June 29: InsecurityMy new cell has bluetooth. My new cell takes photos (640 x 480, not as well as the old Apple QuickTake). Sending photos costs money. My Macs have bluetooth. Bluetooth does not cost money. Apple's bluetooth interface is very good. So, I activate bluetooth on both and copy photos. The Mac displays a security code to type into the phone, so that the right phone connects with the right computer. The phone shows the last digit typed for two seconds before changing it to a *. ???? This is just ... confusing and useless. How many 4's did I type? The number is right there on my screen in 36 point bold, and anyone shoulder surfin will still see the numbers. And the computer has already picked a the phone's identifying information, so it should not accept the code from another phone anyhow. Gah. I guess the phone could be spoofed, but someone would still need to be in range to see the code.
Sorry they're so large, can't edit images on the phone. Anyhoo, first one self-explanatory, as is the second, third is Jake at his new school with a new friend (!) and the last is the vault at the old PNC Bank at 31st and Market. June 18: Let 'em sweatIt's been in the nineties since Saturday and I love every degree of it. Deep in February, this is the weather I long for. June is not nearly as humid as August, nights are cool, and the house remains cool on the first floor without running the air conditioning. My office is, of course, freezing. The University sent around the annual "save as much electricity as you can" e-mail; that reducing the cooling power of the air conditioning to a humane seventy degrees would save more power and money than any other strategem is an irony lost on the administration. Fortunately, our building is so old the windows open (but have no screens). First thing each morning I open the window, leading my co-workers to wonder at my sanity at letting in the "three-thousand degree" heat. And here I thought it had been a pleasant morning for a short bike ride and a brisk walk! Was I little sweaty by the time I got to the office (and the train station ...)? Sure, it's summer after all. If you don't expect to sweat in the summer, move to northern Canada. Sweat doesn't bother me. Maybe it was three years of cross country running practice in the August heat that forever linked sweating with (literally) running around outside and carefree days. If I'm expecting a workout and don't work up a sweat, it wasn't much of a workout. It might have been summers in Dad's un-airconditioned house in the Poconos, or Mom's un-air-conditioned house in the Philly burbs. It could be that I spend winters freezing my buns off. It could be genetic; my mother is always cold, and we comiserate on the over-use of air-conditioning in public spaces. She loves to be warm, and actually keeps the heat so high in the winter that we wear t-shirts under sweaters when we visit (sweaters for the rest of the world, just a t-shirt at Mom's) and I open windows and doors for the breeze. Being cold in summer is unnatural, all the worse because the contrast beetween the unnatural coolness of indoors is so stark compared with the natural heat of summer. Why do so many people believe indoor spaces should be like refrigerators? Do they keep a spare winter wardrobe in the car to run into the grocery store? June 5: If anything happens, I'll let you know.Mostly, we're in the garden with Jake (and pinkeye). Because really, you don't want to read my rant about the new cell phone. May 30: It's called authorization for a reasonSo, this story from ComputerWorld, supposedly about stupid computer users is really about stupid software/database designers. Long story short: one department's orders are deleted from the database every morning. Any sane software or database person would immediately whip up some code to log what's going on, and who's doing it. And they would find out very quickly that one user is deleting the previous day's orders every morning from "his" computer. And this raises the biggers question: why did this user have the authority to delete anything? If you know users shouldn't do something, don't let them. Because if you don't stop them from doing it, they'll do it — maliciously, thoughtlessly or accidentally — but they'll do it. I know, I'm a user, and I quake in fear each time I touch real, live data. May 29: Little Oberensingen and Little Möser
Sunday morning we had bagels for breakfast in the back yard in our jammies, just like when we visited Tobi, Renate and Lutz. We had tea. I ferried things back and forth on a tray. We saw a slug. Jake "mowed" the lawn. It was a great start to the day, better than yoga. It turns out that one of my life goals is eating in my own backyard. This made me happier than doing any of the things I felt I "should" do. I sat in my yard, enjoyed the breeze, looked at my garden that is so much messier than I'd like, watched Jake have a ball, and was blissed out. It was even better to have Mom and Fred over. So, when can you come over? Happy birthday Steve!Hah! We pulled it off! Steve turned 40 this weekend and we had a little surprise party for him. Close friends, grilling, chocolate cake. We've got food for a week now. The best part was that he suspected nothing. As the day approached, I was sure he suspected and was only nicely pretending to be clueless about