knew I wanted to buy a laptop after a friend had loaned me one and I found it really helpful to have on campus with me. I looked at the MacBook with the student discount compared to a comparably speced Gateway sans discount and the difference was only a few hundred in the direction of the MacBook.

Gateway was the only Windows laptop brand I was considering. I know Dell has a student discount but I am not a big fan of their laptops. I had one where I worked that was brand new when I got it. After having that machine for about a year it turned into a horrible machine.

I decided on the MacBook because I can run both Windows and OS X on my laptop.

After 2 months there are still things I prefer to do on Windows than on Mac. Plus most of my software investment is on the Windows side. My desktop is a windows machine and I use it primarily when I am at home. When I am on campus or other places I use the Mac OS.

At this point in time for web development I still prefer the way that Windows operates and how the programs I like to use work under Windows.

The Mac is not bad and I am giving it a pretty fair shot. I have tried a few of the programs I like to use on the Mac and have not liked the way that they work in the Mac realm.

It is still funny to me to be automatically assumed that I am a huge Machead because I carry a MacBook.

I was just sitting here reading something online when all of the sudden the weather alert signal comes over the radio. I listened for the announcer to explain what was going on but they don't say anything just static. Next thing I know the tornado sirens are going off on campus. I was immediately frightened. I rushed to get dressed grab a jacket and run downstairs to the basement of my building. The whole while I am absolutely terrified. I heard other people still in their apartments in the building and I was the only one in the basement. I stayed in the basement for a little while. Then I came up out of the basement and stood in the foyer for a little looking at the sky. I saw people just going about their daily lives no one seemed that upset. I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing so I try to call a friend who had helped me with these things in the past but it doesn't seem like my phone was working so I don't know if he picked up or not. I came back up to my apartment and turned the radio back on and a second weather alert came across saying it was just a test.

I wish I would have known that in the first place so I wouldn't have gotten so upset.

We have tornadoes in Florida but we don't have the elaborate warning sirens etc. Hurricanes are our main plague and you usually know those well in advance.

I thought this was interesting. Kingston has designed a mouse that they are targeting specifically to the female market. They are donating money to the Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign which is nice but it has nothing to do with the mouse. At first I thought they were donating a portion of the profits from this mouse to that cause but that doesn't seem to be the case.

It is apparently designed to fit a woman's hand. I haven't had problems with unisex mice but maybe that is just me. There are things that do need to be designed specifically for women. Sometimes I think they take the designed for a woman thing too far. Do women really need a separate mouse? Anybody else have any thoughts?

More here

I am sure everyone has gotten at least one of the Nigerian scam e-mails. If you haven't essentially what you get is an e-mail from some, lawyer, government official etc. asking you to help them move some money out of the country. They say they got your address from a trusted source and promise to share some of the wealth with you. All you have to do is send them a few thousand dollars to help them out and then you each share in the wealth.

The one I got today was actually pretty creative.

"I am Fook Weng, an attorney at law.A deceased client of mine, by name Mr Andrew McAtee, who here in after shall be referred to as my client, died as the result of a heart-related condition on the 11 November 2001. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the Gulf Air Flight Crashes in Persian Gulf Near Bahrain Aired August 23, 2000 - 2:50 p.m. ET as reported on: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/23/bn.08.html

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at $17 million dollars is lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent to present you as the next-of-kin and beneficiary of my named client, since you have the same last name, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you. Then we can share the amount on a mutually agreed-upon percentage. All legal documents to back up your claim as my client's next-of-kin will be provided.All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.'

This will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from many breach of the law. If this business proposition offends your moral values,do accept my apology. I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinary confidential, whatever your decision, while I await your prompt response.Please contact me at once to indicate your interest. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via my private EMAIL:barristerfook_weng11@yahoo.com.my and treat with absolute confidentiality and sincerity.I look forward to your quick reply.

Best regards,
Barrister FookWeng"

I'd love to have part of the 17 million, it would pay off a lot of school debt but I know this is a scam. I actually read this one since it was addressed to me, name spelled right and it did have someone with my last name.

They are getting more creative with this scam.

All of this thinking about people from high school made me wonder what happened to my first boyfriend Joey Reinert. The last time I talked to him was in 2003. He wanted to be an actor and was doing all sorts of local small time productions. Today when I googled him he showed up in IMDB. Apparently he was in a real movie called The Celestine Prophecy which was released last year in the Netherlands and apparently had a small run in the US that opened on my birthday, ha. Now I want to reactivate my Netflix so I can see it.

I am happy to see him starting to live his dream. I wonder if he will remember he promised me he would take me to the Golden Globes.

Some of my Indian friends invited a bunch of us over for a celebration of Holi a spring festival. Apparently the tradition is to throw colors, colored powder, at other people along with water and other things. Since it was snowy and cold here I thought they were not going to throw colors.

