1934

Oslo's famous.

originally uploaded by Neylano.

One of my photos of Mos was used to promote the "Three Books" section this week on NPR. Cool, non?

Performance load and my new watch.

This is my new watch. It's a Nike Triax Mia. It's a sports watch, but I bought it mainly because of the industrial design. I love the fluid, futuristic look (I can just see a design studio wall plastered with preliminary sketches – yummy!). I also love how it wraps around my wrist so that the face rests almost parallel to my radius and ulna. This would constitute, in my opinion, white space as it occurs in industrial design. How the object rests in space makes it easy to read, thus creating white space in the mind of the user. They're not burdened by the extra cognitive load needed to figure something out. Or the physical discomfort caused by having to twist your arm around in order to read your damn watch.

In terms of performance load, however, this design could use some work. According to my very informative book, Universal Principles of Design, performance load dictates that "the greater the effort to accomplish a task, the less likely the task will be accomplished successfully."

Well, this happened with this watch, but not for reasons you might imagine (i.e., that there are too many functions on the watch lacking intuitive controls). You can't see them in this photo, but at each rounded corner of this watch are little buttons you use to adjust the functions. I figured out the menu system pretty quickly, but when it came time to hold the buttons down to make the adjustments, it was difficult; it required a high kinematic load. For some functions, you have to press one button and hold for three seconds while simultaneously pressing another to make the adjustment. Being  5'11", I don't have the most dainty fingers, so finding the center of the tiny side buttons was a bit difficult. Then once I did find them, the metal buttons gave hardly any tactile feedback. Once I was finally able to push them, I couldn't really tell – haptically, anyway – if I was or not. Luckily, I got feedback from the screen.

Nonetheless, it was very hard to set the alarm. Which is why I'll continue to rely on my cell phone or the dogs to wake me up; whichever needs to go to the bathroom first! Haha.

Was Zum Teufel?!

originally uploaded by Neylano.

Sunday, July 27 - Well, this week was prolly a hellish one for all those Olympians who have to like, swim and run and jump and wrestle and cycle and fence and flip their bodies all over mats for hours a day just to have a chance at winning a disc of some lame precious metal.

Ja. No, thanks. Oslo and Mies and I will just stick to running three times a week with our Nike Plus. Which we were gonna do today until Oslo and Mies and I walked into a hornet's nest by accident. We were in the woods near Mass Ave when I heard Oslo yelp and turned to see a bunch of yellowjackets swarmed all over his back. He was yelping and jumping around, just like Mary Lou Retton doing her floor routine. Meanwhile, Mies and I were just trying to get the hell out of there! With Oslo in tow of course, minus the damn hornets. In the end, he ended up with 14 stings, Mies had 10, and...lucky me...only one.

Mon, July 28 - As the Olympians were all doing their sit-ups to get ready and the Chinese were passing out HAZMAT masks while trying to figure out how to get rid of all the goddamn smog, the Associated Press reported that four people in Iowa were jailed for trying to make a citizen's arrest of former White House scumbag Karl Rove:

(AP) Des Moines police arrested four people Friday who attempted a citizen's arrest of former White House adviser Karl Rove.

A news release says a retired minister and three members of the Des Moines Catholic Workers community were cited for trespassing and released. The four accused Rove of election fraud and conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States in the time before the Iraq war. The arrest complaint also says they accused Rove of treason, sedition and subversive activities for fraudulent acts leading to the deaths of 300,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,000 U.S. Military personnel.

Mies, who couldn't care less about Karl Rove, was very interested in the concept of a citizen's arrest. He was hoping he and Olso could perform one on the dogs in our building. As far as they're both concerned, Oslo is the boss of this condo complex and all dogs who enter are trespassing, whether their owners live here or not.

Tues, July 29 - Nothing happened today.

Wed, July 30 - While these four people were jilted in their attempts at justice, Oslo decided to mete out some justice of his own. For what reason, I'm not sure. Anyway, he decided to defecate right outside the Norwegian embassy this morning, precisely at the feet of the Queen of Norway's bronze statue. In broad daylight. On Massachusetts Avenue.

Hmmmm, my only guess is that he doesn't like his name? Maybe we should have called him Berlin or Düsseldorf instead.

