BLOG by zaiss

When Google first introduced their online calendar module, I was intrigued, and particularly impressed with the smooth incorporation to GMail. Over time, though, the number of potential appointments seem to have been increasing in the sidebar of my GMail app, culminating tonight with an email exchange with one of my friends:

What’s the rule for a potential calendar event? The word “meeting” and some unit of time? Is it possible to be approaching too much of a good thing? I’d frankly be interested to do a quick review of event emails, to try and determine a consistent structure. Regardless, I have a feeling that off-handedly mentioning that meetings only take one hour at work compared to grad school doesn’t constitute an actual calendar event.

But at the end of the day, I wonder if I’m a good example of a calendar user. I’m good at putting my meetings into the calendar, but I stop using it shortly thereafter. Maybe I’m not the ideal Google Calendar user.

In the wake of the recent ruling to uphold the gay marriage ban in Washington, emails have been flying around Microsoft with commentary. One article that caught my eye was an MSNBC piece on the difficulties of being in the heterosexual minority.

Now there’s a lot that one could potentially say about this idiotic article (oops, there I go), but I’m going to try to avoid debasing arguments here. By and large, I’m impartial to what the article has to say, except on the point of the heterosexual people being offended at being called “breeders.” I agree with that sentiment! It is offensive! It suggests a culture similar to the Handmaid’s Tale (wow, that takes me back to high school…), which is pretty spooky.

So what I don’t understand is why government officials like Rep. Phil Gingrey from Georgia get away with saying that the purpose of marriage is procreation. Lots of marriages happen without aims of procreation, or it so happens that procreation isn’t possible. Letting comments like Rep. Gingrey’s go is equivalent to letting someone call you a breeder. (Not to mention Lewis Black’s wonderful commentary disproving the reverse causality: “A one-night stand with no love, a Quaalude and three beers can also bear children.”)

If you consider yourself a heterosexual minority (a premise which has also been thoroughly ridiculed on the Daily Show), I urge you sit and think about the arguments being made on your behalf, and the next time MSNBC comes to you with a crap story premise, maybe you can actually make it worthwhile by placing the blame where it belongs.

Ten months after the eighth version of Flash was released, Macrodobe (this is my clever way of saying it’s really Macromedia but OK we’ll call it Adobe sort of) realized that the flexibility in their coding model was leading to some sloppy coding! I got a PSA from Adobe the other day with some Flash programming best practices:

1. Put your ActionScript in a single location. If you put code in an FLA file, put ActionScript on Frame 1 or Frame 2 in a layer called “actions” on the top-most layer in the Timeline.
2. Avoid attaching ActionScript to objects in an FLA file. ActionScript that is written on the Timeline or in classes is more elegant and easier to build upon.

It’s like I’ve been teaching all along! The lesson usually goes something like, “This is the crazy way Flash lets you do it, but it keeps things orderly if you do it this way.” People who take my advice say, “Yeah, that was easier!” People who don’t say, “Where the f*ck’s my ActionScript?” And so it goes.

Another issue that’s come about in my Flash teaching is the crazy behavior of the library when creating a tween. Try it for yourself… I’ll walk you through it step by step:

1. Draw a circle on the stage.
2. Add a keyframe later on the timeline… let’s say, Frame 15.
3. Move the instance of the circle in Frame 15.
4. Right / Ctrl + Click on one of the in between frames, and select “Create Motion Tween.” Be sure to do it this way! Selecting a Tween from the Properties panel won’t produce this behavior, which is a very strange inconsistency.

That should do it. Now scope out your library. Notice some symbols that you didn’t put there? If you have Flash 7 or earlier, there’s one symbol, which is problematic - Flash converted the Frame 1 circle to a Graphic (ewww… Graphics… yuck) and the Frame 15 instance was left a circle, breaking your tween. In Flash 8, Macrodobe decided that broken tweens were bad… so they made two graphics instead of one, and cluttered up the library some more.

Now, apart from really annoying me, the anal library organizer, these graphics tend to be hellish if you’re collaborating with someone else… if you both have 15 tween graphics named “Tween1, Tween 2, …” and then merge the files, someone’s tweens are getting overwritten. And it will screw things up.

After my friend Ricardo asked me what was up with that behavior, I decided I’d send Adobe a bug report, and I got an interesting response:

Fantastic. So some random guy decided that random Graphics showing up in your library might be a good idea, and unknowingly caused countless numbers of flash developers (and students!) to suffer as a result. Thanks, Macrodobe.

So if you were walking up the stairs to your office, started wandering around on the floor, how long would it take you to realize you were on the wrong floor? Here’s how it went for me…

1. Walk to the kitchen area to get some juice. Notice a “new” vending machine next to the soda coolers.
2. Wonder why a new vending machine would already be half-empty.
3. Walk past the printer room, notice that the printout holder on the wall had been moved.
4. Walk past a conference room I had met in the day before. Notice that it’s not a conference room, but a shared office. Wondered how they switched that out so quickly.
5. Start approaching my office, hear someone typing inside (and my office mate is out of town). Stop just short of asking him what he’s doing in my office.

