Change Of Face(book)

Over past Facebook changes I have largely, roundly, and imaginatively derided complainers. I have a very long, somewhat impolite, and happily unpublished blog post to that end somewhere, regarding the last facebook restructuring, and I still have very little patience with people who whine, cry, and generally carry on obnoxiously about every single thing Facebook changes. No good reasons, no quantitative analysis, or in depth discussion - mostly just a pity-party of complainers.

I know, most people may not be good at analyzing and comparing things, and/or don't have the time - but they still find the time to complain without a second thought. The least they could do is be respectful about it, and (*gasp*) say something about why they don't like it. Face it: posting things like "it STINKS!!! i hate facebook now it sucks and its different and what were you smoking?" does not inspire any respect at all and is mostly un-helpful.

So in the interest of my own opinions on whiners, I will not whine about the changes. I will attempt to compare the current UI iteration thoughtfully to past versions and provide insight into why most of you hate facebook so much right now, or at least did last week. And I apologize for the length of this post, but it seems I can't do things like this by halves. To my knowledge, this is the most thorough analysis of Facebook's interface changes ever published.

Anyway, here's my nut-shelled opinion: I think the layout took a couple steps forward and a whole bunch of baby steps backward. The changes have been made in the name of simplicity and ease of use. It is definitely more simple. However, it is visually less structured (i.e., more cluttered), does not always work the way I want or expect it too, and does not provide me with as much control or value. If it does not do what I want it too, ease of use tanks as well. This is a case where simpler is not necessarily better.

Goodness

Filtering based on friend lists
This is really nice - it's the one major feature I wanted in the old facebook that wasn't there.

Layout
The layout *is* simpler. For the most part, the underlying concept of the new facebook is pretty good, with exceptions noted below.

Badness
In the Operational Unintuitions Category
(Or, assumptions about user behavior which might not be quite right)

The post box operation is nebulous
It looks the same everywhere, but can behave very differently depending what page it's on. It is completely unclear that posting on your own wall is different than posting on someone else's, which has been very aptly demonstrated by my newly-facebookified mother, who replied to multiple wall posts by setting her status. The concept of a "status" is completely hidden unless you already know how it works.

• This could be easily remedied - for starters, change the post button text to say "Set Status" when on your own profile page, unless posting a special type of content.

(See also the note on post format - either change the format so it works better, or split statuses back out to a separate entity. And the "What's on your mind?" line is a bit hokey, but I can't think of anything better than "Post stuff" or "What do you want to share today?")

The Recent activity thing is confusing
Labeling activity on the wall as "recent" serves no useful purpose for two reasons:
1) I can figure out if yesterday is recent on my own, thank you, based on the post's timestamp
2) The "Recent Activity" boxes are all through the wall, even if the activity is no longer recent. This makes the term "Recent" totally useless.

This is/was done (I think) because it is easier to filter programmatically and visually groups wall posts and informational stuff separately. However, it would still be better to use the "Today", "Yesterday", "Some other day" headings, grouping the posts and other activity underneath. The smart date headings were great because they are very simple, require no interpretation, and (most important!) give the user control over what they think is "recent" enough to be interesting. I honestly don't care if it's recent, I just care if it's interesting to me and generally when it happened.

The single "delete" button is not intuitive
When I click it, I do not expect a particular friend to stop showing up on my news feed, I expect to just get rid of (or de-rate) that particular post or post type. The friend-based behavior is redundant - news feed supposedly already rates somewhat based on friend activity/interaction. This is an example where simplification is completely irrelevant - it's simpler, sure, but it a) isn't very useful and b) doesn't work the way users expect.

Wall post filtering is not designed from a user's perspective
This one is sticky. The wall has been restructured for ease of use by everyone but the person who owns the profile. The defaults should be to show user+friends, with option to show only friends or only user. The current settings emphasize broadcasting the activity of the user, rather than letting the user choose how they want their wall to work and be used.

