aubreyturner.org

If you have dogs you don’t realize how nice a fenced yard is until you have to do without one for a while.  My mother lives on about 4 acres in East Texas, which are not fenced.  So whenever the dogs needed a potty break, I had to go out with them.  Unlike the neighbors up the road with their pack of unruly curs, I’m not going to let my dogs roam unsupervised.  Besides those other dogs and the road (which people have a nasty tendency to engage at warp speed), there are various wild animals around.  Not to mention that Boots has shown a distressing tendency to roam great distances if not closely supervised (i.e. on leash, since she conveniently forgets that I exist if she gets beyond 20 feet away). 

Interestingly, Malcolm is much more human/pack oriented, so I was able to take them both out by putting only Boots on a leash.  Malcolm would then orbit either Boots or me and generally stayed within 50 feet or so of both of us (and would come back when called if he started to get a little too far away).  While not quite as secure as having both of them on the leash, it was much more convenient, since the two of them seem to have an instinct for crossing back and forth and tangling their leashes.

Anyhow, it’s a bit annoying to be awakened by a whining dog at 2:00am when it’s 40° and raining.  Although I have to acknowledge that it could be worse, since I’ve had to do the same duty in the past while visiting my sister in Colorado (which, in December, means really bundling up, rather than just throwing on a jacket in addition to the flip-flops).

As was painfully obvious, I took some time off.  I had been feeling pretty run down towards the end of the year.  I’m not 100% sure what it was, but I suspect a combination of a nasty cold bug and allergies.  I started feeling a bit better towards the end of December as we finally got some cold weather and the allergen/fungus counts went down.  I was even able to stop taking Claritin-D, which helps a lot with my thought processes (pseudoephedrine gives me a floaty head). 

Interestingly, when I went to East Texas for a week over Christmas I felt a lot better.  I came back on Saturday and by Sunday afternoon was feeling somewhat stuffy again, so either there’s something different in the air in this part of the state or there’s something in the house (I probably need to have the ducts looked at and cleaned).  But, so far, I’ve been having good results with just a saline spray.

Anyway, I hope that this increased energy will continue and hope to have more frequent updates on this site.

In her ongoing series of doggie dressup pictures, I think Rachel Lucas may have captured the perfect portrait of dog resentment towards the silly things that hoomans inflict upon dogdom.

I tried to put antlers on Boots once, but it was an utter failure.  She only sat still long enough for me to get one picture before she shook them off.

I will kill you in your sleep for this

Since then, I have decided it best not to attempt anything of the sort again.

+
+ = Major waste of time

For a long time I was a die-hard PC gamer.  Not that I played much these days.  I got tired of the upgrade race and spending money on new video cards and rebuilding systems.  About a month ago I caught an ad for NFS:ProStreet and got a look at the graphics on the XBox 360 and decided to give it a try.  I’ve been really pleased with the graphics and game play, especially given the cost comparison to what I was spending on PC hardware.  At one point I spent about $300 on just a video card.  The XBox 360 bundle I bought was $349 (although I turned right around and spent more for the racing wheel, it was still less than any comparable PC platform).

Aside from racing games, my other favorite genre was flight simulation.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a version of MS Flight Simulator for the XBox 360.  This had been a sticking point for a while (one reason I resisted the XBox), but I finally gave in.

Not that I’ve spent every waking moment gaming this past month.  Far from it.  But after spending all day at work in front of the computer, I just haven’t felt up to taking the time for blogging (which means spending even more time in front of the computer).  Gaming provides a nice, brain-disconnected, end-of-day activity after a long day of work.

As time allows I will attempt to post more, but my work schedule, frankly, sucks between now and 12/21.  I’ve got 10 pounds of crap to stuff into a 5 pound sack.  If my stuffing is successful, though, then perhaps blog activity can resume at a more normal pace after Christmas.

While these “new” terrorism warnings might be the usual chatter, it’s probably prudent to take them seriously.

