right on bro!

How to Piss Mike Off at Starbucks in the Morning
* Be in line on front of me with 3 of your friends
* Order three extremely complicated drinks while the place is short-staffed
* Tell the barista what the first two drinks are, THEN decide what your third drink is, after consulting the menu
* Change your mind on the third drink after ordering it
* After the barista rings you up, then decide you want pastry
* Examine pastry case (with finger to lips as if deep in concentration) and ask friend if they want to share a croissant
* Pay with credit card
* While waiting for drinks, stand in front of cash register, blocking me (and other customers) behind you

It really works!

Best Use of Flash, Ever
http://www.dfilm.com/index_moviemaker.html

Incredibly-guilt-ridden-for-liking song of the summer, and summer’s not even over yet: “Boys of Summer” by the Ataris. Yes, I know it’s a cover, and I love the original version, but these fools really made it their own. Still won’t buy their album, so take that, big corporate record label honchos.

Received a surprise package from Sony in the mail today: a Playstation-branded personal organizer complete with my official Playstation Underground membership card. I feel like I did when I signed up for the Burger King Kids’ Club at age 15 - except, thirteen years later. Nice work!

System temp on email box is a steady 42-44 degrees, while fan is a quiet whir. Considering the crappy case (inwin s500) and one case fan I have running…Dr. Thermal comes through.

Now I can hear my power supply fan…maybe I should replace it…it’d be only about fifty bucks…oy this is a bad road to go down.

- mdj

Got into a discussion today with a product manager who thought that I should limit functionality and ease in my application by eliminating multiple ways to access the same data. The end result would be that certain people (namely, the customer service group) would have to take a longer path to get to the data they needed. This would be done in the name of giving users a standard path to access data, because she said that users (our employees) wouldn’t understand anything unless you gave them one single path.

I just don’t buy that argument. Design something that gets people to the data and functions they need, as quickly as possible. Efficiency is the key. People aren’t stupid, and software design should not reflect that people are stupid.

As far as the call to “just make it easy for people to use:” People, when you create overly complex business models and products, YOUR SUPPORTING APPLICATIONS ARE GOING TO BE COMPLEX. There’s just no other way around it. They will require training. I can’t magically import an understanding of how our business works into user’s heads when they load the program.

I am getting tired of the constant calls for “make it so easy to understand, I should be able to load up the application and understand it immediately.” People at my company seem to arrive immediately at the end result they think they want, without the knowledge of what it takes to build it, nor the details from beginning to end.

Two executives that I “grew up under” have gone. Time to seriously investigate other options.

Went to the hamshack computer fair today to help a friend upgrade his PC. I love going to these things. I guess building PCs is my version of football.

I bought a Dr. Thermal TI-V77 heatsink to replace the shit-ass $2 Foxconn all-aluminum heatsink that I bought a couple of weeks ago. The high-pitched whine immediately disappeared. CPU temperature is running about 9-10 degrees (C) lower. Yay!

The heatsink is made by a company called T.I.T.I. (say it out loud)…hee hee. Their tagline is “Leading Where Information’s Going To.” Translation problems?…but that’s what makes it hamshack.

went to MOCA’s “boohooray” yesterday to see Blonde Redhead play as the sun was setting out in the middle of Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. weird. they were pretty good though.

Saw the new Tomb Raider movie today. It was much better than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which straight sucked. (Did I mention LXG sucked?) Not spectacular, but enjoyable all the same.

Saw it at the Grauman’s Chinese theater, in the big theater, the one that you see in the movies. First time I’ve been there in the almost six years I’ve lived here.

yay.

Rules:
http://www.starkitten.com/08/index.php?dir=&img=91

Thank you.

It feels like everything I want to do, and am working on, is moving incredibly slowly. And I only have myself to blame.

Nice work!

Time to go drinking.

Well….I was supposed to get a free guitar from Sam Ash when I ordered my copy of Cubase…and I did…it’s different from the one they said they’d send though. Err, am I supposed to jam them up over a free guitar? I called anyway, they said I’d have to talk to a manager, so I guess they’ll call me back.