Wall posts no longer have a "Reply" link
This is a UI dilemma - it's a duplicate feature. Yes, you can just as easily post on a friends wall by clicking their name or on the "Wall-to-Wall" link, but if I'm replying, I look for a "reply" link. It's not intuitive to click one of the other links. It would be amazingly intuitive to click "reply" and have a post box drop down (or pop up), like a comment, only it would post directly to the friend's wall instead of commenting. This would be a killer feature.

The new feed is a lot of information in a huge, daunting list
It's very hard to get useful information out of so much data. The old feed algorithm provided a much better balance and control over what showed up - now I have almost no useful control. See also the note above about wall post activity/date headings.

I no longer have control of post types in the News Feed
Before, there were preferences with sliders to customize the type of content that came across my feed. Now the only way to do that is manually, with application filters. Not good.

And now in the Visual Miscues section...

Post format is visually muddled
Previously, the name of the poster was in a sort of header and the message was separate. The current run-on format is harder to read because it is not visually well-defined. It works great for statuses, but nobody writes wall posts like statuses. Heck, most people don't write statuses like statuses. For wall posts, a better balance between space and readability would be good - even just putting a break between the name and post.

The new feed is harder to read - no visual formatting!
The old news feed formatting was much easier to read - the "Today" "Yesterday" etc. headings broke down the news feed into smaller, more easily parsable chunks. (The abbreviated & more compact format helped, too.) Coupled with the more mashed post formatting, it's much harder to read the news feed.

Miscellaneous UI quirks

• The rounded images look icky and ill-defined. Keep the sharp, square, refined look.
• Can we please put pokes with other notifications or something? Burying them in the middle of the right-hand sidebar has always bugged me, it makes no sense.
• Group invites & friend requests should go back over on the right hand side with events, pokes, etc. They get lost visually at the top, even if it makes sense grammatically.
• Highlights are pretty useless. It looks messy and is distracting. I want the relevant stuff I like to show up in my feed, not over there. Reformatting them could help, or put some sort of visual break between the news feed and highlights.
  
• People You May Know should be hideable. It's useless to me - I want the option of not seeing it, like I had in a couple versions ago with apps on the profile page.

My Big Solution:
Put all invites, events, pokes, and notifications on the right-hand sidebar. Group as necessary for ease of use. Limit the amount of space notifications can take up, or make it say "You have 23 notifications" and the link unzips it.

So there's my take. Hope it's useful.

I Know It's Spring

I hit a bug on the way home from class the other night.

How Not To Design Stuff: Dellusions Of Power

The University of Southern Maine employs the use of a large number of Dell Optiplex GX280 computers in labs and classrooms. They are modern computers, pretty fast, quiet, not real pretty, and the power button of these computers looks pretty much like any other typical power button on the planet: it's round, it has that funky little circle-with-a-line-symbol-of-power-thingy, and it glows green. However, one unfortunate design flaw has caused lost time and headaches.

How, you ask, can the design of a power button result in confusion and lost work? Visual feedback.

Fact: The button glows green when the computer is on.
Fact: People expect something on the computer to glow green when the computer is on.
However: In order to tell that the button is glowing, one must look almost straight at it from the front. If you are a little to the side - which is the normal arrangement for the Labs - you can't see the light.

Result: If the computer is positioned anywhere but in front of the user, the little green glow is invisible unless one leans over and peers at the button.

One would not think this to be a terrible problem, a dinky little light doesn't make that much difference. After all, you can also tell if the computer is on by looking at the monitor.

That logic is conveniently defeated by two different circumstances.

1) Some classroom computers are attached solely to a projector - if the projector isn't on (or is blanked), there is no feedback from the screen.
2) In the John Mitchell Center CAD lab, all the monitors are on a separate power circuit and can be turned off at the professor's whim.

We are back to using the power button glow as the sole indicator of computer status. This is a dangerous prospect to entertain if the glow cannot be easily seen - and did I mention that pushing the power button when the computer is on immediately shuts it down?

(Cue scary theme music.)

You push the button. Nothing seems to happen for a couple seconds. You push the power button again. The computer you just turned on shuts off again. You wait longer this time, and are confused. You push the power button again, firmly, and wait longer and something finally shows up on the screen. You can now do useful work before class starts.

