Bird-like Contraptions

It’s the time of year again when my focus at work is directed out my window rather than towards my monitor. My work is in the SoDo area, maybe a mile north of Boeing Field; airliners and private planes taking off and landing are common sites. The other day a formation of four CH-53’s flew low and slow directly over the building, rattling the walls which was so very cool for me. Soon Seafair will be upon us again and with it the Blue Angels F/A-18’s. They practice for several days before the show and we all go out and watch them as best as we can. Going to the annual air show at Fairchild AFB was a highlight of my youth and it really spawned a love of aircraft for me. From Grade six on, I could identify everything in the sky and was a total aircraft geek. At the time, Fairchild was still a SAC base and home to B-52’s, the sound of which is one of the most comforting to my ears. My favourite air show memory is actually of that huge, ungainly monster taking off on full military power and climbing what seemed to be straight up into the sky. I also love the sound of UH-1 helicopters, that distinctive “whump-whump” of the rotors that just reverberates somewhere deep inside you and the sight and sound of the Coast Guard Dolphin helo that flies by my apartment nearly every hour. Just a few more weeks and I’ll be out in the parking lot staring up into the sky, waiting for the Blue Angels to scream overhead.

What Zune does the caged bird sing?

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in my first Microsoft usability study. It was focused on two upcoming accessories to their Zune player which I had to figure out how to set up and then was asked how I could improve the product and instructions. The first half took place in a fishbowl room while I tried to hook one of the accessories up to a tele as the engineer took notes and asked questions from the other side of a one-way mirror. Given that I have been television free for a year and a half and even when I did have one, it was 10-12 years old, I had the most awkward, embarrassment of a time trying to figure out which holes to put the connection into. Why does a modern television need 3-4 different input points?? I swear, sometimes modern tech is just so much pearls on a swine.

It was so much fun to actually voice those thoughts that always bounce around my head about the way things are designed.

“Are those buttons big enough? Is it a problem that they are so flush with the mount? Could they make an audible noise when pressed?” Etc.

And although I’m really starting to wonder if Microsoft has hired every androgynous female that they can, I almost asked her “how did you get this awesome job?”

Rise & Shine

I half-awoke this morning to my usual series of alarms (three, two of which I hit the ‘snooze’ button on) and tried to prod myself from sleep with my usual mantra of “It’s Friday, just one more day and then tomorrow you can sleep in.” The problem is that today is only Thursday and when I realized this, my inner mantra said, “screw this” and continued to loll about in almost sleep snooze button dreamland. Point and summary: I am not a morning person.

Zombies are Trying To Eat My Brain

Who would have ever thought that the zombie would rise again in popular fiction? I mean really, it’s just a hokey idea. For the undead, vampires at least can be sexy and refined… zombies? They just stumble about and rot, not much depth there. I’ve been pulled into a series of cheap online zombie fiction called ‘Monster Island’ and just started the second book, ‘Monster Nation’ last night and I don’t know why. The genre is a one-trick pony; legions of undead, stumbling towards us, wanting to eat us, there’s too many of them, blah, blah, blah. And this ‘Monster’ series is even worse because it quickly degrades from ‘hokey’ to ‘super hokey’ by introducing mummies too. That’s right, mummies… sheesh. Poorly written too but I still just can’t detach myself from it. Even though I haven’t seen it, I think the film ’28 Days Later’ would be on the ‘sophisticated’ end of the zombie fiction spectrum. In fact, I watched the trailer to the sequel; ’28 Weeks Later’ and it did look rather good. Although it reminded me of an episode of The Smurfs wherein there was some sort of mysterious Smurf disease being spread by bites. Once bitten by the infected, the Smurf would turn a purple colour, jump up and down quite a bit and seem to develop a case of Tourett’s. I can not recall exactly how this Smurf contagion was contained and it is so far back in my memory that I’m not even completely sure that this episode even existed or was a result of a Kool-Aid binge in my adolescence. But assuming that I actually viewed this, it would seem a pretty messed up plotline for the wholesome Smurfs. Maybe the writers were stretching the boundaries of the material in order to appeal to the more mature 10-12 yo. demographic, Smurfette wearing a push-up bra probably helped that too.

But the absolute best zombie work? Shaun Of The Dead… rock.