a better fit
I’ve been thinking about buying a new car for mostly the wrong reasons.
Petty reason #1. My Civic has a terrible amount of road noise. Driving the local roads in Seattle, even at a paltry 25 mph, it’s like riding a coal mine cart in an Indiana Jones movie.
Petty reason #2. My Civic has a cassette radio and playing my tunes through my cassette adapter is, and always has been, like listening to a live recording on a cardboard speaker.
Petty reason #3. I love riding my bike with Elle, but I can’t get bike rack that fits through my apartment’s garage. I need a car that can effortlessly fit a big and small bike.
Petty reason #4. My Civic has a great turning radius and is small enough for city driving, but improving on both these dimensions would be even better for the narrow Seattle roads. It would open up a whole new world of parking opportunities!
Petty reason #5. My Civic is aging and approaching the high maintenance phase of its life. Who wants to spend time replacing a timing belt here, tires there as it slowly falls apart? Better to rid of it now and save that time for something more enjoyable, like eating cheap ethnic food on the Ave.
I suppose the only legitimate reason I have is that I feel surrounded by emblems of my broken marriage. I live with the car, the furniture, the bed, and the kitchenware of a failed 8 year relationship, and as shallow as it seems to gripe about things, it’s really hard to move on when I’m living and using things from my painful past. I don’t know how much that’s worth; I don’t think I could put a price on it. But surely a $150 monthly car payment is well below its value.
So what do I want? I’m looking at a Blackberry Pearl Honda Fit. They’re small, fuel economical, with extremely versatile space for people and things. I’m used to Hondas, their usability is one of the best in the car industry, and they’re pretty cheap. As much as I hate cars, I do spend a lot of time commuting back and forth to Kirkland, so why not have a nice, compact little car that can zip around those Lake Washington curves? The Fit wouldn’t be dramatically better than my ‘02 Civic, but would be an incremental improvement, in a petty sort of way.
sketching with words
I had a meeting today with the Human Interactions in Programming group at Microsoft Research today, along with a few other UW people, to talk about potentials for collaboration. Lots of opportunities came out of our meeting, but one thing stuck around in my head today after David Notkin made a comment about peoples’ misperceptions about what software is and is capable of. I replied to his comment this notion that there are all kinds of versions of a software artifact: versions on paper, versions in specs, versions floating around in developers’ heads, versions in users’ heads. And of course, the real version that ends up being built. The intriguing thing here is how all of these different conceptions end up affecting the actual software artifact. For example, think of two developers discussing some broken feature and how they want to fix it: if you really listen, the discussion is about future versions of the current version and all of the quality implications of the change. They fill the discussion with descriptions of the slightly modified system at a variety of levels of abstraction, with the goal of debating the merits of the modified system. The same conversation might occur between a program manager and a marketer, discussing ways of describing what it is that is being built.
It seems to me that all of these different versions of the system are essentially sketches, in the broadest design sense. They’re verbal sketches, and likely so because programs and software systems are so tricky to draw. So when two developers debate a change, they’re essentially drawing out the modification in the ether, letting the ideas linger in the air, critique the ideas in their phonological loops. I helped with a study by Mauro Cherubini looking at developers’ sketches, and the result was quite similar: in most cases, developers use diagrams in order to support discussions about changes to code.
I’m planning some studies looking at software developers’ design discussions and this idea of a verbal sketch could be quite helpful in finding meaning in the data.
my iPhone hates you
In fact, it hates everyone, especially other iPhone users. Six hour text message delays. Voicemails showing up a day later. In some cases, I’ll never even get the message. It’s driving me crazy! I had situations where people email me asking why I’m not picking up, and I’ll call them, but they won’t get my call. This is the best phone I’ve ever had, except for the phone part.
That said, I’m on the phone with Apple and AT&T right now, and they’re pretty awesome. They know what they’re talking about, they’re clear in their instructions, and the quality of the call is great, without any distracting background call center noise. Now if only they can fix it…
Trouble is twitching
Ever since I returned from a four day break in Portland, my cat Trouble has been particularly affectionate and noisy. The day I returned, he meowed through the night right next to me bed. I felt really guilty for making him so lonely, but eventually, he returned to normal.
Or so I thought. Lately, he’s been climbing high places, pointing his tail straight up and then twitching it like a big furry vibrator while he meows at me pleadingly. I pet him, I stroke him, I feed him treats, but nothing placates his strange new behavior.
I searched for twitching tails online and some sites suggest that he’s “offering a friendly, cheerful greeting” except for the twitching, which is associated with either being intensely annoyed or intensely happy. Is he still pissed off at me for leaving him alone so long? Or is he happy that haven’t left again?
Maybe I should just get him a little kitten to pick on while I’m gone.