Then, the monitors are shut off during lecture and you forget the computer is on - and there are no visible glowy lights to tell you either way. The lecture is over and you push the power button to start the machine up. It shuts off. And, since the computers have DeepFreeze (or equivalent) installed, anything that you saved to the internal drive is wiped clean at boot.

It sounds ridiculous, but I've seen people lose valuable work because of that. Extra frustration, problems, and lost work - all because the power button doesn't provide a good (i.e., visible!) visual cue.

Welcome Back To The Grindstone

Since we're now well back from Thanksgiving break, overloaded with homework, and careening our way into Advent and the Christmas season, I thought this would be a good moment for inspiration.

To offer some, that is (though I wouldn't mind recieving some, either).

Advent means coming, as I'm sure some of you know. Since we have a lot to look forward to in the coming days - finals, for instance, and, of course more finals, and Christmas break and home at the end of them - it is increadibly easy to lose sight of everything but the pin-prick of light at the end of the tunnel.

So take some extra time out with God in the days ahead. Yeah, I know, you have to study, you have to do this and that and the other thing. (By the way, my name is Kettle. Pleased to meet you.) This is an amazing season with an amazing story and it's all to celebrate our Creator. I can't fully comprehend it right now - I'm too lost in homework and doing stuff. I need to start talking to my Creator again.

So how are you doing? I don't think God cares so much about the ecumenical part, even less about the gramatical - but spiritually, He is concerned with us. That's amazing, too.

Crossposted at the USM IV blog.

Reasons My Life Is Lousy, Part 1

There's a stack of unread magazines on the bookshelf by my bed. A pile of sorted, but unfiled papers in front of the shelf, which is overflowing, and a couple half-read books are stacked on top. One of my computers is a pile of parts screwed to some metal legs, a pile of stuff is slowly covering the desk, including the laptop that I haven't touched for weeks. (It's ancient.) Don't even mention the lists of miscellaneous things to do or read or think about. And I'm sitting here writing this instead of writing a memo for Technical Writing class.

I don't have time for my life. Or at least I doesn't seem like it. Homework? It's not hard, it's just not done. I'm apathetic. I haven't really figured out how to manage things yet this year. I only have class four days a week! In between and around classes I have whole blocks of time! And I don't know what where the heck it's all going!

Then again, maybe it would help if I hadn't gotten sidetracked looking up stuff on hovercraft for three hours last night.

I'm Not Even Working And I Have No Life

You know you've been spending too much time on lighting design and rigging when, driving home late at night, you turn on your highbeams and immediately think, "Oh, they have hotspots".

And as if I needed more proof that somewhere around fourty hours is too much time to spend working on Fiddler On The Roof this week, I was thinking about the holes in my front wash and how to better rig my toplight before I was properly awake this morning.

Of Rain And Normality

Today was really weird. I woke up and the sun was shining. For the past seven days (give or take a couple due to innacuracies in memory), it has been either cloudy, rainy, drizzly, or any combination of the above, and I had started getting used to it.

Now picture my confusion when I woke up this morning to sun streaming in my window and no comforting sound of rain dripping off the roof. It's very disorienting, I tell you, and I must admit that I stumbled around a bit and was somewhat disgruntled before the effects wore off sometime after breakfast. Such are the hardships of life, I suppose.

Striving For Excellence In A Land Of Lowercase

IMspeek really bugs me. Why does everyone seem to think that capitalization, punctuation and spelling don't mean anything anymore? The rules and dots are there to bestow the language with order, reason and color.

Don't believe me? Here. Let me translate some of an old classic into the modern vernacular of IMers for you, with very sincere apologies to Shakespeare.

alonso87: dude they all fell asleep
alonso87: im tired to
bro_sebastian: go to bed man
4n70n10: yeah man      bro an ill watch 4 u
alonso87: bye
alonso87: zzzzzzz
bro_sebastian: OMG dude thats so weird they all just like conked out
4n70n10: LOL its the climate
bro_sebastian: yah but im not tired
4n70n10: me either
4n70n10: totally weird they just all fell over at once

Ok, enough of that torture. (It's from The Tempest, Act II, Scene I, by the way.) I think I can count on one finger the number of my friends who actually IM in fluent English. Hang on...I think I'm channeling the ancient spirit of superbob487... (above the whine of a certain William's coffin, which is rotating at a very high rate of speed right now)...

superbob487: LOL dude its all about like just talking not some english paper

Yeah, it's just talking, but what is talking about? Communicating, and you are communicating to me right now that you are too lazy to hit the shift key and put a little thought to what you're saying to me.

