themorgue.org

I was at a FedExKinkos in Norman, OK today just browsing around and came across the greeting card section of the store. One card caught my eye that had George Bush’s face on it. The card said something about Bush’s last day in office (which is in 2009) and that on your birthday you should party like it’s 2009. OK, not a really big deal, people have been taking shots at Bush for years. As I continued browsing, I noticed an anti-Cheney card. Again, not a real surprise. Further browsing did turn up some slightly more surprising cards.

The next one I came across was a Hillary Clinton card. With the words “President Hillary Clinton” across the top. The inside said something along the lines of: see there are things scarier than getting old. This one did stray a bit off the usual anti-Bush fodder, but she was once a first lady, so I guess it still makes sense. Believe it or not John McCain was next. This one did strike me as a bit more odd than the others; however, this is an election year so I guess you’re bound to see cards poking fun at all of the candidates… Not quite.

The final group of cards were the Barack Obama cards. I figured that they would again take some shots at the prospective presidential candidate. That’s where I was wrong, way wrong. These cards portrayed Obama as some sort of superstar, sex symbol. Not a single negative or even neutral point was made about him. You could have replaced his pictures on the cards with pictures of Marilyn Monroe and left all of the prose in place! Needless to say, I was flabbergasted! It’s basically like the greeting card company is campaigning for Obama through their cards (and FedExKinkos is indirectly doing the same by carrying the whole collection). I guess it’s their company and they can do what they want, I’m just taken aback by how blatantly biased they are. Oh well, I guess you can just chalk it up to more free publicity for Obama.

There is an epidemic of bad design in this world that is more than just annoying, it’s dangerous. I’m not just talking about bad aesthetic quality of devices, obviously. I’m mean that their behaviors are badly designed as well. I think Steve Jobs nails it when he talks about design.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

So how could this possible lead to “danger?” I’m glad you asked. I’ve been dealing with safety devices in the home lately. Safety has taken on a new meaning to me since I moved to Tornado Alley last year. The weather in this area pretty much mandates that you have a weather alert radio to notify your of impending danger (especially at night). The other badly designed device I’ve dealt with recently is a smoke alarm. Let’s start with the smoke alarm since most people are familiar with them.

There is a smoke alarm installed in my kitchen that was there when I moved in. It works well. Too well. Any hint of smoke in the air from cooking sets it off. What happens when it starts going off for that reason? I get annoyed and remove the battery. This isn’t necessarily dangerous while I’m cooking, but I have to remember to put it back in when I’m done. That doesn’t always happen. To try to remedy this situation, I bought a new smoke alarm made for kitchens that has a “hush” button. This is a button that you press when you get “false alarms” due to cooking. Great idea! Except that it was badly designed.

I was cooking today and created a pretty good amount of smoke (no, I’m not a bad cook, some things just create smoke when you cook them). The new smoke alarm went off, and rightfully so. I pressed the hush button, and it stopped! YEAH!! Then it started to annoy me. Every minute or so, the smoke alarm let out a small chirp (basically like the chirp most smoke alarms let out when the battery is low). After a few chirps, this annoyed me enough to take the battery out. So I’m right back where I started!

If fire isn’t bad enough, weather in Tornado Alley can be even more dangerous. I purchased a weather alert radio to alert us (mainly at night) about severe weather. The first one I purchased in a very simple model and pretty well designed. It has three lights on it to indicate different levels of alert and a screen that displays what type of alert it is. It can be plugged in or can run on batteries. So what’s wrong with it? It’s too dang loud! It has the option to alert you in three different ways: light up the display, voice alert, or siren. Obviously, the light won’t do much at night; it’s not that bright. The siren is absolutely obnoxious and is loud enough to induce a heart attack in the middle of the night, so voice alert was my choice. The problem is that “voice alert” only means “partial voice alert.” Before the voice alert comes, you get about five seconds of the horrendous siren first. I’m a light enough sleeper that the voice is plenty to wake me up. I think the danger of having a heart attack by having the siren go off in the middle of the night is a bigger danger than facing whatever it is that the radio is alerting me to. Here comes weather radio number 2.

The new weather radio was much more technologically advanced. It has base station and a hand-held portion. I liked this feature because it made it handy to take into the storm shelter during an alert. Both the base station and the hand-held portion have a clock on them. Since the hand-held radio is battery operated, it isn’t affected by power outages. However, the base station doesn’t have battery backup, so when the power goes out, the time goes back to 12:00. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it just took the word of the hand-held portion (which still has the correct time since it’s running on batteries), but the opposite occurs. The hand-held radio takes the bad time from the base station so that they are both wrong! Now I should explain that the base station is supposed to sync with the atomic click in Colorado, so it should always have the right time. But that is only true if it can actually connect to the atomic clock which brings up another design flaw.

