Recently in Life Category

I've been on the phone with Orbitz customer services for almost an hour now. This isn't the largest amount of my time that has ever been wasted by a big company but it is without a doubt one of the most unpleasant.

Anticipating that I might need to cancel my ticket, I took advantage of the Orbitz Airline Ticket Protector. This is a service that they promote heavily as a benefit of shopping with Orbitz, as a way that they are different from the competition.

But today, when I called to cancel my ticket, I was directed to call an insurance company that I'd never heard of. I was a little confused but did what they said. I then learned that the Airline Ticket Protector is only good if there is a disaster, death, etc.

I called Orbitz back to complain that they don't make this very clear on their web site.

A quick note about calling Orbitz. Like many automated customer services systems, getting to talk to a real person is a little game. My first strategy is to repeatedly press 0. Sometimes this works. In this case it doesn't. The Orbitz system is voice activated and interprets 0 as needing help with your password. I tried saying "Help" but that didn't work. I tried "Operator." No luck. Then I tried "Customer Service" and that did the trick.

As soon as someone got on the line I asked to speak to a supervisor and from there the call degenerated. I explained that I understood that I failed to read the terms and conditions but that I felt that Orbitz promotes their fare protector in such a way that gave me the false impression that it could be used to cancel the ticket without a catastrophic emergency. I simply asked for some understanding and to talk to someone who could weigh my position and possibly grant a slight reduction in the cancellation fee.

Instead, I was condescended to repeatedly. After half an hour of being put on hold with interruptions of rudeness, each worse than the last, I asked to speak to a supervisor, not to seek the discount I originally hoped for but to complain about my treatment. Even this is not within the agent's power.

The man I spoke with from the other side of the world is not at fault here. He is a cog in a machine bent on squeezing every penny. A business structure that has lost site of why they exist: to give value to customers, to make great travel experiences possible.

It's at times like these that I wonder what possesses a service company like Orbitz to make decisions that makes me, the customer, feel small, stupid, and un-cared for. I don't call customer service very often but when I do it is with a problem. At those moments I am not in the best mood. This is normal and it isn't my fault. By not training their customer service representatives to deal effectively with me in this state they make me feel like it is my fault. This isn't nice. I don't like it when people aren't nice to me and thus I don't like Orbitz.

All this talk of emotion might seem odd first. I am, after all, talking about a big company. Why should they care about how I feel when I deal them? I'm just a small nothing, one of a hoard of customer. That attitude, the reluctance to treat me as an emotional creature and instead as a mere wallet carrier, is what makes people hate companies. When I feel hated I will hate back. I hate Orbitz right now. I hate them so much that I'm lashing out in a blog post. This is normal human behavior. These are predictable preventable reactions.

I would have thought that the least a company could do is apologize that I misunderstood the terms and offer a small token in sympathy. Apparently, that isn't the least they could do.

Yes. You read that title correctly. I had hiccups for four nights while I was in Chicago and it was terrible. It was so bad that I stopped attending the Adaptive Path User Experience Intensive conference and had to go the emergency room.

Like any reasonable person I started with the usual regimen of home remedies. Sandy recommended that I stand with my heels and back against a wall with my head upright as he poured water into my mouth. I felt like a cornered animal trying this one so moved on to other methods.

Eventually I got them to subside with a breath-holding technique but the relief was short lives.

Hiccuping puts you in a weird social position. You want to apologize for the random noises you are making. People look at you like you are a nuisance but you just can't help it. All you can do is look back and shrug.

As for what's actually going on in your body, I learned that hiccups are a neurological condition. The diaphragm spasms involuntary, often several times a minute. The "hic" noise is caused by the sudden rush of air into the lungs.

Most cases of hiccups resolve themselves but they do occasionally require medical attention.

On the third night I couldn't take it and went to the emergency room with Sandy. I was anxious about using my insurance out of state but couldn't stand to keep hiccuping so went in the hopes that the insurance would sort itself out. But that's another post about unhelpful customer service.