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence report distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning. (Click here for full text.)

The alert said al Qaeda “hoped to disrupt the U.S. economy and has been planning the attack for the past two years.”

Law enforcement officials tell ABCNews.com that the FBI received the information in late September and declassified it yesterday for wide distribution. 

While the moonbat contingent is out in force in the comments claiming this is the usual spin, I’m a bit surprised it hasn’t happened yet.  It doesn’t require a great deal of sophistication, nor does it require lots of resources or planning.  Heck, Tom Clancy even wrote a novel (not exactly his best work) that included mall attacks as part of the plot.  And while Mr. Clancy isn’t a national security asset, he’s oddly prescient when it comes to ways to attack America (viz. Debt of Honor, with its 747-attack on the U.S. Capitol, written in 1994).

Anyhow, malls are soft targets, and malls in places like Chicago and Los Angeles are especially soft, given their silly but draconian (and likely unconstitutional) gun laws.  It’s been nearly four years now, but my opinion has not changed (see Sterilization vs Immunization).  The best defense is one that is distributed among the people.  Relying on a centralized “authority” to respond and keep you safe is a recipe for heartbreak, disappointment, and likely death. 

So maintain Condition Yellow, and if you’ve got ‘em, carry ‘em.

I meant to comment on this incident a couple of days ago, but forgot at the time. 

Charles and Linda Everson were driving back to their hotel when their minivan was struck by a falling object – a 600-pound cow. The Eversons were unhurt but the cow, which had fallen off a cliff, had to be euthanized.

The year-old cow fell about 200 feet from the cliff and landed on the hood of the couple’s minivan, causing heavy damage.

A Chelan County fire chief, Arnold Baker, said the couple missed being killed by a matter of inches in the accident Sunday on a highway near Manson.

Can you imagine?  You’re just driving along, minding your own business and suddenly BLAM there’s a cow on the hood of your car.

It doesn’t matter how defensively you drive, I don’t know that there’s any way to prepare for this sort of eventuality.  Sometimes the universe is simply perverse.

No, not the band, but my toe.  Not paying attention I somehow managed to smash my toe into the edge of a door last night.  Oddly, it wasn’t one of the usual ones that I smash into things (the big or little toe), but the fourth toe (the one next to the little toe).

At first I thought it might be broken, but upon palpation I could not detect any deformity (sorry, my first responder training kicked in for a second), and the toe retained sensation and circulation.  This doesn’t conclusively rule out a fracture, but I’m moderately certain it’s just a nasty bruise.  And it certainly turned a rather interesting shade of purple. 

Anyhow, I can still hobble around fairly well.  It doesn’t bother me too much unless I’m careless and flex my toes too much.  Time will tell if my diagnosis is correct.  If it doesn’t start clearing up in a day or two I suppose I’ll have to pop over to the local doc-in-a-box for an X-Ray to see what’s really going on with it.

Delivering good software can be a challenging process, especially so when numerous development and design principles have been ignored or violated.  I was recently reminded of this due to my exposure to Verzon’s new FIOS TV Interactive Media Guide.  A month or so ago I received a letter telling me that I would soon be seeing a new interface on my DVR.  The day before the roll out I got a phone call telling me about the coming “upgrade” and pointing me to the website for a tutorial.  This should have been a warning to me that something was up. 

I’ve been in the software business for about 14 years now, doing everything from tech support to programming to systems design. Over that time I’ve learned a thing or two about delivering software as well as about UI (User Interface) design.  While UI is not my specialty, it’s something that I have to take into account while doing design work.  Whenever you have a system that is going to be used by people (rather than other systems), then you have to think in terms of the user while doing your design.

Anyhow, I told you that so I could tell you this:  It is my considered opinion that the Verizon FIOS TV Interactive Media Guide as it exists today is an unmitigated piece of crap.  The UI is so flashy as to be difficult to use and distracting.  It’s slow. It’s unreliable.  It’s inconsistent.  It represents a failure in requirements analysis, ignorance of UI design principles, and its implementation and roll out demonstrates an utter lack of understanding or consideration of UCD principles. 

