I am having a rotten day. I feel beleaguered and ineffectual. My creative energies are blocked. I can’t problem-solve, which is the only thing that I want to do right now. I feel like everyone is telling me to quit and give up. One guy called me an Alpha Male. He thought something was wrong with my blogging. What the hell does he read it for then? You know who you are, stop reading! Here is a link for you.

ARRRRRRRrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHH.

I tried to work out some JavaScript for an effect I need to prototype and it wont cooperate. I tried to sell the missile command game and the guy never showed up. I tried to donate baby gear and goodwill won’t take it. I tried to help this guy on his website (volunteering) and everything I did had a bug. My jaw hurts from clenching it.

I am shut out of helping Intuit. It’s not me, it’s the whole model. We are telling business units to do it themselves. So why wouldn’t they decline our invitation to help.

Ugh. Maybe it’s the Mao book I’m reading. The guy is the most Machiavellian guy I have ever read about. He is so brutal and heartless. I am sickened by him.

Maybe a long weekend will help. Happy 4th of July! I hope.

Read this New York Times article if you are married or have a significant other.
Katie sent it to me. I am not annoyed at being likened to a circus animal. Quite the contrary. I am happy that Katie has stumbled upon this concept.

I want to be trained to clean up more; criticize less; eat less. And play sports more. And sell crap on CcraigList.

There once was a boy who was allergic to pollen. He had hay fever. His spine also was a tiny bit curved which made sleeping on a hard surface painful. The boy also had this wierd thing where he needed to sleep with his legs apart. If his legs were together, it would bug him and keep him awake. The boy was quite a wuss.

Then one day, the boy’s wife decided to play a mean trick on him. She brought him into the forest and said, “You shall sleep on the hard ground tonight. And you shall have to sleep in this special bag that keeps your legs together. HA HA HA” The boy started sneezing and couldn’t hear her. He thought she must be laughing at some joke he told. The boy was very funny.

The boy couldn’t sleep at all that night and had to walk back to the car from the forest at 2:00AM and try and sleep in the car. He awoke in the morning with a splitting headache and a sore back from the seat belt protruding into his spleen.

The boy always remembered this night and swore revenge. “One day”, he swore, “I shall make my wife do something she hates.”

His wife overheard him and chimed in, “Like give up singing and take care of three kids all day long while you watch TV like a lazy bastard?”

The boy’s eye’s squinted closed and he whispered, “Touche!”

Touche, indeed.

Bill Gates has announced he is leaving Microsoft to focus full-time on the Gates Foundation. Bill Gates is the most philanthropic human being in history, giving more to charitable causes than anyone before. He puts his contemporary billionaires to shame. (Larry Ellison, you know who you are).

He leaves behind a mixed legacy at Microsoft. Clearly, the most successful software company in the world, however, their success has been due mostly to the Windows and Office franchises. Their numerous other ventures have rarely led to profit. However, many of those efforts may have boosted their overall strategy. Interestingly Microsoft, a company who made products mostly by stealing other innovators ideas, is also one of the most copied. It is ironic that they make such a big deal about piracy, when they founded their company on stealing other people’s software. (CPM, Apple/Xerox PARC)

The latest version of Vista is very MacOS X-like. The latest version of Office is such a significant change, I find myself wondering where things are. I am concerned that the general public is in for some serious confusion in the next few years.

What will the next generation of Microsoft be? It is fascinating for me to think about, but probably less for the average joe. Good Luck, Bill Gates. And, if you read this…I could really use a million dollars or so. The housing prices are killing me! You would barely miss it. I have lots of kids. Consider us a small impoverished village! It’s just a million!

I have spent most of this week at Usability 2006, which is a conference run by the Nielsen/Norman group. I started at the Usability in Practice sessions but then switched over to Interaction Design. I am really enjoying Tog. He has great stories and clearly has had a really fun career. So far, I agree with everything he has said. One thing he brought up was Fitt's Law. I knew this stuff intuitively, but it helps so much to have the science behind it. It's good to be in a conference like this, HOWEVER, I have some definite "fidget" issues. I can't sit still. I need to get up all the time and stretch. I blow my nose every 30 seconds. These chairs are very uncomfortable. Ugh. I hate conferences. I miss my chair. I want to go back to work. We had a nice father's day. Spent it with Penny/Jim. Look at my post in October 2004. I was working with a very long commute. Today, I do not feel that way. I am thankful for the shorter commute and easier work environment.