Doctor's can't actually cure hiccups, per se. Instead, they simply treat the symptoms and hope that the cause corrects itself. In rare cases, prolonged hiccups can be caused by a tumor pressing against the diaphragm. A chest X-Ray determined that this wasn't my problems so the doctor started explaining the treatment options to me.

Oddly, the treatment options are almost all anti-psychotic drugs. Yeah. You read that right, and some serious ones too. Haldol and thorazine both list hiccups as secondary uses.

I was a skeptical of this. I can be a pretty aggressive patient. I try to ask as many questions as possible. I like doctors to explain their reasoning to me before putting drugs in my body or cutting me open. Giving me an anti-psychotic seemed odd enough that a small voice in my head wondered if the drugs were in part being suggested to shut me up. I persisted in asking about the options and was convinced to give it a try.

The ER doctor recommended Thorazine and I consented to an injection. Let me tell you, that stuff takes effect quickly. It essentially numbs your entire nervous system. In my case, however, that numbness didn't cure my hiccups. At this point I was pretty out of it. The doctor wrote a prescription for Reglen, a gastrointestinal stimulant that is supposed to be less effective than the anti-psychotics, and sent me home.

The next morning I woke up still feeling like a zombie. I got on IM and while typing could barely feel my fingers. I was still hiccuping and felt terrible. I took the Reglen and waited.

Eventually the hiccups subsided. My chest was terribly sore and I was just worn out. I tried to get some work done to pass the time and went out for dinner in an attempt to have a normal evening.

Sadly, the hiccups started again. I was terrified at this point. The chest X-Ray hadn't revealed anything but I had been given some serious drugs and they were of no help. I hate taking medicine for exactly this reason. Doctors are not magicians. Often, their prescriptions are shots in the dark. The drug might treat the symptom of an unknown cause. In this case, they ran me out as soon as their technique didn't work and I was too drugged up to resist.

I went to bed on the fourth night very distraught and still hiccuping. That night they were worse than ever. They kept me from sleeping until late in the night.

When I woke up in the morning I looked at my watch and realized that I had overslept. I stared at the ceiling for a bit as my consciousness returned to me and realized that I wasn't hiccuping. Cautiously, I got out of bed and was still fine. My chest was sore and I was exhausted but I wasn't hiccuping.

I had a reasonably normal day trying to get work done. I was to return LA the following day and wanted to recuperate as much as possible before heading home.

Around three o'clock that afternoon I hiccuped once. I was terrified that they would return but focussed on my breathing and relaxed as much as I could.

They didn't return.

Gray
Originally uploaded by Sam Felder.

I've spent the last two weeks mixing black and white gouache paint in an attempt to create a perfect nine-step scale from white to black.

The technique is to aim for the mid-point. You start with white and then black. Once those have dried you start mixing to get a perfect halfway point. This is surprisingly difficult. Fifty-percent black in Illustrator and what the eye perceives as halfway are two different things. For the purpose of this class, the latter is all that matters. What I am trying to create are color squares that are so perfectly between their neighbors that a human observer will experience the illusion of simultaneous contrast.

To help us think about the illusions we can experience when looking at color, our professor pointed us to some examples at Edward Adelson's site at MIT. This checkerboard example was the hardest for me to accept but it does work. The same color can appear to be completely different from itself in the same design if the context changes.

These illusions are what we are trying to learn how to control. The hard part is reproducing the color correctly. I must say that as frustrating an experience as this assignment is becoming, I find that my eye is getting better. I've now painted almost a hundred swatches. At the beginning I didn't really know what to look for and now I think that I'm really getting somewhere.

Precision
Originally uploaded by feministjulie.

I turned in my first homework assignment yesterday and, thanks to many hours of careful work, earned a perfect score.

It's nice to be a student again in some sense. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the pressure to complete homework. This last assignment was profoundly frustrating. Yet I found the whole experience incredibly rewarding.

These projects are teaching me to slow down. To be patient.

Anyone who knows me realizes that this doesn't come easily. I get frustrated easily but it's high time I got over this. My work will improve dramatically by developing a little patience.

Like many web designers, I came into this field via a long and meandering path. Now that I know it's what I want to be doing I really should get better at it.