Lest you think I’m just bloviating, allow me to give a few examples.

The first (and most egregiously annoying) mis-feature is the “fixed focus” program guide.  Here’s what it looks like:

As you press Up or Down Arrow the “highlight” stays fixed and the guide data moves underneath it.  It’s kind of like looking at a specimen through a microscope by moving the slide around underneath it.  Unfortunately, I find this highly distracting and somewhat nauseating.  First, I tend to think spatially.  This means that I think of my local channels as being “up there” on the guide, things like Discovery (channel 100) being “in the middle,” and the HD channels being “down there” (800’s).  Scrolling through with the old program guide was kind of like navigating in a video game, in that I could correlate spatial position to channels.  My brain is also accustomed to scanning the entire page at once.  My usual Sunday morning activity is to open up the guide, enter 100, and then scan across the Discovery channels to see if there’s anything interesting on.  And I do this a page at a time.  It’s kind of like a visual “grep.”  With the new guide, the huge visual wart in the middle interferes and causes me to have to refocus on the top and bottom halves separately, which interrupts my visual comparator and makes me irritable. 

Anticipating objections, though, I will admit that this is a personal thing.  There might be people who like looking at things through a microscope.  I’m just not one of them.  Still, I bring it up because there is no option to use the old style of guide.  This indicates to me that they didn’t talk to any users during design, didn’t talk to enough users if they did talk to any, and/or ignored feedback from the initial victimstesters.  A good design would have take human factors into account and would have either not used the fixed focus method or would have allowed for an alternate guide format.  More on this towards the end…

They have implemented a “tabbed navigation” system for the menu system, which is shown above.  This system has several issues, mainly in being inconsistent and violating the principle of least astonishment.  For example, pressing Right Arrow causes the next level menu to be activated.  The interface shows you the options in the next level menu as it’s displaying the upper level.  Unfortunately, if the list is long it attempts to center the list and the arrow points to something in the middle.  When you press Right Arrow to go into the next level menu it takes you to the top of the list, rather than the item to which the arrow was pointing.  This is surprising and annoying.  It should always go to the item that the arrow is highlighting. 

Further, it’s not consistent, as when you get to “leaf” items (i.e. lowest level items in the menu), pressing Right Arrow does nothing.  You have to highlight the item and hit OK.  The old version of the IMG let you use Right Arrow, so not only is the new version inconsistent, it removed previously useful functionality. 

The interface is also horribly slow and it provides no feedback that a request has been received or that an operation is under way.  This is a cardinal user interface sin.  Both the guide and the ‘My DVR’ function take 1.5 to 2 seconds after the button press to appear on my system.  There is no change in cursor, no change in interface color,  nor is there a sound to indicate that the button press has been received and that the data is being gathered.  I forget where I originally saw this, but most UI guides require acknowledging a button press within 0.1 seconds.  The operation can take longer, but you must give an indication that you received the button press and that the operation is under way.  Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is to use some sort of sound, but that gets annoying quickly (it was the first thing I turned off back when I had a Tivo).  So there has to be some sort of visual indicator on the screen to show that a button press was received and that an action is under way. 

This can be more than just an annoyance, by the way.  Users, thinking that nothing has happened, may be tempted to press the button a second time.  If the particular button can cause a selection to be made and then cause some action on that selection, there may be trouble.  The old version of the IMG had this problem, in that it (like its successor) did NOT acknowledge button presses and would often appear to be hung.  I accidentally deleted a couple of recordings by hitting OK too many times, thinking that the system had missed the first button press.

