Talk Tonight

Hello after a long break. I have been meaning to blog since the last time but have been either busy or feeling too lazy to do it. So yeah this past month or so has been less than a great time for me. If I had written this entry about two weeks ago, I would used the Oasis song "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" as the title instead of "Talk Tonight." But things have gotten better this past week so I guess I will just ramble as I normally do. So yeah, beware this might turn into one of my patented super long rambling entries that has no point other than I can gripe a lot. So what has been going on? Okay, where to start?

Last week, I attended CHI2007 in San Jose. For those who don't know, it is a big conference for people in the HCI field so whole bunch of people from my team went. It also served as a semi SI reunion (at least more of a reunion than the actual SI reunion was last year)what with Noor, Amyaz, Diana, Apete, Cameron, Olga, Cari, Grude, the lamer version of me, among others who made appearances. Overall, the conference was pretty good. I went to some pretty interesting talks including one on self-regulatory behavior in MMOGs and the latest coolio tangile interface from Ishii at the MIT Media Lab. I think part of being a good user experience professional to keep up with the ongoing research in the field. However, the conference did have its flaws. I took some classes from Karen Holtzblatt, who literally wrote the book on contextual inquiry. I was expecting some new insights/learnings but nope, it was rehash of what I already knew. Another thing is that they did a really bad job of predicting turnout for certain talks. Some talks were overflowing with people while others didn't even have half of the room filled. Plus there was the everlasting argument between theory/academics versus practical. Dan Safer did a pretty good job of explaining why CHI isn't for real industry practicioners because it has too much theory (aka the UPA viewpoint). For the uninitated, as I understand it, UPA was an offshoot of CHI that was more focused on practical based matters which some people I know like because of it. While others i know think UPA is just an excuse for a bunch of usability consultants to get together and hawk their services. I guess my viewpoint is that CHI is like the Transformers while UPA is like the Gobots. A lot more people know about the Transformers (they are releasing a live action blockbuster movie this summer) and the Gobots were like a much lamer version of the Transformers that got no respect. It didn't help that the Gobots blatantly copied things from the Transformers. For example, The leader of the good Transformers (the Autobots) is named Optimus Prime and the good Gobot leader is called "Leader one." The Autobots home planet is named "Cybertron" while the Gobot home planet is "Gobotron." So yeah, I guess I am more of a CHI/Transformer fan. If I really wanted to hear experience reports, I could read them online and go to BayCHI more often than I do now. If I am going to shell out hundreds of dollars to go to a conference, I want to see and hear things that I can't hear anywhere else. Plus CHI is going to be in Florence next year.

On a related note, work has not been friendly to me for the past couple weeks. For example, I stayed up late working on a presentation that got a "reserved" reception to be generous when I presented it. Its never fun to stand up and give a presentation that noone pays attention to and/or nobody likes because apparently, I can't read minds. Also on another project I am working on, I am putting lots of effort and time to make the user experience of the product better. Yet for all my efforts, it has been frustratingly hard to make any real progress towards that goal. Its not like the team doesn't appreciate the feedback or input. They appreciate it but not enough to make it a priority. So yeah these are things that almost everyone faces in the workplace but in combination with other things going on, made it a tough time. Personally, it has been a rough time. Remember in my previous entries about me wanting to get back into the dating game. Well, I did and I guess I will just say that I didn't understand fully the commitment, involvement, and responsibility that it required. So I think I will bench myself from it for a while. Also I had some family issues on top of that. Like they say, when it rains, it pours.

I will reserve the rest of this entry to rant about some current events. So I finished reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran a few weeks ago. I highly recommend it. It is probably the best book I have read all year. It is highly readable yet damning account of how the Bush Administration screwed up the first year after Saddam fell in Iraq. It details numerous huge mistakes such as relying on partisan loyalists instead of people who were actually qualified to do the job, massively stupid assumptions based on idealogy, stubborness to admit failure, and just a vast array incompetence. During the first years of the occuption of Iraq, I would sometimes watch the TV News, thinking that I could probably do a better job than the Bush Administration. After reading the book, I technically was more qualified to help govern Iraq than some of the people we sent over there. That is a sad state of affairs. It is little wonder we are stuck in the mess that we are now. Some people have criticized me in the past being a stickler on planning stuff out. Well reading this book should teach people that paying extra attention to planning is not such a bad thing, especially when it comes to occupying a country. In addition, I did get to review some intern resumes for this summer. A few people said that prior experience wasn't that important, especially if somebody showed "potential." Well, I am sorry, this book tells me that all the "potential" in the world isn't going to do squat without the experience to back it up.

Finally, I guess I will add my two cents on the Virginia Tech massarce, even though it is an event that already has had too many words devoted to it. Much has been said about the killer and him being Korean American. Idiots like Pat Buchanan said that if didn't let immigrants in, then massarces like Virginia Tech would not have happened. Plus Korean American communities around the country are worried about a backlash. First off, its utterly silly that him being Korean had anything to do with it. It didn't help that the South Korean government apologized for shooting given the fact that the killer hadn't lived in South Korea since 1992. As many people pointed out, the major characteristic of the killer was not that he was Korean but that he was flat-out crazy. I think MSNBC had the best headline "Killer considered weird, majored in English." Many have descried the fact that he was hospitalized for being mentally unstable, showed bizzare behavior in English class, never talked to his dormmates, and stalked two female classmates. Why didn't anybody step in and intervene? Well, go look the mirror, you'll find the answer. The reason nobody stepped in was because he wasn't anybody's problem and when he did become a problem, he was quickly handed off to someone else. You have seen it. So have I. Mentally ill people on the street, on the bus, and yes, even on campus (as I have blogged before about). And why doesn't somebody come in and help them? Because in this country, the only way a person can get mental help is they recognize they need it or if they pose a danger to themselves or others. First off, a mentally ill person will probably not recognize the fact they are mentally ill and therefore not seek treatment. Secondly, do you how far mentally out of it someone has to be before they are considered a danger to themselves or others? Pretty far gone to get that point. And even at that point, all the treatment needs to do is make the person not a threat. After that, they are free to be as crazy as they want to be. The time to get a mentally ill person help is far before the point he or she becomes a threat. Except in this country, we value freedom so we can't force people to get treatment. We let them destroy their lives, push away the people who love them, and fall into an abyss because they are too sick to understand they need help. The people who decry why his parents, roommates, school officals, and others didn't do more to stop his bizzare behavior and warning signs don't understand that the time to stop Cho Seung-Hui was years ago. Freedom is a two way street. Freedom allows us to express ourselves and live our lives in the way we want. However, it does allow someone to destroy their life even if they are too sick to understand what they are doing. As yes, that sometimes does have consequences.

Sorry to end on such a sad note. Just needed to get that stuff off my chest. Until next time, peace.