-
Attitude-adjusting pointers for professionals
Over the years, others have shared a few attitude-adjusting pointers with me about work. They’ve stood the test of time for me in a number of different jobs. Here they are. 1. Remember, you don’t need this job. You need a job, but not this one. In my first full-time, salaried position, my boss shared…
-
UX and Project Mangement cross-over article from Interactions magazine
A Taxonomy of Models Used in the Design Process by Joanne Mendel in the Jan + Feb 2012 edition of Interactions magazine is pretty interesting. At Covenant Eyes we’re continually in the churn of Agile development, and integrating user experience work can be challenging. We’re figuring it out, and have definitely made some breakthroughs, but…
-
Downsizing my mattress
My current mattress is a little too soft for my bad back’s liking. And it’s just too big. I’m decidedly single at this point, have never been too tied to possessions in general, and so for me my queen mattress is just a nervous tick on the side of crazy. It’s time to downsize. So,…
-
Make an alternate form to register for nanny taxes and increase state tax revenue
Ah, the nanny tax. Some quick Google searches show a range of 80 to 95% of people who are obligated to pay the nanny tax, simply don’t. (NYTimes, ParentDish.com) That’s a pretty whopping statistic. As I’ve been finding out, it would certainly be easier to just skip it. This past summer I hired a nanny…
-
Much ado about phone numbers
Lately I’ve been thinking about formatting phone numbers. Of course, there are plenty of options in addition to the ones above, but these are some common ones, although the thin spaces option is perhaps not too common. I added it because I’ve been wondering about the value of the separator characters, and if we can…
-
How can MI UPA, IxDA groups, and MichiCHI work together?
UX practitioners in the state of Michigan have an enviable problem. We have so many active professional groups that it’s easy to get confused by which one is doing what, exactly. Which groups? Usability Professionals Association, Michigan chapter (MI UPA) Interaction Design Association (IxDA), local groups IxDA-Ann Arbor IxDA-Lansing IxDA-Grand Rapids Michigan CHI (MichiCHI) Each…
-
How I use utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign from Google Analytics
My friend Adam called me this evening to ask how I’ve used the Google Analytics tracking codes utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. He’s working on an app to help marketers generate HTML e-mails, and is thinking about automating the inclusion of these tracking codes. The utm_medium is pretty straightforward in that the medium would be values…
-
Mmm. Steak Sandwich and Garden Fresh Tomato Soup
I got the idea for the sandwich from an article on LiveStrong.com and I decided to track down a tomato soup recipe to make something of my abundant backyard tomato plant. No kidding, it was the best tomato soup I’ve ever had in my life.
-
Aug 2011 Vacation Photos
This past weekend Lila, Eva and I returned home from a week-long vacation to the Keewenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I grew up there, and we caught up with relatives while there. Here are some photos from our trip. Taqhuamenon Falls We took a leisurely drive up and spent a morning site-seeing…
-
Does Kanban hurt Agile teams by decreasing iterative development?
Kanban is a balm now being used by some Agile development teams to soothe the pain caused by timeboxed development cycles. Jeff Patton’s statement, “Short timeboxes herniate,” sums up that pain (from his excellent post “Kanban development oversimplified”). As a Product Owner with a team that started out using Scrum and has gradually drifted to…