When I came back to the party after going out to look for some of the people who were bringing food, I didn't want them to have to carry everything in the snow. I was greeted at the door by a smack of red color to my left cheek. It looked like I had been hit really hard. Apparently after more people got there they decided to get out the colors and have a small color fight. Everyone who walked in the door after that was greeted with colors. Hopefully one of them will post photos somewhere. Thanks Sindhia. Above is a picture of me right after being hit by the color.

They prepared a nice meal for everyone and introduced us to a few snacks which I unfortunately don't remember the names of. One of them involved taking a semolina puff, poking a hole in it, putting something like dried chickpeas in it and then dipping it in a sweet and then spicy sauce. It was pretty good. The photo is of me trying to put the whole thing together. The second thing they shared was a sweet milk type ball. I didn't care for it but appreciated the experience of trying it.

The only bad thing about having the color on my face was that I had promised a friend I would go see a movie with him so I felt weird showing up with this big red blotch on my face. I kind of smeared the color to make it not quite as obvious and then went to the movie. I explained what was going on when he got there even though it wasn't that obvious.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the theater it started to snow again and I got worried that it would snow so much that I wouldn't be able to get home. Thankfully it didn't and I was able to get home after the movie without much trouble.

BTW Zodiac, good movie.

*Update* The color came off of my face and hands with no problem. The only issue now is the stuff that got in my nose when someone put it on my face. I realized also that when the color was smeared it kind of looked like I was using sunless tanner and had done a really bad job of putting it on.

Yesterday was so nice most of the snow had melted it was a bit windy and not that cold. I took a trip out of town for they day since I really needed to get away from Bloomington for a little while. I was going to go today but I am glad I went yesterday since there is no way I would want to go that far in the snow.

I thought we were done with snow and then I wake up this morning and it is back. It was interesting for a little while but now I am really of sick of it now. I am supposed to be somewhere in a little under an hour and it has just started pouring snow from the sky. I am afraid to drive in the snow so I am worried about leaving. The last couple of times it snowed I just stayed in or called my friend to come and get me to take me where I needed to go but sadly I don't have that option anymore.

It just slowed up hopefully that burst of snow will be the last for today.

I hadn't used my MySpace account in a while until last weekend when I jumped on just out of curiosity. Somehow my notification of messages got turned off so I didn't know people were contacting me. One of my friends from high school had sent me a note in December that I didn't get. I felt bad and wrote back immediately apologizing.

My sorority little sister had sent me a note too but that one had only come in a few days earlier. I was very happy to hear from her since I had been thinking about her recently. I have been volunteering as a graduate adviser for IU chapter of the sorority I belong to. It has been fun and reminded me of when I was still in the house.

It is sort of odd starting to catch up with people from high school, we have our 10 year reunion in September. A lot of my friends are married, two of my friends just had babies in the past few months. Some of them went to college a few to graduate school. It is all so weird since the last time I saw most of them was graduation.

September will be interesting I'll make my plane and hotel reservations once I know my fall schedule.

For some reason my blog broke today. I put a new post in this morning and then started getting an SQL error. I ran a repair script from cPanel and that seemed to make it work again.

Hopefully this post won't break it. *crosses fingers*

Today I went ice skating with a few Informatics students and other graduate students. It was a lot of fun. I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it since I haven't been inline skating in a while and the last time I had been ice skating was in high school. I started off a little shaky but was able to stay pretty stable and get up to an ok speed.

I did almost fall a few times. At one point I thought I was going to have to hold on to the guy who was skating next to me to regain my balance. I recovered even if it was a little graceless. Luckily he was someone I knew through another acquaintance so it wouldn't have been that weird.

They had to close the ice rink because so many people came out for ice skating. I am guessing since this was the last weekend before they close everyone decided to come out. I had invited a bunch of Informatics people to come out and some of them may have showed up only to find out that they were closed.

I am really late posting this but I am very happy for the 5 teams that were accepted into the CHI student design competition from IU. We know Michigan has 3 so that makes IU the dominate school in the competition. :)

I wasn't on one of the accepted teams but I am still going to San Jose, CA to support my classmates and to network. I am looking for internships now and will be looking for a job next year.

It should be a good time. I think we are all going to stay at the same hotel so we will be able to organize social activities while we are there.

I am probably going to take a few additional days in San Fransisco afterwards.

It seemed like everywhere I went today there were plastic buckets or plastic sheets to catch water leaking from the roof. It sort of reminded me of times after a hurricane. Often people would loose pieces of their roofs and have to put tarps on their roofs to keep the rain out.

Here it wasn't rain but melting snow on the flat roofs of the laundrymat and the mall. Many of the stores in the mall had tarps and buckets inside the store. Probably the worst was a jewelry store outside of Target. They had damage to the facade of the store and a tarp ramp leading to a huge gray rolling trash bin.

