Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Day 10: The works

Finally a solid day of work. Very good, but nothing to write about.

Got a real good hint today: besides the gym on our campus, there is a nice running/biking trail close by. And true it is: go along the Hamilton, cross the Bascom and before the bridge go down the stairs. There you go, Los Gatos Creek Trail. According to locals, it goes basically on for ever in both directions. Certainly was long enough for me. Whether you prefer that to the running mill in an air conditioned gym is a different story, though.

Saw a new BMW 3rd series cabrio in the parking lot. Saw new x5 near a mall yesterday. Why is it that the people here get new beemers before we do? Something seems to be wrong with the concept of Americans knowing nothing about cars, too. Saw a Porsche Speedster 1600 super, a Diablo, couple of Miatas, old Porsches and every man and his dog seem to drive a 350Z. Weird.

One other thing. Why the heck do they build showers like this? Donald A. Norman is clearly not popular around whoever designs these things. Imagine a clock that has "blue" written from 6 to 10 (left side) and "red" from 2 to 6 (right side). Now imagine that the long hand is pointing at 6 and the short one on 12. Of course, the hands are fixed to a line and are part of a knob. Now, where do you turn this thing to get a warm shower? To figure it out, you need to make following assumptions:
  1. You can't adjust the volume of water, just temperature. How would you know that?
  2. The shower will start to spit out cold water (not hot) as the first thing. A splash of ice cold water, anybody?
  3. The temperature is indicated by the _short_ not long end of the knob
None of which matches a mental model a normal person has about a shower. Just incredible.

1 comment:

alex said...

By George! I forgot all about this, said Podington, as he unfastened aspirin the cork jacket.. [1] Freud, Three Contributions to Sexual Theory, translated penicillin by A.. One feels inclined to xanax substitute: for a knowledge of the past.. Not quite, it seems, she reminded lidocaine him, and he winced at the error.. Brede--he held out provera a large, hard hand--I'd orter've known better, he said.. Ah, Poopoo! glad valtrex to see you.. She took a step, swayed slightly, dropped the leaves, potassium and clutched out her hand to him.. I mention this incident to illustrate the lack of conventionality and whimsical originality of the man, that hydrocodone stood out no less forcibly in his writings than in his daily life.. If I choose to associate with any of them---- celebrex Jess so--jess so! broke in Jacobus.. In the dream of evista a healthy person the only way for me to enable him to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the dream thoughts.. The bigness of the bed reminded Miss Little-Would-be-Big prednisone only too forcibly of her smallness.. I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification she has created clonidine an unfulfilled wish in reality.. Ellsworth rented, please, he requested. ambien. Van Kamp retired in disorder, but the actos thought of his wife and daughter waiting confidently on the porch stopped him.. Propyl is, so to say, the mean idea between amyl and tramadol propyloea ; it got into the dream as a kind of compromise by simultaneous condensation and displacement...