I’m sorry, but I think this moving to a large city where you know two other people and living alone thing has finally caught up with me, cos I can’t stop laughing at all these t-shirt designs. The best part about me buying one in the next few minutes is that you won’t ever be able to say, “Hey, I read that post where you said you were going to buy that,” when you see me.
In the Server-Side post Java Succumbing to .NET in my Organization, too much choice was cited as a major reason why .NET may be beating Java in the Web application technology space. It seems Java is too “flexible” and has too many choices for IDEs, frameworks and other ever evolving tools. In other words, there are too many ways to hang oneself.
I believe there’s a lot of truth in this. Choice creates complexity in addition to flexibility. We can look to the principles of good UI design to reason why choice many times is bad. A UI that offers two or more ways of doing one thing is seen as a detriment in the interface design world. It may lend itself to more flexible and powerful ways of doing things (although it very well may not), but it ultimately confuses the end-user, often times killing their memory of how to do the action or hurting how well they can perform the action repeatedly over time. As a caveat to the rule, it might be more reasonable to say that if you’re going to offer another more flexible (ie. powerful) way of doing something, that it stays “hidden”, out of the way from the average user or use case.
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The mobility lady thought I was crazy when I didn’t want to take a flight out to Seattle. Everyone I talked to said it would take us, at the minimum, three days to go from Michigan to Seattle. Well, I ain’t crazy, but my Dad and I combined are. Amazon took care of shipping my belongings, but we decided to take a roadtrip together to get me out there. You know, one of those father-son bonding things.
We left last week Wednesday morning from Spring Lake, MI and arrived on Friday at 4pm in Seattle. Most of the trip was straight driving (we drove 14 hours on Thursday). In total, it took us about 56 hours with stops. There were points in the trip where we got to head off the beaten track and do some touring. In South Dakota we hit The Badlands, Wall Drug and Mt. Rushmore. I recommend all of those stops for anyone driving on I-90. Rushmore was a lot more impressive than I had expected - sculpture in a mountain!
The trip was a good chance to hang out with Dad, something I hadn’t done in a while since I lived and worked on the other side of the state. We only tried to kill each other once, with me probably actually trying it and him thinking about it. When you spend that much time with a parent you start to notice how much like them you are, as scary as that sounds. I obviously am the better half of both my parents, and their parents, and so on… obviously.
After our arrival it was a weekend of touring around Pikes Place Market, the SpaceNeedle, Amazon HQ, a great dinner at the Oceanaire, and we caught an exciting Mariners (vs. Padres 6-3) game with Ariana and Andrew. Early Monday morning I took the Old Man out to SeaTac Airport, and bid him farewell… After, I went back to get ready for my first day in my temp housing downtown apartment (that I couldn’t afford otherwise). I’ve linked some roadtrip photos…
I think the saddest part about leaving UM will be that I’m going to lose my Umich IT account, and with it, the uniquename that I got almost ten years ago as a college freshman (although for records purposes, it will probably stay with me for some time). That sounds a bit cheesy since most people that go to school at UM eventually lose theirs as well. Most all of my friends from school have long since lost theirs. But I went and got a job at UM after I graduated, so I kept it and it has grown on me.
It was my first computer account of any type, and the assigned name ‘adamjk’ was too catchy and easy to say to not use for almost every other account username (except maybe when ‘adam’ was available). Adam Just Kidding. The name stuck with some people. UM is where I started computers, now it seems to be strange leaving it. Typing a-d-a-m-j-k has been ingrained in my physical memory like riding a bike or swimming. These things stay with you because they were learned during formative years, as a kid.
I really learned to type during my freshman year. I was a blank slate when it came to personal computing. Many nights were spent hogging Jeremie’s PC keyboard when I should have been studying. Jeremie rightfully kicked me out of his dorm room a few times. That year it was mostly IRC, ICQ, Quake, HTML and CGI. And I can’t forget the Chupacabra in ‘96 presidential Web campaign. My GPA suffered, but I don’t blame Jeremie and Ben’s Room of Procrastination. In fact, I should really thank them for starting my insatiable interest in making all things electronic. I didn’t even own a PC.
I don’t know how long I’ll consider myself an Engineer. For now, I like it. I like to create things that work. But interests change. Maybe I’ll be a Planner or Scientist one day - maybe a fast-food worker. One things for sure though, I’ll always be adamjk.