Think of it this way. A telephone is one step removed from real life - you can't see the other person's body language. IMs are one step removed even from that - you can't actually hear the other persons voice. (That's two steps from real life.) This makes it difficult at times to convey meaning - more specifically, the meaning we want - in what we write.

Now, comparing a book (The Tempest - a play, actually, but who cares) to a real-time communication device (like IM) is rather a stretch. Obviously the two have little in common aside from the words and communication bit. That's the important bit, however. Though a completely different method than books, IMs are still a medium for communication. More importantly, they are a form of interaction - like talking to someone. I don't know about you, but when I talk I don't do it in a flat monotone and I use various vocal inflections to convey my meaning.

Read that bit about our buddies on the island again, but try it out loud this time. (If you're in a library, just make sure you whisper.) If you read it right, it probably sounded flat and incredibly boring. If it sounded normal, you read it wrong. Remember: no periods no commas no pauses no taking a breath!

In writing, punctuation controls the flow of the words. Pauses..... dramatic... or dreamy... pauses..... can be had with merely a half-dozen (or fewer) presses of the period key. Just around the next comma, there awaits great adventure! Excitement! And colons! Remember this, kids: "Lack of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling inhibits comprehension." We'll review that later; now on to Capitals and Spelling.

Capitals mark important things, like places, titles, and Stuff that you want to Highlight. Beginnings of sentences. And sure, you ALL know about YELLING, but judicious use of that shift key really adds a lot of depth and class to simple sentences. Especially beginnings of sentences. Just that one capital letter can make writing easier to understand - not capitalizing takes away the visual definition and is harder for your brain to parse.

And spelling - spelling is one of the more nebulous ones. Your brain is really very good at fixing things and making it make sense, but there is no point in making it work harder than need be. Using regular spellings is easier to read and, as an added bonus, gives the appearance of being somewhat intelligent and capable of understanding multi-syllable words.

This isn't that hard, is it?

Now a brief spiel on acronyms. Acronyms to abbreviate common phrases are sort of like carrying a bunch of cardboard signs around my neck and holding up the one that says "LOL" whenever I hear something really funny. It might be faster than actually laughing, but it requires extra translation on the receiving end. Sure, I can translate it, but whenever I see "IMHO" my brain thinks it "Imho" and then has to go back and say "In my humble opinion". Communication is about getting your thought to the other guy, right? Anything that needs translation on the other end isn't communicating clearly.

Now one word on l33t 5p33k: Retarded. I refuse to go any further down that path. See also the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

Now that I have thoroughly lambasted all my friends (except one) and most of the rest of the universe under age 20 (except for probably a couple dozen), let me be the first to say that this whole post is rather...er, anal. You can sometimes leave off capitals without appearing totally dumb, and acronyms really do work if you're in a big hurry.

My point remains, however: Unless your house is burning down, there's no really good reason not to spend a couple extra seconds to type complete and properly formatted thoughts. Just remember this, kids: "Lack of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling inhibits comprehension." (And if your house IS burning down, what the heck are you typing for? Get out and call 911, for the love of Pete.)

Dude, Maybe It Was The Hairspray

I think I finally figured out Global Warming. Really, after this record warm January, who can possibly argue with the facts?

See, it all started with the cavemen. (Oops, I'm sorry - Ancient Dwellers of Subterranian Geological Domiciles.) Some of the cave paintings dating from the last ice age bear surprising resemblance to certain modern urban art forms, leading scholars to believe that this may be the earliest known use of spray paint. (The Eskimos of only a few hundred years ago were known to have an aversion to aerosol cans, possibly because of the great decline in native terrain caused by ingorant and indiscriminant works by rogue cave artists. This may also be where we get the term "New-Age Art".)