Thurs, July 31 - In today's news, that little bastard Mies had it with the lack of good coffee here in DC and got into my bag of organic, free-trade coffee beans that were accidentally left on the counter. But that pales in comparison to what a box turtle got into at Rock Creek Park, as reported in the Washington Post:

Ken Ferebee, a National Park Service researcher, has been monitoring Turtle No. 72 for seven years, occasionally venturing into the woods to see her. Since Turtle No. 72's purpose in life is limited pretty much to finding a berry or bug to nibble on, there's no telling where in her roughly 50-acre range she might wander on a given day.

A few weeks ago, her little turtle brain guided her to a sun-splashed clearing deep in the woods. And that's where she was on the afternoon of July 14 -- at the northern end of the 1,754-acre main park, far from any trail -- when Ferebee, for the first time in nine days, decided to pay her a visit.

"I was walking in the woods, following the signal with my receiver, trying to find the turtle, and I walked into an area where some large trees had fallen down," he recalled yesterday. "So there's a big hole in the tree canopy, so there's a lot of light getting down to the ground, and there's a lot of vegetation growing there."

He saw Turtle No. 72 in the clearing and moved toward her.

"But as I'm walking, I could see a patch of bare soil that didn't look quite right. And when I got closer, I could tell it had been cleared and some plants had been planted. They looked like they'd been grown somewhere else and then actually replanted in the park."

Suspicious vegetation -- about 10 plants, some four feet tall.

And guess what this suspicious vegetation turned out to be? Yep. You guessed it. The other grass. What gets me, though, is that this stupid researcher even reported it. It's pot, people. IT SHOULD BE LEGAL. Get those damn cops off the trails of box turtles and 19-year old hashish farmers and onto more important cases. LIKE FINDING BIN LADEN, MAYBE. Or turning that citizen's arrest into a real one and putting Karl Rove's sorry ass in jail.

Fri, Aug 01 - While federal investigators today headed north from Rock Creek Park, its electronic turtles, and illegal foliage to pursue the anthrax case in Frederick, Maryland (where the dogs were kenneled, by the way), Oslo and Mies were busy confronting six deer right across the street from Dick Cheney's house. While we were on our run, one doe was close to the road, chowing down on what we hope was legal grass. In the shadows of trees a few feet way stood another doe and four bucks.

They saw the dogs and all just stopped and looked at them. My two foaming and frothing Weimaraners were nearly rearing like horny stallions when the doe near the road started to walk gingerly toward Oslo and Mies. For a brief moment, I thought she was going to descend into a play bow and challenge Mies to a wrestle.

Sat, Aug 02 - Nothing happened today unless you count us taking the Weims into City Bikes, this really cool bike shop in Adams-Morgan. They charmed the bike shorts off all the patrons with their bad-ass grey selves while I looked at wheels for my soon-to-be fixie.

Mountains and mental models.

As I continue to struggle with the reality of having left my beloved west coast and trying to make sense of all the things on the east that seem so off-kilter, I was struck once again while driving through North Carolina how most of my unease is due to upsets in my mental models. Take, for example, the mountains. Pictured above, we have the Olympic mountain range on the left, the La Platas in the middle, and the Blue Ridge mountains on the right. Obviously, one of these things is not like the other.

The La Plata mountain range in the middle is the range most familiar to me. I don't remember the first time I laid eyes on these frosted peaks because I was baby when I did. They're in southwest Colorado, looming over the town of Durango, where I spent the better part of my childhood. Mind you, it wasn't just this range in isolation that I grew up around. The western half of Colorado is the Rocky Mountains, and there are mountain ranges like this from north to south, east to west. I grew up over a mile high with these mountains in constant view, snug in the valleys of these beautiful, 14,000 ft forms. My eyes spoiled by their loveliness. My lungs billowed with their crisp freshness.

The mountains on the left are part of the Olympic mountain range, which lies to the west of Seattle, across the Puget Sound. These powdered-sugar dusted peaks are visible from the front porch of Will's house on Queen Anne. They greeted me on a regular basis for the more than four years I lived in that house. Very craggy and rocky, they represent the other mountain ranges in Washington state. Sharp, jagged, and white.

To the left are the Blue Ridge...er...mountains of North Carolina. Beautiful as they are, I hesitate to call them that. As you can see, they look more like the foothills leading up to the real mountains I grew up with in the west.