I’m off to get some sleep, and hopefully avoid this situation in the future.

In case you aren’t an avid comment reader, I wanted to call out Laura’s special link that she left on my earlier post.

It left a smile on my face. Why can’t we get more marketing like that in the US? Seriously!

But what I find interesting is the tone in the ad… “They’re gonna taste great??” That wouldn’t work in America at all! We don’t want random future predictions, we need isntant gratification! It’s a minor point, but I find it interesting that the rhetoric has to be “It works,” “It’s the best,” “It tastes great.” Very declarative. Does that say something about our society?

It was a cold Wednesday night in February when I was watching Veronica Mars, and I saw an quick preview for the movie Pulse: A Japanese horror film remake starring Kristin Bell (aka Veronica Mars), set to come out on March 3rd.

Wait wait… Veronica Mars… + horror movie? Those are my two favorite things! I marked March 3rd on my calendar. I made plans. And March 3rd rolled around… and nothing. No further previews, no mention in the movie listings, nothing. After some investigation, I learned the release date got pushed back to early July.

So I marked my calendar. I made plans. The release date came, and went… again… and nothing.

Now the release is set for August 11th. I’ve seen a grand total of 7 commercials this time – each with Kristin Bell saying the same line (”Oh my god”) twice… and nothing else. My enthusiasm for this movie is dwindling. Veronica Mars, you’re on notice – don’t push the date back again! I’m makin’ plans….

This awful Head On commercial is driving me crazy. Do low budgets mandate crappy commercials like that? The commercial fails to even mention what the product is for – just what you do (a growing trend among medicine advertisements lately, I suppose). Couldn’t they at least ensure that the lady put the damn tube on her forehead? Seriously!

As part of my first week at Microsoft, I had to write a brief bio about myself. I didn’t want to use the one that I used on the MHCI Bio page, so I started doing some research, and came across a number of “How to Write a Good Bio” sites, including this one from essortment.

Among other things, the site suggests that writers start their bio “with first person references and midway through change to the third person. … By using a delicate combination of first person and third person tenses, you can give a professional element to your resume or bio.”

Is this some new kind of writing style? I rarely see first and third person mixed together in the same passage, even in a bio. And when I do see the two voices mixed together, it looks like someone forgot to proofread it. I certainly don’t think it looks professional. But maybe I’m just behind the times, so if you’ve written successfully this way, let me know. I also welcome the opinion of any English majors (Sarah).

My friend Eric expressed concern that my blogging would taper off since I probably couldn’t blog about work at Microsoft. Well, there’s good news. I looked up the Microsoft policy on employee blogging, and the only requirement is that bloggers use common sense! Sweet! That’ll be easy, considering I don’t have any common sense.*

So orientation was pretty fun. Most of the people on my team were baffled that I was in orientation for 1 1/2 days – apparently orientation had been redesigned at Microsoft to provide new employees with (the start of) a better on-boarding experience. In all, I was really impressed – the team did a good job of making new employees feel welcome, meet each other, and learn about company life at Microsoft. While there’ve been a few bumps in the road, it was mostly smooth.

But all throughout the first day, there was something about the orientation leader that I couldn’t put my finger on. The second day, I realized he reminded me of someone…

Yes! Patrick Swayze’s character in Donnie Darko! And truly, he was encouraging us to reject the ideology of fear (of Microsoft) and embrace the emotion of love. Honestly, he had the look, the voice, the inflection…

But really, it’s been a good week so far. More stories and updates to come later.

*Consumers of this entry should not interpret writing within to mean that the writer has little, no, or misguided common sense. The writer is merely expressing himself through writing and having a good time, and does not intend to communicate or imply, however remotely, any negative sentiment toward Microsoft or my orientation leader. I like my new job, and I promise I was paying attention during the legal portion of orientation. Readers should not take this aside to have any basis with legal, lest I get a stern talking to from them. Copyright me 2006.

Oh man. I’m startin to get prods from friends to get blogging with updates. The bad news is that it’s been so long I have to call attention to it in the very medium I use to communicate (a common precarious sign for future blogging). The good news is that I have more to say than, “More coming soon!” (No offense to friends’ blogs who have taken a dive shortly after a “More coming soon” post. =P)

Anyway, I’ve moved into my apartment, and started work this week. Lots to say, but I’m gonna spread it out a bit. For now, I’ve got some furnished pics of the new digs. Won’t you come in?

Just inside the door, I’ve got the kitchen, living room, and exit to the patio to the right. The bedroom / office and bathroom are to the left. Here’s the kitchen:

And the living room:

And a shot of the (messy) bedroom:

More pics can be found on my flickr page, along with a few I took during my adventure to the Experience Music Project, Sci Fi Museum, and Space Needle. And let me tell you, excitement is riding down the side of the Space Needle in an elevator standing next to a woman with her head in her hands repeating “I’m going to throw up…” over and over.