The sensor for the atomic clock must be placed outside so that it has a clear shot at Colorado. There are conditions though. It can’t be in direct sunlight, it can’t be subject to direct moisture, it can’t solid objects between it and the atomic clock in Colorado. So it must be installed under something that gives it protection from sun and rain, but that would block the signal to the atomic clock. I give up…

I’ll definitely be sticking with the second weather radio because it has a much more sane alert than the first radio (although it does automatically turn itself to maximum volume when an alert occurs), but it is far from perfect. I haven’t even gone into the other issues that I have with it. The point is that each one of these devices annoys me enough that I consider not using them at all, which puts me in the path of danger whether it is fire, severe thunderstorms, or tornados just because of bad design. While bad aesthetics probably will never cause any real danger except to my sense of taste, design of safety devices that cause you to quit using them is dangerous.

Day two of our trip got off to an early start. We can thank our cats for that. Our cats don’t like to be out of the house and decided at about 5am that they were ready to get out. Since they made sure to it that we couldn’t sleep, we decided to just get up and go. Not getting much sleep, and driving through Kansas is not exactly a good combination. This is made quite evident by the occasional road sign advertising free coffee at all Kansas rest stops. Unfortunately, neither I nor my wife likes coffee.

We drove for about an hour before stopping the first time. I was feeling pretty much awake by that time, but my wife was still having trouble concentrating on driving. Luckily, one of our cats decided that today was the day to create all kinds of noise during the entire trip to keep here awake. With Prairie Dog Town behind us, there didn’t appear to be any more sites to see in Kansas. The good news is that we soon hit I-135 and started heading south to Oklahoma.

I was excited to see the border of Kansas and Oklahoma. Every truck and rest stop that we visited had all kinds of Wizard of Oz stuff and I was just dying to see a big sign on the border that said “You’re not in Kansas anymore!”. I was, however, greatly disappointed. There was no such sign.

Northern Oklahoma was much like Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas, more nothing than I have ever seen before. However, after getting further south, the landscape got greener, and there were more towns. We stopped in Guthrie on the way through, which is the site of the Oklahoma International Bluegrass Festival in October. Being a banjo player, I’m definitely looking forward to that.

Less than an hour after Guthrie, we were in Norman, our new home. After picking up the keys to our rental unit, we were pleasantly surprised by our new home. It looked a lot better than either of us remembered it when we visited a couple of months earlier. We still plan on making quite a few changes to the place, but there’s no place like home even if we aren’t in Kansas anymore.

It was time for my wife and I to head out of Colorado and make way for Oklahoma where we’ll spend at least one year living. Rather than hiring a moving company like we did for our last move, we decided to rent a truck and move ourselves. This decision was made based mainly on the thought of having to live without our possessions for at least two weeks while the moving truck made it’s way to all of its destinations before coming to our place. Since the trip from Colorado to Oklahoma was mostly freeway the entire way, it would be an easy drive as well. Easy for someone who is experienced at driving a truck that is.

Out with a Bang… Literally

This would be my first experience driving a rental truck. I have driven tractors and wagons, cars with trailers, large vans and large pickups, but nothing quite like a large U-Haul truck. The main difference is that in a U-Haul truck, you can’t see a thing behind you, which I learned the hard way. After picking up the truck and getting back to our townhouse to load the truck, I thought I would back the truck up to the sidewalk to make it easier to load. The driveway to the townhouses in our neighborhood are pretty tight, but it looked like there would be room to do it. Apparently, there was a medium sized high-voltage box right next to the parking spots that I was trying back into. As I wheeled around to bring to truck into the spot, I backed right into it. When I looked back to see what it was that I hit, I finally saw it. At first I thought that I just put a small dent in it, but when I took a second look I realized that I had knocked the metal box off of its mounts so that it was sitting at an angle with the cables inside exposed. This was not a good start to the move…

I got out of the truck to take a closer look. It didn’t look like any major damage had been done. Yes, the box wasn’t mounted to the ground correctly, but it appeared as though all of the electrical equipment was intact. I certainly wasn’t about to touch anything, so we ended up calling the electric company to come take a look. Meanwhile, our hired hands had showed up to load the truck.

After a couple of hours, the electric company showed up and verified my evaluation of the damage. They took down my name and address so they knew where to send the bill and proceeded to put the box back onto its base. The procedure was basically the reverse of my procedure for pushing it off: hook a cable to the box and yank it with the truck. Five minutes later, they were gone. I’m curious to see what they’ll charge for something like that; I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

On the Road

It took about three hours to load the truck. Not too bad, although it wasn’t the best packing job as we would find out later. Now with my nerves all frazzled about running into things with the truck, we headed out. The plan was pretty simple: take I-25 to E-470 to I-70 into Kansas. I’m happy to say that this went without a hitch.

