Picture My World

Today was all about cars. First was my second ICBC appointment to deal with the second theft. Then, I had to AirCare and renew my insurance on the other car. Oh yeah, and update my drivers license with our new (well, rather old) address.

Yes, it’s one of those boring, day-in-the-life-of posts.

The most annoying part of the day was the Porsche’s gas cap failed AirCare. So, I had to schlep to an auto-parts store, get a replacement (luckily in stock), go back to the AirCare facility, get them to test the new one, and get my passing grade. What a pain. One day I will not do everything at the last minute.

Forgive me for not writing anything interesting. I’m spent.

The site looks different because I’ve upgraded to WordPress 1.5. What a painless process. I blew away the old template — the default 1.5 one is sorta nice, though.

**Update:** Whoops. I just noticed none of my photos in the archive pages are getting displayed properly. You need to view the post in its own page to see them. Not good… looking for a solution.

**Update:** All fixed. Supposedly “not a bug” (developer-speak for intended behaviour that users don’t like) but easily fixed by getting WordPress to use the content of the post, not the excerpt, for the archive pages.

This story just gets better and better.

Our car has been stolen again.

This time it was stolen from [Clarkdale Motors](http://www.clarkdale.com) who were in the middle of repairing it from the first theft. They had fixed the ignition (but not the door lock) and parked it on the street awaiting someone from the body shop who was going to take the car and repair the door lock. It was out there less than 30 minutes in the middle of the afternoon when it was nabbed.

Who gets to deal with the hassle of filing yet another set of police and insurance reports? Me.

I can’t help but laugh at this development.

For those of you keeping score, the car thieves took (or most likely dumped) the car seat. They either needed the space for stolen goods, there were more than 3 of them, or they were just complete <insert choice expletive here> (hey, my daughter might read this one day…).

I went shopping during my Seattle trip in [Lynnwood](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=lynnwood%2C%20WA) at an [Albertsons](http://www.albertsons.com) grocery store. They have 4 automated checkout stands where you can scan your purchases and pay (almost) all by yourself. I was happy to get the chance to try out these devices. I didn’t take the time to observe anyone else using the system and am only reporting on my own experience.

The first thing I noticed was the store employee standing at a workstation in the middle of the four self-checkout kiosks. He had a computer screen and was obviously monitoring everyone using the system. I also noticed a pole above each kiosk that had a red, amber, and green light. I immediately envisioned myself making a mistake and triggering a flashing red light (and maybe a siren, too). I was a little nervous as I approached the kiosk. (more…)

In addition to my blogs below, Christian over at Smiley Cat Web Design (cool name, by the way) has also blogged about days 1 and 2. It turns out we were sitting next to each other for day 2. Now I see where your comment about “live blogging” the seminars comes from! Anyone else out there?

Day 3 featured “Honing Your Usability Test Skills” taught by Ginny Redish. I would have headed home after day 2 if anyone else was teaching this seminar. Ginny Redish is a usability testing expert and I was lucky to bounce some of my testing issues off her. (more…)

Be on the lookout for a dark blue 1999 VW Passat. Last seen in front of my house.

Yes, our car was stolen last night. Would you steal a car with a baby seat in the back? What kind of monster does that?

Update: I got a call today (Saturday) from the police telling me the car was recovered last night with minor damage to the door lock and ignition. Ironically, it was found 2 blocks from our house. I wonder if I passed it and didn’t even realize it… No word yet if the baby seat (the only thing of value) is there or not.

Today’s seminar was “Using Personas to Guide Design” given by [Kim Goodwin](http://cooper.com/content/company/executives.asp) of [Cooper](http://cooper.com). Kim focussed on Persona creation but also touched on the overall design process including user research and UI specification creation. (I’m summarizing the summarization of the Cooper design process here, so I may not get all the details right. I hope someone reads this and will correct me if I’m way off.)
(more…)

Today’s seminar was titled “Discovering User Needs: Field Techniques You Can Use” and presented by Kate Gomoll and [Ellen Story](http://www.gomolldesign.com/aboutus/ellen.htm) both of [Gomoll Research & Design](http://www.gomolldesign.com).

I have conducted a few field studies of my own but have been disappointed with the results. I came back with pages upon pages of notes and then struggled with the best way to analyze and present the data. I hoped this seminar would give me some ideas and inspiration and I was happy with what I learned today. (more…)

Why do hotels install towel racks above the toilet? How many unfortunate accidents occur as a result?

(Yes, I made it to Seattle safe and sound. No speeding tickets, either!)

I’m driving down to Seattle today to attend UIE‘s Know Your Users Roadshow. I’m attending all 3 1-day seminars on user research, personas, and usability testing. If you’re interested in the details, you can check the link for more info.

This is probably the Porsche‘s last major trip before it’s sold. Too bad the I-5 doesn’t have more twists and turns.

I’m currently obsessed with all things backup related.

On Dave’s suggestion, I installed Second Copy and have it doing incremental copies of all my data to the second HDD. (I’m not thrilled with its interface or error handling and it seems a little buggy, but whatever…)

One problem with this whole automated backup scheme is locked files. Most notably Outlook’s .PST file. I searched Outlook help regarding backups and found this entry about the Outlook Personal Folders Backup Tool. On install, it creates a “Backup…” menu item where you can setup regular backups. Unfortunately, you have to quit Outlook in order to backup its own file… I usually have Outlook running all the time, but usually shut it down once a week. Better than nothing.

Porsche

Originally uploaded by JZip.

Want to buy a 1986 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe? It’s in great shape.

Contact me by email or leave a comment if interested.

sad experience
some things should never happen
or ever be seen

We got almost everything of importance off the dead drive!

The only file that was MIA was Microsoft Outlook’s PST file. Teaches me for using Outlook without a backup… Another email app that didn’t keep email in a single file would have survived the crash better. How often do you go into email archives, anyway?

I’ve now got two 80 GB drives. The Western Digital Dell sent me and a new Seagate Barricuda I bought today. Scott asked if I was going to mirror them, but it doesn’t appear that my motherboard has a RAID controller. Or maybe it’s controlled by the BIOS? I have no idea — I’ll have to check the BIOS again. For now I will do nightly backups to the 2nd drive and see how that goes.

The hero of the day is Tom and OnTrack‘s EasyRecovery software.

Hopefully, this is the last post I ever have to write about data loss and recovery.

This news is making its way around the web quickly, so you’ve probably already seen it. Google Maps is awesome. I love the large viewing area and quality map content compared to MapQuest and the rest. The panning blows them all away, of course. Google’s really bumped up the interactive quotient in this application. I love it.

I received the replacement drive from Dell yesterday and it’s a Western Digital. That’s good because it’s not a Maxtor, but it’s also bad for the same reason. I had hoped for an identical drive so we could swap out the logic board with the failing drive and get the data off faster. The recovery process is ongoing. We had recovered 4 GB of files when the recovery computer reset itself (reason unknown). The whole process (scanning the drive and then recovering files) had to start again. Getting anything out of that drive is incredibly slow due to whatever is failing and I hope today is the lucky day for a full recovery.

YahooInstall

Originally uploaded by JZip.

Funny how Yahoo! provides the illusion of control without actually handing any over. The checkbox to make Yahoo! your default search engine is uncheckable.

That’s one way to beat out Google.

It sounds like my data is on its way back from the grave. It’s going to take all night, but files are being recovered as I type. There was a bad sector on the disk so something is lost, but hopefully its just some harmless Windows or application files.

Guess who’s starting regular back ups?