It's something very hard for me to get used to out here; an example of yet another aspect of this east coast interface that doesn't behave as expected. This concept of hills being mountains? Utterly foreign to me. It throws me for a loop every time someone says they're going to the mountains for the day. THOSE ARE NOT REAL MOUNTAINS, PEOPLE. Geologists might disagree with me, but as far as I'm concerned, real mountains don't exist east of the Rockies.

Carnivorous.

originally uploaded by Neylano.

I took this photo in Rome three years ago. As you can see, the Italians have no qualms about eating meat. I mean, look at this: the tongues, the feet, the stomach lining. It's all there, baby! In it's unadulterated, undisguised form. Honestly, I think if you're going to be a eat meat, you should eat it this way. Just to remind yourself of the life lost so you could eat. It's a lot easier to eat meat when it's all cut up and cooked and prepared beyond recognition. Most people, myself included, don't have the guts to eat meat in this form.

Was Zum Teufel?!

Sun Jul 20 - During this week of an extra smoggy China, Obama's German lovefest, the French working more, and the UN trial of that mean old Serb, Radovan Karadzic, Oslo and Mies were kickin' it at a kennel in rural Maryland – about an hour north of DC – while we drove down to North Carolina to see some friends.

Mies, who's been following the Karadzic story closely, was intrigued by the way ol' Rado was able to completely transform himself, avoiding capture despite being one of the world's most wanted for over ten years. So, he spent most of his time at the kennel contemplating how the addition of a beard and some glasses would enable him to escape the consequences of future trash can upendings and cabinet raidings. As a matter of fact, by the time we picked him up, he had picked most of the fur from one of his sucky toys and glued it to his face. A prototype, of sorts.

We recognized him right away, though, despite the fake whiskers.

Mon Jul 21 - While the Bosnian Butcher was busy being outed and brought to justice and the German Obamakins were busy having orgasms in public, Oslo and Mies were busy reading (what else are they supposed to do all day while we're at work??). Today they came across an article about cats being cheaper than dogs. Mies fretted over it all day and made us promise him when we got home that we would never, EVER trade him and Oslo in for two cats. I told him that of course not. We would never do that. What we might do, however, is FedEx him back to Stephanie if he doesn't quit getting into the drawer, chewing open the box of Ziploc bags every time I buy a new one, and then spreading half-chewed-and-thus-useless sandwich bags all over the floor.

YES, MIES. I'M TALKING TO YOU.

Tues Jul 22 - Speaking of orgasms, today's news brings the story of green speed dating. According to my employer (e.g., NPR), treehuggers need love, too:

Sixteen or so singles from across Los Angeles descended on a bar near the beach last month in search of a carbon-neutral connection. What do these greenies drive? As it turned out, more than just Priuses — one would-be dater rolled up in a Land Rover.

The offender, Jeff Seputra, is a hedge fund manager who lives in downtown Los Angeles. He insists he's been trying to get rid of his gas guzzler for years. He also says he only drives it very short distances and that he recycles and gives to green causes. But at an event like this one, Seputra's choice of wheels may be an inconvenient truth.

Oslo and Mies are all about hugging trees, especially when there are squirrels in them.

Wed Jul 23 - Nothing happened today, people.

Thurs Jul 24 - Speaking of orgasms and Germans, today saw a downright lovefest on the streets of Berlin as Barack totally sweet-talked all of Deutschland. Hell, all of the EU, for that matter.

Anyway, Oslo and Mies watched with great interest as their fellow Germans fawned over the famed senator from Illinois. They were frustrated, though, when they had to rely on the captions to understand what the Germans were saying. "Why do you speak to us in French, Mom? We're not French bird dogs, in case you haven't noticed. We want our commands spoken in German!"

Jawohl. Heil Weimaraner.

Fri Jul 25 - Unbelievably, today's news reports a poll showing that pet owners are more likely to vote for McCain. Was zum teufel?!

Not in this house. NO EFFING WAY.

Sat Jul 26 - Today in France, the French are undoubtedly enjoying their weekends more than they were last week. Apparently, Sarcozy has ended the coveted 35-hour workweek. Sorry, Frogs. After years of part-time work, it's time to start busting your asses and working overtime like the rest of the industrialized world.

Oslo and Mies, on the other hand, voted to shorten their workweek (if that's even possible). Oslo decided he's only going to fetch the paper three days a week instead of five, and Mies is looking to outsource some of his guard dog responsibilities to Mudhol Hounds in India. He doesn't like working the night shift.