It took a few uneventful hours to get to Kansas through eastern Colorado. This is desolate ground, and I could tell that it was going to be a long drive. Western Kansas was more of the same. I lived in Michigan for most of my life and I’m used to seeing a lot of farmland, but nothing like Kansas. The whole state is farmland. The odd thing is that I didn’t see that many farms. My history of watching horror movies started getting the best of me out there. The sky was cloudy and gray, there was nothing but farmland for hundreds of miles in every direction, and there were only two radio stations, both Christian. If those stations had been preaching fire and brimstone, I think that might have been too much for me. I have seen way too many horror movies that start out this way. Even when towns did pass by, I was creeped out by it. Take Goodland, KS for instance, with the town motto “We’re waiting for you.” No, I am not making this up.

One of the finer landmarks on the way through Kansas was Prairie Dog Town which was advertised about 100 miles on either side. Prairie Dog Town featured such sights as a Russian wild boar, a 5-legged steer, and best of all, the largest prairie dog in the world! Unfortunately, it was late enough in the day that we figured Prairie Dog Town was closed for the night; or maybe my wife just wanted me to think that it was closed.

After driving about six hours, we decided to stop in Hays, KS, the largest town in Northwest Kansas: population 20,000. If you haven’t been to Kansas before, this should give you an idea of what it’s like. The largest town in the entire Northwest quadrant of the state only has 20,000 people in it! After getting there, I think that 20,000 was an optimistic count.

Overall, after hitting the high-voltage box and missing out on Prairie Dog Town, the day was uneventful. And if you know my luck at all, you’re well aware that my life runs in two modes: uneventful and freak-accident. I’ll take uneventful any day.

Well, my evaluation of the Mirra Chair didn’t go as well as I had hoped. While my back did feel better in it, the seat just wasn’t for me. After a couple of hours sitting in the seat, I just couldn’t get comfortable so I had to send it back. I’m not really sure where to go now since I’ve tried out pretty much every high-end, ergonomic chair there is. I guess that leaves the low-end.

I went to Staples to look at the chairs that they had and came across some by Sealy. Yes, that’s the same company that makes mattresses. I was quite impressed with their chairs. While they aren’t as stylish as the high-end models, and didn’t come in as many colors, they did seem very comfortable. Not only that, the prices ranged from only $200 to $300. I haven’t purchased one yet. I would like to sit in Staples for a couple of hours while working on my laptop to see if it would really work out for me, so I’ll probably do that in the next few days.

I have always strived to have an ergonomic workstation. Even when I didn’t work from home full time, I would spend my own time and money trying to achieve a workplace that was efficient, ergonomically correct, and of course, stylish. Not all of my attempts worked out however.

The first chair that I purchased several years ago was a black leather executive type chair. While it was very comfortable, and very stylish, it didn’t have any back support. After working in that chair for a year or so, I started to develop pain in my legs. I didn’t realize that it was due to the chair until I started trying out other desk chairs. The ergonomic department at the company that I worked for set me up with one of their ergonomic chairs. It had many adjustments and controls, and a lot of lower back support. It wasn’t, however, stylish.

I used this chair for several months and my leg pain did subside. Unfortunately, I started to develop lower back pain. It took me a while to figure out why. I had a good ergonomic chair with lots of adjustments. I thought that would be sufficient. To figure out the problem, an all out chair shopping trip was in order. I researched the web to see what the most popular ergonomic chairs on the market were and set out to evaluate each one.

The front runners for best chair were: the Aeron chair by Herman Miller, the Liberty chair by Humanscale, and the Leap chair by Steelcase.

The first chair that I tried out was the Aeron. This chair is famous for it’s popularity during the dot-com boom in the late ’90s. One thing that attracted me to this chair was the mesh seat and back. I work in a hot climate, and anything that can make me cooler while working is a plus. I went to a local store (actually about an hour away) that carried the Aeron to try one out. Boy was I disappointed. Maybe my expectations were just too high, but I found this chair to be very uncomfortable. In particular, the lumbar support felt like a 2×4 being strapped across my back. This would certainly not do.

While at this store, I also tried out the Leap chair. I was pleasantly surprised by this chair. It was very comfortable, and was nicely adjustable. The Leap chair did have an upholstered seat, but featured a mesh back. I was very impressed with this chair, but it had a problem similar to the Aeron, the lumbar support felt harsh. The amount of lumbar support could be adjusted, but it still felt like a hard object strapped across my back.

After trying out these two chairs, I realized what was wrong with my existing chair. The lumbar support was just too extreme. While you could adjust the position of the back support, the amount was not adjustable and it was just too much. It was like I was trying to brace my back into an unnatural position with the chair back. With these other chairs that I was trying, the position of support and amount of support were adjustable. This change made an immediate improvement.