Then came the cows. I think they actually (*ahem*) evolved prior to the A.D.S.G.Ds., but did not come into great prominence until the... (Ah, so sue me) Cavemen began breeding them. Since bovine, modern and ancient, are great consumers of Green & Brown Grasses and great producers of Greenhouse Gasses, the atmosphere degraded to the point where the ice-cap receded even further from the equator. As they say, it was all down-hill from there. (Unless, of course, you were an Olympic cross-country skier living in what is now Texas.)

So in my conquest to combat this terrible trend (or fry trying), I propose we taking cow-tipping to a whole new level and outlaw graffiti. We must do all that we can in this urgent matter - if we don't, we'll all bake in another few million years and that would really be tragic.

Newsflash: Superbowl Now Obsolete!

Thanks to Google Video, we now have all the best commercials without the hassle of watching an entire football game to see them. People like me who don't care much more than a dust mite about football can still get in on the entertainment value of big corporations spending multi-millions to make a buck (so to speak). Not that I care much about the corporations, either, but sometimes a few of their pennies turn out to be worth something.

Wonka's Many Flavors

This is one of those very rare posts where I talk about movies. It's a combination of things, really - I've lately been on a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kick, having just read the book, and (in a rare fit of something) watched both of the movies based on that book back to back. The contrasts are quite interesting.

First off, I love the book. It's zany, it's light, it's deep, it's funny, it's classic. It's the sort of thing I wonder how I made it this far in life without. This naturally colors my perception, so keep that in mind.

I like the second movie best. (For clarity, I will refer to the first movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as "the first movie". I will refer to the recently released Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp, as "the second movie". It would be terribly confusing to refer to the movies by their rather similar titles, necessitating a note about which one Johnny Depp is in every time to make sure everyone understands, and also noting when I'm actually talking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the book vs. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the movie.)

As I was saying, I like the second movie best. And no, not because Johnny Depp is in it. (Though I do think he's a very good actor and does a generally better job than Gene Wilder, but we'll get to that later.) It's a combination of things, really, partially due to technology differences between 1971 and 2005, but also casting and general story line.

The first obvious difference is casting. Just to hit on a couple major points: I really have nothing against Peter Ostrum, but he just doesn't look like a poor kid who's practically starving. He looks like he just walked out of some California Suburb and probably going surfing tomorrow, after he finishes his paper route. Mr. Bucket is also another notable figure, partly for his absence in the first movie, but also for his casting. He comes across very well as a young, but very tired and careworn man. The second Grampa Joe is also rather more effective in my opinion. Much more the wizened old man one would expect to have been in bed the last twenty years. The first is almost too young. (Never mind the fact that he might have been Einstein in another movie.)

Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka also lacks some sort of pep. The image I constructed from the book is of a spry little man who can't sit still, has a White Rabbit complex (So much to see! So little time! Hurry along, I'm Late! I'm Late!), is seemingly out of touch with much of reality and happily naive. Mr. Wonka from the first movie (that's Gene Wilder) seems slightly lethargic in comparison. Humorously oddball, yes, but a little to far up in the clouds somewhere. The second Mr. Wonka (that's Johnny Depp) is a little more odd and less kindly, but comes across as less of a polite mad scientist with A.D.D. and more of a mental case with a really bad haircut. He also seemed more rather more nervous about the things happening to the kids. I can understand some of that - who wouldn't be nervous if someone got pushed down your garbage chute by your squirrels - but my ink & paper mental image smiles and nods politely and does what little it can to help deal with consequences. The whole thing is (partially) rigged, anyhow. Oh, and what's up with the flashcards? Chalk one up for the world-class-mental/weirdo nomination. Happy mediums are elusive things.