Ok, to set up the story, put your fingers up in the air in a peace sign. (Index and middle finger up, with other fingers down under the thumb). Then point your two fingers towards your eyes. Then point them away from you, straight ahead. Do this 5 times back and forth fairly quickly. Remember this gesture. Ethan had apparently let Matthew out of the front yard (we have a gate). He was with Matthew, but this is not allowed by the rules of the house. Katie made Ethan tell me about this. She had punished him earlier in the day. So Ethan is telling me that he let Matt out, but then he said, "But I was watching him. I looked at him then the road. Matthew, road, Matthew, road, Matthew, road." (Now do the gesture from before). I could barely keep myself from smiling. Then yesterday, Ethan asked me what athleticism means. I had said something about Shaq O’Neal ruining basketball and that he had little athleticism. He is just a freakish big person. So I told Ethan that he was athletic and I had given him that gift by putting the coordination gene in his DNA. We talked about it for a while with Jared too. They are fun to talk to. It’s like they have a gift for cuteness or something. Katie and I are blessed.

Also Known as Vista Beta 2, I have sucessfully installed the operating system. I also have installed the beta of Office 2007. So far, I am pretty excited. The glass interface is very cool. The performance is pretty good. Alot of the new features are nice. On the down side, UAC (User Access Control) SUCKS. I had to disable it. It literally asked me four times for every tiny decision I made.

I am still trying it out. I want to explore alot of the hidden features and upgrades. I want to make a DVD slideshow of our pictures.

Office 2007 has a new interface. This is the first wholesale interface change since the DOS to Windows change. It’s pretty different. I need to play with it more to get the hang of it.

WIll update more as I learn. No errors yet, thank god!

Katie and I celebrated out 8th wedding anniversary by going to a nice French (Freedom) Restaurant and watching The Miser by French (Freedom) playwright Molière. The play, at the Berkeley Rep was fantastic. We enjoyed the costumes, the sets, the acting. It was the best play I have seen since “How to succeed in Business without really trying” with Matthew Broderick. That website is too funny.

Katie and I had a lovely time. The boys feel asleep at Penny’s. For some reason, Matthew calls Penny Me-Ma, which is what we called my father’s mother. As far as I know, no one has prompted him in this. It’s kind of strange. When we drove the boys home and stopped the car, Jared woke up and said, “I’m not sleepy!” and then feel back asleep. He is a goof.

In other news, Katie had me buy a manual lawnmower. The kind with no engine, it just spins and cuts. It actually works pretty good; I am impressed. We have to get to the backyard though otherwise the raking will be hell.

In technology news, I am having alot of trouble installing beta 2 of Windows Vista at home. Yes, I am trying, AGAIN.

They are called Vitreous Floaters. There is a whole website dedicated to them. They are the little hairs that you sometimes see floating into your field of vision like little ghosts. When you try to look directly at them they move out of your field of view. When you stop trying, they come right back, floating just off the center of your vision. They are shy and do not like being looked at.

I asked Katie and she said, “I have no idea what you are talking about”.

I just read a book about creativity which made the analogy that those little hairs are like the creative process. If you try to look closely at it, to measure it, to make a process out of it…it will just disappear. The creative process is elusive and can’t be pinned down so easily. I think it is an apt analogy.

Who out there has Eye Floaters? Let Katie know. We are not alone. We should unite and create a union. We have rights! Power to the People!

Speaking of non sequiturs: (Thank You Susan Lipka) Ron Dellums is going to be the next mayor of Oakland. I am excited to see how he does. He has always been a legislator. I wonder how he can make the switch to the executive branch.

There was this award at work. Everyone had to nominate another person and say why they thought that person embodied the corporate values. The Intuit values are actually pretty interesting. I did not win the award, but rather, my nomination was the winning one. Everyone mentioned the quality of the writing as an important factor. It wasn’t good grammar, but rather good storytelling.

I think being able to tell a good story is an important business skill. A good analogy is critical to explaining complex ideas. A good story of what someone else did or did not do can be the difference when a decision gets made.

I wonder if email and blogging have contributed (nationwide) to the ability to tell stories or has had a detrimental effect?

Maybe we should have more time in elementary and high school to develop this skill?