The Liberty chair evaluation came about a week later at a different store since the first store I went to didn’t carry them. Luckily, this store also carried the Aeron and some other chairs that I hadn’t considered yet. The Liberty chair is a very nice looking chair; probably the best looking of all of the chairs that I looked into. This is mostly due to the fact that Liberty has a minimal number of adjustments. Sitting in the chair showed that the seat was definitely comfortable. I also liked the mechanism used for the arm adjustments. However, the seat back didn’t have enough tension in it for my tastes. The chair back would recline too easily with just minor pressure. It also didn’t have any upper back support whatsoever.

This store also had an Aeron, and I thought I would give it another try. How could a chair that was so popular be as uncomfortable as I had found it? Well, the second try didn’t change my mind at all. However, there was another chair there by Herman Miller called the Mirra. It was definitely a unique looking chair. The back was very tall and wide, and made out of a slotted polymer. The mesh seat was very similar the the Aeron. Sitting in the Mirra was very comfortable. The back molded perfectly to my back and was supportive from the lower back all the way up to the shoulders. The Mirra wasn’t as adjustable as the Aeron, but I consider this to be a good thing. The number of controls was enough to fit it to your body, but not enough to be confusing.

After sleeping on it for a couple of nights, I decided to purchase the Mirra chair. It was a difficult decision between the Mirra and the Leap chair, but my wife really liked the Mirra, and the store was 30 minutes closer.

The store that I bought it from was only a showroom, so it had to be delivered. A few days later it arrived. I decided to get the Citron finish because I’m tired of the typical black/gray office chair. The style and color of the chair fit perfectly into my office decor. I haven’t tried the chair out for a full day yet, but the little bit that I have used it, it has been quite comfortable. The only concern that I have is that the pressure on the bottom of the legs isn’t even. The back of the seat is only mesh, but the front does have some foam to protect against the hardware underneath. The seam between the two seat materials sat right across the point on my legs where I had previously had some leg pain. I’ll hold off any real judgments on the chair until I get more time in it. I’ll let you know my final evaluation at that time.

This was our first Independence Day in Colorado, and it was a memorable one. We went to the free Longmont Symphony concert in Thompson Park. There were a few opening acts featuring local talent, and a best picnic competition. Altogether, very nice. They ended the concert with the traditional 1812 Overture complete with canon fire. I have to say that I was very impressed with the whole event. It was simple and non-commercial.

While at the Longmont celebration, we heard about a great spot to watch fireworks in Boulder. You can drive up to the NCAR Mesa Lab and sit on the side of the mountain to watch the fireworks. Not only does this give you a nice view of the Boulder fireworks, but you can also see the fireworks from the surrounding towns (Longmont, Louisville, Lyons, Broomfield, Loveland, and probably more) off in the distance. It was quite a site to see so many towns setting off fireworks at the same time. If you’re ever in the Bolder, CO area on Independence Day, I highly recommend trying this.

I recently moved from North Carolina to Colorado. I knew that it was dry in Colorado, but it never hit me just how dry until today. I went out for my usual lunchtime walk at noon. The temperature was about 90 degrees. Now in North Carolina, that would probably mean a heat index of close to 100 degrees because it is so humid and the air is so still. However, in Colorado where it is much breezier and currently only has 9% humidity, the heat index is actually lower than the measured temperature.

After getting back from my walk, it was 96 degrees and I was completely parched from breathing the dry air. The weirdest part was that I had to turn on the A/C when I got home, not because I was so hot, but I just had to close the windows and crank the humidifiers full-blast to get some humidity in the air. In North Carolina, you’d do just about anything to get the humidity out of the air in Summer. What a crazy world.

I’ve been reading Influence: Science and Practice which is a more formal and textbook-like version of Robert Cialdini’s excellent Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. The chapter on Commitment and Consistency is very interesting. One of the tricks of getting people (including yourself) to believe in something is to get them to write a written statement of the behavior you desire. Apparently, the Amway Corporation uses this technique. The following statement is given to it’s members:

One final tip before you get started: Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it, so you’ve got something for which to aim - and that you write it down. There is something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down. When you reach that goal, set another and write that down. You’ll be off and running.

If you really want to make sure that the goal is achieved, make it known to as many people as possible. Having other people know that you are trying to achieve a goal brings pride into the equation, which is a very powerful force.

I’ve always had this feeling about the effect of writing things down, but now I see that there is scientific proof of it. I find that I achieve tasks much faster if I have a hand-written to-do list. I guess I need to start applying the “write it down” method to some bigger parts of my life.

Well, it’s been over two months without TV. I was holding out pretty well, but my wife couldn’t take it any more and we broke down and got a new TV. I think we would have made it, but this Colorado winter has been rather harsh. Since we don’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet, entertainment was getting pretty scarce. I guess the good news is that we’re not wasting as much money on it each month since we’re getting a package deal from Comcast that includes internet, phone, and cable.