There are examples like this throughout the IMG, and it would take me forever to enumerate them.  Fortunately, someone else has already done so on the FIOS TV forum of DSLReports: IMG Bugs and Missing Features FAQ

I mentioned earlier that there didn’t appear to be much user feedback incorporated into the design.  I find this to be the most egregious sin of the entire project, and it’s not so much a failure of the development team as it is of the Verizon management.  I say this because they have been rolling this thing out for months and they have known since the first deployment that it was bug-ridden and that many people hated the new guide.  Rather than step back to incorporate the feedback, they continued rolling out the system.

It’s clear to me that either Verizon management wasn’t hearing the same story as their customers were telling, or they simply didn’t care.  On August 3rd, John ‘CZ’ Czwartacki (Executive Director – External Communications) posted an article on the Verizon PolicyBlog about how they were generating such great buzz over the new FIOS TV IMG with bloggers.  This lasted until the 9th, when frustrated customers found the blog entry and deluged him with over 100 comments about the ways in which the new IMG sucks. 

But it was this response that told me that Verizon management doesn’t get it:

UPDATE (9/18/07): We hear you!  Thanks for all the great comments and suggestions.  We’ve incorporated many of them into a maintenance release that we intend to deploy shortly after we finish deploying version 1.0 across the country.  Keep the feedback coming.

So they intend to give everyone the crappy IMG before they send out the fixes.  It seems pretty stupid to me to expose your customers to a bad, buggy, interface and then fix it (especially if the new IMG can delete recorded programs, mess up scheduled recordings, cause random reboots, and generally wreak havoc with your settings).  It sounds like someone let the programmers make that decision, rather than doing the right thing and making a new combined image with all the fixes rolled in.  Given how long this thing has been out there, and how loud the screaming has been, I should never have received such a bug-laden piece of crap on my DVR at the end of October.  That’s simply inexcusable.

Via Crystal I was pointed to an interesting 2008 presidential candidate calculator.  I’ve liked Fred Thompson since it appeared like he was going to run.  Even so, though, I was a bit surprised by this result:

I suspect, that like all such simplistic measures, that the way the questions are weighted leads to inaccuracies.  I also couldn’t help but notice that there were two gun control questions.  The first one, about “background checks” for gun purchases had me curious, since we already have them.  Perhaps the person who created the study has been listening to the PSH after Virginia Tech and doesn’t know how these things work?  Anyhow, I was surprised that the server didn’t melt when I chose “Yes” to support for gay marriage and “No” for gun control (unfortunately there wasn’t a “Hell, NO” option), socialized medicine, and other government meddling.  I’m fairly certain that Fred doesn’t support gay marriage, although he’s intellectually honest enough to try to keep the federal government out of it. 

Additional rankings are shown in the extended entry.  It showed that my worst match was John Edwards at 10.87%.  Given my CDS, I was also a bit surprised to find that I had a 19.57% match with the Hildabeast.  Crikey!  I’d have expected zero.  Anyhow, it doesn’t really matter, because there is a zero-percent probability that I would vote for her. 

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if school “administrators” don’t have their brains sucked out when they take the job.  In a textbook case of PSH, a Dallas elementary school suspended a 4-year-old pre-K student for bringing a key chain with a toy gun to school.

One Dallas mom is fighting back after her 4-year-old son was suspended from school for bringing a miniature toy gun key chain to class.

Elijah brought his new toy to his pre-kindergarten class at Casa View Elementary without permission, said his mom, Desiree Trevino. But she says a suspension is too harsh, and Elijah should have gotten a warning.

While the school district and the family agree that the trinket was obviously a toy, the DISD stands by their decision, citing a no tolerance policy.

As usual, I think “no tolerance” is a good euphemism for “no brains.”  I saw this spokes-weasel on the news last night, and I don’t know how he could utter the following with a straight face.

“The message is please don’t bring toy guns or knives or anything that looks like it might be dangerous to school,” said Jon Dahlander, DISD spokesman.

What’s it going to take to get a little bit of common sense back in schools?  If people get all freaked out and have a PSH reaction to a little keychain, I fear for the future of the current generation.  The only thing that gives me hope is that perhaps when they grow up there will be a backlash against such stupidity.