Monthly Archives: June 2008

Great Dane

I’m working with Codename, which is located in a big warehouse structure. I get up on a stage and announce to everyone that we’re going to start doing user testing on a weekly basis. I tell everyone to give names of friends and family to James, and he will be responsible for finding four people for us to talk to every week.

I’m walking around the warehouse and a couple of policemen show up with a giant Great Dane. The dog comes over and bites my head, basically engulfing my whole head in its slobbery mouth. It drools. The cops tell me to stay calm so they can get the dog to stop biting me.

Disjointed Themes

I’m in a hotel and my father is old and sick. I keep trying to call the front desk for help.

I go into the basement and there is a huge laundry room with dozens of rows of washers and dryers. I start doing my laundry.

I tell a female friend that Jodie Foster is coming over for dinner and she’s excited and nervous.

I start cleaning up and pick up stacks and stacks of newspapers. While I do so I discuss with my friend that I’ve seen a number of plays recently.

I see a woman on the street who says she works for a jewelry store. I ask how much it will cost to have my pearls restrung. She says it will be $30 to $50. I give her the pearls and she puts them in her pocket. Later I think that was dumb because she will steal them.

Wireframes

Bob L. asks me to give a presentation to Disney, which is a client of the Los Angeles office. I’m unprepared to do so, but I try and wing it.

I go up to present and it takes me a long time to pull up the wireframes I need to show. A big group of people is watching me and I’m embarrassed that I don’t have anything to present.

I start presenting by saying that I worked with Disney nearly ten years ago and at the time they really didn’t understand what wireframes were. I had to educate people about how they fit into the development process.

Today, they’re using wireframes but I’m concerned that they’re not being used to focus on the right things. I show an example of a wireframe that looks like a designed page, with all sorts of images and shading in the background, except it’s in black and white. I try to explain that wireframes should really be used to help focus the discussion on the interaction model and the architecture, and should not try to replicate the desired visual design at a lower fidelity.

San Francisco

I am visiting Friedman in San Francisco. We attend a movie in a theater together. Part way through the movie the projector breaks or something goes wrong, and so they turn all the lights on in the theater and everyone has to leave.

I go and gather up a bunch of my stuff like some books and a bag. I’m standing around outside while Friedman goes and gets a refund for our tickets. While I’m waiting a bus pulls up and I get on.

The bus starts driving toward the airport and the bus driver announces that they have a new direct flight to MInneapolis. I become very anxious because I think that the bus is going to Minneapolis and I have no way to tell Friedman where I am. I ask the man in a suit sitting next to me if this is really an airplane and he says no, this is just a bus that is going to a different neighborhood. While I’m talking to him the bottom of my shoe brushes his pant leg and gets dirt on him, and he yells at me to be more careful as he brushes it off.

I’m still worried that I don’t have any way to tell Friedman where I am. I start digging through my bag trying to find a cell phone. There are two phones in there but neither of them work, and anyway I don’t know his number. Both of the phones are cheap gray plastic, like old Startacs.

Later, Evan, Josh and I decide to have a party. I walk around saying hi to everyone I know. I go downstairs to the bar, and the Indian woman who lives on my floor is working as the bartender. I ask her if she has rosé and she gives me a glass. I go back upstairs and I see that the drink machine isn’t working. It’s supposed to be making frozen margaritas but there isn’t any ice. I start dumping ice into the machine, but it’s incredibly loud and gets ice all over everything, like handfuls of crushed ice are coming out in clumps from the back of the machine. When Evan comes over I tell him that since we’re in San Francisco we should have invited Shane to the party, and he just laughs.

Family reunion at Elliott’s

I plan to take the PATH train to see Elliott’s new apartment in Long Island City. Jenny tells me that it can take 15 minutes to get down to the platform because the trains are so deep underground.

When I arrive at Elliott’s he gives me a tour of the new apartment. We start in the kitchen which opens onto a small room with two loveseats in it. The couches are old and kind of beat up, and even without a coffee table they fill the room. Now I know what Alex meant when he said the living room was in the kitchen. To get to the next room we have to crawl through a small door in the wall. Elliott says that this is a holdover from when the building was a grain mill.

The next room is large and open with very high ceilings and views out onto the city. The room is so large that there is a small wading pool in the middle of it. Two large dining tables provide an enormous amount of seating, I hang out there for a while and eventually a few other people, including Kevin, show up. Kevin doesn’t talk to anyone and just texts the whole time, and I wonder why he even bothered to come.

I return to Elliott’s apartment later and my entire family shows up too. It’s all my aunts and uncles from both sides of the family, and we take over the entire apartment. On this visit there is a door cut between the main room and the kitchen (much better) and the sofas have been taken out so the small room next to the kitchen can function as an entry foyer/mud room.

Gram is there and says she is taking care of new baby Max. The baby has dark hair and dark eyes and I can’t tell who he belongs to. I want to ask if we don’t already have another kid named Max in the family, but I am embarrassed to ask because I think I should know who his parents are.

At the end of the party everyone comes over to say goodbye to me and thank me for inviting them all. I tell Elliott he is a real saint for agreeing to have my entire family over, and I give him a hug.