I went to the card store to pick up some cards for a few upcoming events and they had plastic tarps and buckets everywhere. I was surprised they were still open since water could quickly ruin most of their stock. They had some sections of cards covered so water wouldn't splash on them.

I talked to the lady working in the card store and she said there was a huge crack in the roof of the mall and when it went above freezing the accumulated snow started to melt and you know the rest of the story.

I could relate to the problem but in a different way since I usually associate problems like leaky roofs with hurricanes or really strong thunderstorms.

It is warming up a bit here today was in the 40s which compared to 10s and 20s is pretty nice weather. The snow is melting and will probably be gone soon and as long as it doesn't freeze at night and create ice patches things will be good.

If this doesn't get you a little concerned I don't know what would.

From a severe weather alert:
THE WEATHER TONIGHT AND MONDAY WILL BE SOME OF THE COLDEST HOOSIERS HAVE SEEN IN YEARS. BE AWARE THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER WINTER COLD SPELL.

Thankfully I don't have classes tomorrow so I don't really have to be out in the cold very much. Even if I did have classes I would either find someone to take me or not go to class.

The warmest feels like temperature is going to be 0 degrees. At 8 am it is going to feel like -12.

The rest of the week isn't expected to be that much warmer either.

This is another reason I am glad that my heat is included in my rent and is warm.

I just found this piece of software yesterday. It manages your power consumption on your Windows machine. It can be configured to shut off your monitor, spin down your disks and shutdown or hibernate after a certain period of inactivity. I shut my computer down once I am done using it so I have been getting the most benefit out of the disk spin down. My savings are not that great since I don't leave it on all of the time but if you are someone who does this software might help.

There is a slight lag when you need to access the disk drive but in the day I have been using it it hasn't been a real irritation.

You can also tell it not to shut down if certain applications are running or during certain times of the day.

LocalCooling.com - Fight Global Warming From Your Desktop

according to David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Labs.

An interesting thought about balancing what the user has control over and the security of the system.

Here is the quote from the BBC article.

"David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Labs, said that with Vista Microsoft was treading a fine line between making the software safe and easy to use.

"The more useable and convenient you make it, especially for non-technical people, the more risk there is that there is a chink in the armour," he said.

"In a sense people are the weakest link here," said Mr Emm.

For instance, he said, the User Account Control system in Vista which aims to stop malicious programs installing themselves invisibly may not prove as effective as Microsoft believes.

This system ask users to give permission for programs, browser extensions and many other things to be installed. The sheer number of times that people are asked may make them click past the warning without realising what they were doing, said Mr Emm.

His fears were echoed by Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, who said the lack of context in the warnings could lead people to make dangerous choices. "It passes the emphasis on to the user to decide." "

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6316253.stm

Microsoft is trying to prevent malicious software from installing on Vista but at the same time is asking people who may not understand what the system is asking to make a decision on whether to install the software or not.

What would a non-technical user do if they are presented with a window they don't understand. Many would probably say yes to all or no to all. The danger in saying yes to all is the user might install malicious software. The danger in saying no to all is the user may not get updates and other important software that they need.

I am guessing this is similar to warnings from firewall software like Zone Alarm. Often you get pop up warning for something like foo.exe. You don't know if foo is part of a program you use or if it is malicious. Zone Alarm does provide a link to learn more about the program but often that information is not very helpful.

I haven't bought Vista since the bookstore isn't carrying it for the academic price yet. I can't say what the user prompts look like since I haven't seen them yet. I'll probably upgrade since usually we can pick up the windows OS for $10.

Many news sites use some sort of list of article related to the story you are reading. This information gives the reader more background on the current story and keeps them on the site longer.

CNET has a new graphical way of doing this that I saw today on this story http://msn-cnet.com.com/Sun+servers+heading+back+to+Intel+chips/2100-1010_3-6151872.html?part=msn-cnet&subj=ns_2510&tag=mymsn.

This is the map off of that story.

When you mouse over one of the items it gives you the options of putting it in the center or reading the story. Interwoven in red and green they have placed overarching topics and companies that are involved or related to the story. Clicking on an item re centers it and takes you to the story.

This is a really interesting way to graphically represent how all of the stories link together using something more visually pleasing than a list.

I just finished the upgrade. I am hoping the spam controls are a little better in this version. I had to keep trackbacks off because I can't even begin to keep up with the trackback spam that I get. If you see any problems let me know.

Thanks!

I am upgrading to the new version of b2evolution so there maybe a few bumps along the way. I should have the straightened out soon.

What else is there to say. GO GATORS!!!! NATIONAL CHAMPS!!!

Well other than never underestimate the Gators to all of those people who said we couldn't match up with Ohio State.