The technology, however, really helped with things in general for the second movie. Quite frankly, a lot of the first movie's factory innards were rather lame. Brown water don't pass for very good chocolate in my book, and you think that waterfall is the source for the world's supply of Wonka Bars? Colossal and Vast and Fantastic are supposed to describe the factory of Mr. Wonka, not Boston Flower Show, amazing as it is. I also have problems with the the boat, it's so very...er...unimpressive. (We're working on the colossal and fantastic, remember?) I'm sorry to say this, but that bell (when the boat first appears) brought back images of Mr. Roger's Trolley and Mr. Roger's Trolley was better. Never mind that the tunnel scene is just plain out of place weird. Oh, and I almost expected the Everlasting Gobstopper machine to start churning out sock puppets or something - never have I seen such a hilariously ridiculous machine, covered totally in a custom cloth cover, with that goofy pink thing sproinging into the air.

Somehow, story lines are always the first victims of script writers or movie producers or whoever does these sorts of things. The changes in the first movie amounted primarily to the Everlasting Gobstopper Plot Device, which, in my humble opinion, was quite unnecessary. I don't really see any problems with the original plot. (There was also a notable absence of the Great Glass Elevator, but I relinquish the benefit of the doubt as far as technical feasibility.) The changes in the second movie were mostly Willy's history, in the form of flashbacks. Which also affected the end but provided some extra food for thought. The literary purist in me rankles at the liberty. The other side of me, however, really appreciates the way it was done. (I will also admit that the puppet scene is another case where I enjoy the book for what it is and the movie for what it is.) While I don't think adding in Willy's childhood and Father really adds a whole lot to the story (aside from providing a terribly convenient reason for Willy to be in the Candy business), it does add an interesting dimension in the comparison of relationships between Charlie's family and Willy's. (That's a whole 'nother post, however.) I'm not so sure about the end, though, they could still move to the factory. That, however, is just my two cents worth, through a lens of Ink & Dead Trees.

Fishing For Fords

Today was supposed to be a fairly normal day. Go shovel out the church, plow the Neighbors pond before lunch, eat lunch, and spend the rest of the afternoon working on odds and ends of this and that and organization, maybe help Dad work on the Buick. Unfortunately, I didn't get past the 'plowing the Neighbors pond' part.

The fun part: I get to drive a 1950-something Ford 9N. (Update: it's actually late '30s.) The more-fun part: it's got a 6-volt electrical system and took me 45 minutes to get it started. The slightly-odd-but-still-fun part: it's got a landscaping plow on the three point hitch, so we plow in reverse. The make-my-day-fun-part: The ice on one side wasn't as thick as we thought, so we get an afternoon course in Tractor Fishing 101.

After a bit of a 'kersploosh' and a startled reflexiv motion that kept the driver dry, the tractor settled (still running) with it's rear axle in four feet of water about six feet from shore, front end still on the ice and pointing towards the middle of the pond. Since it was so close to the bank, the original idea was to loop a rope around the blade and haul the tractor out with the Suburban. Of course, that'll dunk the (so far) dry engine and electrical system in. Hmm. Go home for lunch, Mrs. Neighbor has to take kids to Ballet. Dad wants to hear the whole story and immediately starts figuring. We'll see what we can dig up for useful stuff over at Mr. Skip's shop - the Buick is there anyway, waiting for work. Collect some useful planks, chains, etc. Mr. Skip shows up and we, not being fools, inquire of advice. "Let's go take a look."

If there's anyone to have around when you're lifting, towing, hauling, or otherwise moving anything big, it's Mr. Skip. Grow up on Farm equipment (they guy was backing haywagons at seven - you try that) and spend a few years in the house-moving business, and you have what you call expertise. We end up with a trailer load of planks, cables, chains, miscellaneous ice cutting tools, and the big Hough Payloader. All for the sake of Ford 9N. It got her out, though, and six hours later she sits in the barn with a shiney coat of greasy ice and pond weed and a fully drained engine and rear end, awaiting the kind services of somebody. We didn't manage to manage to get her out without dunking her nose, unfortunately. (To quote the neighbor, who saw her when she was nought but a steering wheel and the top two inches of hood, 'That doesn't quite look like where she's supposed to be.')

A short word to the wise: Don't sink tractors in ponds. It's a pain.

