Jill's musings

Finally, I got myself what I had been wanting for a lifetime, a sewing machine! It is not an exaggeration when I say "a lifetime" considering how long I've known to sew and mend things, by hand of course, and for how long I've wanted to automate the process, or at least partially. This habit of mine, or an essential life skill for women in my grandparents' generation and a good part of those in my mom's, is finally turning into a serious hobby for me by this cute investment - white with blue floral design. As an end user who wants to get things done rather than to learn, I made what I considered to be a smart buy. I bought the simplest model (and the cheapest!), thinking it would be easier to use than an advanced model because there would be less features to confuse me. In addition, based on the general belief that roughly 70% of the job can be performed using 30% of the features in software applications, and that these percentages are applicable to househo

I experience this frustration at least once a day. My favorite routine leaving my office in the afternoon is to start the Youtube App on my phone to listen to my favorite shows -- lately, these have been VOA. I have my phone set up so that it automatically logs onto the university wireless to stream the videos because the wireless signal is far better than my 3G reception in this engineering building with strange sturctures where my office is located. My daily frustration begins as I get out of the building and contiue to walk to the edge of the campus near the verge of the wireless coverage. The Youtube app has paused mid-video. Not surprising since the wireless signal strength indicator reads 1 out of 3 bars. But 3G is back with 5 full bars!!! Obviously, it's time to switch back to 3G but unfortunately, my phone doesn't know to do that on its own. So, as usual, I stop mid-track, exit out of the Youtube app, go to the settings to log off the wireless by hand, then retar

4:57pm... more than six hours after I had a light sweet potato porridge and some skimpy fried vegetables, my body and mind are being taken over by an uncontrollable urge for food. I tried to convince myself that I could still hold on to this "mind numbing" task without replenishing my body, then the next second, I discovered yet another perfect task for CoScripter ! So the task I've been working on for the past 20 something minutes is "mind numbing" -- yes, the exact phrase one of Allen Cypher's customers used to describe his/her job of data entry. Though mine task is not a complete data entry task, it does involve quite a bit of manual repetition with minimal things that are of interest to any intelligent minds. To give a big picture of my work (and life if I have one : p), I'm a PhD. candidate in computer science with a concentration in HCI. This is my final year, a.k.a., the job-hunting year, and the fall career fair is less than two days away. I&