I've diligently attended many conferences, read blogs, and experiment with the latest stuff. I know all about Ajax, Web 2.0, CSS, web standards, and all the rest. What I lack is a strong foundation in the core principles of design.

Yeah I've read a few color theory books. I've learned to pay attention to everything around me for inspiration. And yet as I look at the designed world we live in, I feel that I can only pick out bits and pieces to use in my own work; a typeface here, a color combination there. What I want to is truly master the processes that undergird what I'm looking at.

A core assumption of mine is that I need to learn to work with my hands. This led to my taking a drawing class last semester. I spent the fall smearing charcoal on paper. Drawing lines and blending them until my hands were black and I had an image that reasonably approximated three-dimension. I tried working with pencils and I've tinkered with ink but nothing is quite as pliant as that charcoal. It moves with your hands. It smudges and blends into itself. You can erase it and put it back. You can darken it to jet black and lighten it to a muted gray.

But drawing is almost too advanced. You make decisions before you even start drawing. You choose to crop the image a certain way or highlight particular aspects over others. What I need is a foundations class. I need some discipline.

And that's just what I'm getting this semester. I am enrolled in Design 1: Element and Form. I've attended one class and am intimidated and excited. By the end of the semester I will have created a textbook for the course. I can do the layout and typesetting digitally but all the examples, of color wheels, gradients, etc. must be painted.

Let me add here that I have never, at least not since I was a kid, painted anything.

In this class I won't learn to paint per se. Instead, I will master color. I will understand how to make precise colors and how they work together. I will understand the fundamental concepts of form.

For my first assignment I must precisely cut out a series of shapes twelve times. I must then arrange each set on a piece of paper (that I have also hand-cut) to express each of the following twelve concepts:

1. Figure on ground
2. Figure/ground ambiguity
3. Order
4. Randomness
5. Symmetrical balance
6. Asymmetrical balance
7. Horizontal
8. Vertical
9. Emphasis
10. Movement

This sounds easy but the assignment is graded on two levels. First I get a grade for the concepts. Each tableaux must represent one, and only one, of these concepts. The second part of the grade is for my hand work.

Today I've already gone through four or five sets of shapes trying to figure out how to use the OLFA circle cutter.

This device is handy but a little unweildy.

As frustrating as it is, this is the point. I can make circles all day long in Photoshop but I don't really understand a circle, I haven't mastered it, I haven't earned it. Cutting twelve perfect circles, keeping the square I cut them out of, and cutting the rest of my shapes before I can design with them is part of the process.

This exercise, and the rest that will be expected of me this semester, will teach me patience, a patience that casually creating shapes and textures out of thin air can never create. This is the whole point for me.

The whole thing is more than a little terrifying but I trust that my instructor will teach me what I need to know when I need to know it.

Update: Julie took this picture of me working on my homework that seemed worth adding to the post.

I started really listening to podcasts in '06. These are the ones that I listen to all the time as '07 starts out.

1. On the Media
2. Marketplace
3. Marketplace Money
4. This American Life
5. Good Food
6. Left, Right, and Center
7. Wait Wait.. Don't Tell Me!
8. Inside Europe
9. Science Magazine Podcast

This list reflects my bias toward the produced sound of pubic radio. I find the real value of listening to these shows as podcasts is that I need not worry about when, or whether, they are scheduled to be broadcast in my area.

I'm eager to discover more to listen to so please share your favorite podcasts with me.

UPDATE

I would be remiss to not mention that NPR has begun offering a podcast of Fresh Air. This is a must listen for anyone who cannot easily catch it on the radio.

Phew. I'm back from a long hiatus.

Where'd I go? umm... here's a quick overview:

• Work
• Work
• Work
• Helping Julie with grad school apps
• Work
• Finishing my drawing class
• Vacation in Seattle

Really I don't have an excuse but I am now back from the grave.

PS - If you've been checking this blog and not noticed any changes, I strongly recommend looking at the etc. link in the lower right. If you already get these links you are subscribed to my RSS feed or the handy RSS via e-mail feature.

The Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day for October 28, 2006: oldish.

Brit. /ld/, U.S. /old/ Forms: see OLD a. and -ISH1. [< OLD a. + -ISH1. Cf. earlier YOUNGISH a., NEWISH a.]

Esp. of a person: somewhat old or elderly. Of a thing, etc.: somewhat old or antiquated.

1669 S. PEPYS Diary 20 Feb. (1976) IX. 454 She is an oldish French woman. 1685 Factious Citizen v. 70, I had some Jealousie of it the last time I saw him: For he told me I look'd Oldish. 1727 M. DAVYS Accomplish'd Rake 60 Hang Gravity it gives ones Face an oldish cast. 1775 F. BURNEY Early Diary (1889) II. 56 Miss Lake..is a very obliging and sweet-tempered, oldish maid. 1798 C. SMITH Young Philosopher III. 120 A common cotton gown, an oldish black bonnet. 1827-8 J. F. COOPER Red Rover II. xi. 178 True, you must have officers on board; though, I suppose, they are a little oldish to be agreeable to you. 1855 C. DARWIN in Life & Lett. (1887) II. 47 Time is slipping away, and we are getting oldish. 1884 QUEEN VICTORIA More Leaves 189 An oldish woman, a character, who worked me a book-marker. 1915 A. POLLITZER Let. 7 Aug. in G. O'Keeffe & A. Pollitzer Lovingly, Georgia (1990) 12 I'm crazy to do a big symbolic oilA long haired girlwoman with live oldish poplars & sky. 1918 T. MANSON Humours of Peat Comm. I. 41 I'm gettin' ta be a aaldish man noo. 1967 J. B. PRIESTLEY It's Old Country iii. 26 Oldish women with central European accents. 2002 Jrnl. (Newcastle) (Electronic ed.) 24 Apr., Peel is quite comfortable with the idea of an oldish bloke thrilling to a song about rampant teenage hormones.

And as of October 28, 2006, I am an oldish twenty-six years old. Thanks to all of you who sent birthday greetings, it really made my day!

Julie and I are heading to LAX tonight to catch the red eye to DC. This is Julie's first time back in the District and my second since we moved away almost exactly a year ago.

We'll only be on the ground for just over forty-eight hours but we wouldn't miss this weekend for the world. You see, this weekend our friends Eli and Kavitha are getting married.

We couldn't be more excited to get see so many of our friends again. If only I could decide what necktie to wear to the wedding...

Expect plenty of pictures in this space when I return!

UPDATE I managed to leave my camera behind in an effort to get to the tisch on time. Rob, however, took loads of great pictures.

UPDATE Rob created a flickr photo pool so if you were there (and didn't forget your camera) add your pictures.

I am drowning in work. As I slog through one thing after another I find myself tuning out the world. In my haste I miss the most of the news and use music as white noise to help avoid distraction. This afternoon my focus was broken abruptly with an important thought about the tragic wars taking place around this world of ours.

These are the lyrics to Donovan's 1965 song Universal Soldier.

He is five foot two,
and he's six feet four,
he fights with missiles and with spears,
he is all of thirty-one,
and he's only seventeen,
he's been a soldier for a thousand years.

He's a Catholic, a Hindu,
an atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist, and a Baptist and a Jew,
and he knows he shouldn't kill,
and he knows he always will,
kill for me, my friend, and me for you.

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA
and he's fighting for the Russians,
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

And he's fighting for democracy,
he's fighting for the Reds,
he says it's for the peace of all,
he's the one who must decide,
who's to live and who's to die,
and he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him, how would Hitler
have condemned him at Labau,
without him Caesar would have stood alone,
he's the one, who gives his body
as a weapon of the war,
and without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the universal soldier,
and he really is to blame,
his orders came from far away, no more,
they come from here and there,
and from you and me,
this is not the way we put the end to war.

That could easily be me in that tragic position. It is important not to forget the power of circumstance in shaping my life. I deeply empathize with the position of young men and women on the battlefield. I also wrestle with the real question of how responsible they and we are for their actions.