It's A Super-Duper New Year

So far, anyhow, but that's always the way it goes. Yes sirree, it's a New Year, folks! And you know what that means.........A neeeeeeeeew You! All it takes is a few little resolutions, kids, and you could have a better life! Call today to recieve your free informational packet!

Ok, maybe that's a little...commercially pessimistic. But while I don't see much depth in the whole new beginnings thing that often fizzles this time of year, it is a good time to recoup between semesters, get reaquainted with family you've mostly just seen in passing since the semester started, do some things you didn't have time to this semester, and, uh, relax.

It's not that I dislike new beginnings and bettering yourself for fun and profit. Personally, however, I find it works better to do that sort of thing the whole year instead of chucking a nicely worded dart at the Corkboard Of Despond once a year. Not that I would know (I don't play darts), but to be good at darts I think it takes practise. And when you have finished mulling over that profound wisdom, you may move on to greater things.

Merry Christmas!

Why I'm up at this hour working on reinstalling and restoring 1.9 gig of files to a friends laptop I'm not really sure. Particularly since I have to be up tomorrow for usual Christmas morning and church, too. It's the spirit of Christmas, I guess.

And last night, of course, I was up till 3:00 (am) getting schroeder fully upgraded. He's been needing a good apt-get dist-upgrade for a while, not having had the chance since early May. But, of course, I had to pick a slow day for RoadRunner(tm) and had to do other stuff all afternoon, so the morning was spent watching him download (1.5 gig of packages to DL - at 30-80kB/s) and the late evening and wee hours babysitting the rest of the process. Fun fun fun.

Aside from that, however, this week has been remarkably relaxing and productive. Cleaned out my pack and filed (most of) my junk from this semester, hacked up an A/V connector and tested my $15 Nintendo 64 (it works! Goodwill rocks), got my Flickr thing going, spent a bunch of time getting acquainted with LibraryThing, fixed the powersupply for my Boss multieffects pedal (broken wire), reassembled a friend's Digitech RP-2000 and fixed the powersupply for that (two broken wires), whacked together a dual head linux config for my cousin, updated schroeder, completely dissasembled the old iMac (dead analog board, but PS & mobo still fine - build a linux firewall/router box, I think), slept in a lot, and did a whole lot of research on website pre-processing tools. I think I'm going with tt2site for now, I just have to figure it all out and migrate NateNet over. More fun for the Holidays. No school until January 17th, though, so plenty of time to work on Things In General(tm), read and see if I can help Dad get more of the basement organized. I need more boxes to put stuff in...

After the Holidays. I've got a solid week of goofing off to do with family, the other stuff can wait until post-New Years.

Killing Father Time

I'm learning (or at least realizing) just how time-driven our society/my life is, and I hate it.

In the three weeks I spent at Tauernhof's Upward Bound program this past summer, we weren't allowed watches while we were out on tour. It was awesome. Our leaders took care of waking us up and keeping us on schedule. We got up when someone yelled "Rise and shine! Brekky in half an hour!", we didn't know how many hours of sleep we got and didn't worry about it. Minutes were no longer important. Everything was somewhat flexible.

Now in contrast, these last two weeks of school would be fairly normal except that my church's annual Dessert Theatre production is next week - so, added on to the normal routine, I have to finish the lighting before this weekend and we have four performances next week. The last two weeks of school. Since my school schedule is pretty much a fourty-hour week, I usually do a bunch of homework on weekends. Now I have setup, dress rehearsals, and performances on weekends, on top of the usual midweek activites that take up a couple evenings.

I recalled this summer last week while putting together a robot during Lab - I happen to enjoy working on stuff like that and suddenly realized that I had been happily working on Olaf for an hour and a half (say that five times fast), oblivious to the rest of the world. That's when I realized I don't like time. Those three weeks with I spent mostly time independent and it was the proverbial breath of fresh air. (And I'm sure being in the Austrian Alps didn't have anything at all to do with it. ;) Regardless of where I am, I don't want to have to care so much about scheduling and time management and making sure I have enough time to do all my homework for PreCal. (And that's the kicker - I'm slightly behind and it's not because I don't understand the math. It just takes so much time to crank through all the problems.)