it. But, really, he's so trusting, it made sense to him that we'd forget this is the year he turns 40, and that we'd have him and a few other people over the day after his birthday, because Gena would be in town, not because of any personal milestones. Heh. He seemed to have a good time, and the party was the right size. PinkeyeJake got pinkeye at school (goopy eyes, but not actually pink) and passed it on to me and perhaps his father. I'm in day five, and still waking up with my left eye glued shut. At Steve's party I talked so much I sounded like Julie Kavener from her Rhoda days. This morning I had no voice, and am taking a "germ day" to work from home and not infect my colleagues, in case the lost voice is something different. May 14: UselessabilityMuch of what I do is trying to improve the usability of the programs I write and maintain. Sometimes it's pretty basic: automated processes that intelligently and intelligibly notify the right people about errors (or successes), or pulling data from fifteen sources into one place and relating it all to each other (i.e., making the computer do the grunt work). Sometimes it's just so obvious that the current program or process is in a state of uselessability. Septa's web site has long been a prime example of uselessability: PDF schedules, schedules posted to the web weeks after the changes go into effect, no notices of disasters (such as local flooding halting the subway and train lines). At first glance, this list of trains currently running and their on-time status looks pretty darn useful. It's not anything we expect from the web in the 21st Century, but Septa has finally pulled the site into 1997, haven't they? As I type, the Lansdale to Malvern train is currently 41 minutes late; pretty useful to know if you're waiting at Malvern. Of course, the two Doylestown to Thorndale trains are only 3 minutes behind schedule; both of those trains will go through Malvern. Which train arrives first? Well, you can't tell, because Septa has organized this "information service" by train number, requiring the user to cross reference that to a schedule (PDF!). Not that "Trainview" tells you which of seven routes this train runs on (R5), nor does anything indicate there are two schedule files for the R5 line, depending on which side of the city you are travelling from. I ride three lines; from this table, there is no way to know which is the next train, whether it's on time, and whether it's worthwhile for me to just catch the next one. This is classic uselessability: at some point, someone said, "Hey, we have a web site, we should put train status up on it! People really want that!" Now the manager or programmer can claim to have "current train status" up on the web. And passengers can use it — if they've memorized every train number. Getting the information on the web was "quick" and "easy" because the passengers are still doing the hard work: determining which train applies to them. The page will never get better because they've already "solved" the problem. First off, there's a very simple fix: order the list not by train number, but by time through Suburban Station. All trains go through Suburban Station. Using Suburban Station as the point of comparison, the user can quickly see which is the "next" train. Even better would be to add the departure and arrival times for the two end stations, so that experienced passengers know whether that train from Doylestown has already left. Ideally, passengers could enter and bookmark their own departure and arrival stations (or departure, or arrival) and see only relevant trains. Is this more work for the computer and programmer? Sure, but that's what computers do and what programmers are paid to do. May 13: Happy Mother's DayThe mothers have left and I am sitting in my garden drinking my fourth cup of coffee (with sugar and half and half), eating half a poppyseed bagel with cinnamon cream cheese (too much cinnamon). The weather was nice enough that we brunched outside, and six weeks of work were not wasted. Brunch was lovely and possibly one of the easiest we've ever done: bagels with cream cheese and a lox platter, biscuits (I had to bake something), coffee cake from Jorj's co-worker, scrambled eggs with cream cheese and chives (made by Jorj), roasted asparagus, bacon from the oven (350 degrees, half an hour on a baking rack over a rimmed baking sheet), fruit salad, coffee, tea, juices, cold duck. Jorj cooked eggs as needed. The trees dropped little "friends" into the drinks and food. The adults ate on the back patio and the kids ran around at will. No one ran into the street. The bluebells, cannas, bleeding heart, mock orange and scotch broom are all in bloom. I had forgotten how little sun the patio gets, so it was a bit cool, but we'll be happy for that in August. Jake has a cold but was so excited to see all three grandmothers and to be able to run around in the back yard and play in his "big blue boat" (aka the wheelbarrow body). Did he eat anything? No! Conversation flowed and it felt like what those pictures in tony garden magazines promise. May 5: Nag, nag, nag'Nita tells me I need a "real" blog. Nita forgets I care for no-one's opinion but my own, except for those moments of screaming insecurity. Anyhow, I'm too busy in the garden |
What I'm reading
What I'm listening to
What I'm excited about
|
After a