This is why I hate time: it waits for no-one, we can't kill it, all we can do is waste it (to borrow the cliches). But at the same time if we try to pack as much as possible into our minutes, we end up wasting ourselves instead. Which is really better?

Black Bears And Shoe Strings

The two aren't really related, of course, except that one may find both a humorous. Depending on your sense of humor. Black bears and the hunting thereof are, apparently, a hot topic in western Maryland. From an article in the Washington Times:

A bill introduced yesterday would save the black bears of Western Maryland — by spreading them into every county of the state. House Minority Leader George C. Edwards of Garrett County offered the modest proposal in part to highlight differences between rural and suburban parts of the state.

Choice quote:

"If these people want to tell us we have to live with the bears, they should be willing to accept the bears," the Republican lawmaker said. "They can bring their charcoal grills and their bird feeders in every night. Fair is fair."

Why is it that people who live in cities and urban areas usually have a problem with controlling wildlife population? It's not like they would know much about it, generally speaking.

Now, on to other things. If you've ever wondered exactly how many ways there are to lace a shoe, you need to take a trip over to Ian's Shoelace Site. Anything you could ever want to know about lacing and tying shoes. Seriously. (And his Ian Knot really is fast, once you get the hang of it.) Deffinitely one for my bookmarks.

And In This Corner Of The Ring....

I heard earlier today that Terry Gross was going to be interviewing Sen. Barbara Boxer on Fresh Air this evening, and I thought it might be interesting. I wasn't dissapointed - Sen. Boxer accused conservatives of employing "Leninist Strategies". Listen for yourself.

Sen. Boxer cited Lenin's assertion that in order to defeat the opposing party one must keep the older folks happy and made a parallel to a statement of President Bush's in the State of the Union Address:

"I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way."

What I fail to understand is how caring for our aging citizens amounts to Leninism. I assume, however that what Sen. Boxer did *not* mean was that Democrats don't care about the aging percentage of the populace.

(Oh, and brownie points for slamming Social Security Reform by making the Conservative=Communist connection.)

Maine Is In The Eastern Time Zone.....Right?

For now, anyway. I heard a blurb on Maine Things Considered the other day and finally got around to posting this. Rep. Kevin Glynn (R-South Portland) is proposing a bill to move Maine from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone, citing increased economic and health benefits. (That's if I remember the quote from Maine Things Considered correctly. I also couldn't seem find a copy of the bill text, it's LR-518. Link to Kennebec Journal article.)

It would seem to me that changing time zones would cause more economic havoc than good. Sure, having an extra hour of daylight would be good for the Ski Companies and after-school activities, but being an hour different from the rest of the Eastern Seaboard could mess up commerce in general, travel, tourism, etc. Whatever.

I'm not sure what it would do for general health, either. Let people be out and about later, maybe. And keep kids a little safer in (and allow more time for) after-school activities. But on the other hand, right now the sun is just up when elementary school kids are out waiting for the bus at 7.30 or so. However, if we move an hour ahead, it will be as light at 7.30 as it is now at 6.30, which is not very.

I just don't really get it. The bill to make Moxie our state drink, that's one thing - but being the only state on Atlantic Time? (Ok - so it's not as weird as Maine Time.) Bragging rights, that's what we get. Why can't we just brag about Moxie?

Happy Inauguration

I missed the inauguration fairly completely today, I was at lunch and the dining hall was too noisy to make watching it interesting. It doesn't have the same sort of appeal as a silent film, for some reason - but we digress. Here's to hoping Mr. Bush will do even better than he did with his first term. The BBC has an interesting take on it, with which I'm apt to agree, for the most part.

But tell me - is this just a little scary, or isn't it? Is there a good reason for the IAC to have this type of information? Is there a reason _anyone_ should have this information right now, aside from the law enforcement? The IAC?!? And then, from another corner, we have this tidbit about ABC, courtesy of Captain Ed.

Now, on a more positive note, it's a beautiful day, if still cold and (down here at school) windy. Three inces of fresh, white snowfall nicely augments the general sunnyness and blue skies.