The end of 2006, huh? That sure was fast. I spent the year immersed in interaction design, and I think I rediscovered my love for creativity and making things.

Academically, I worked on guiding the Interaction Design graduate proposal through the various (and often ridiculous) hoops and hurdles; I watched some people come and go from the department, and became endlessly irritated with the administration. I pondered an awful lot about design, and I started a company; I'm looking forward to a March publication date for this silly book I wrote.

In 2006, I celebrated my fifth year anniversary to my best friend, and lost my other best friend. I got a giant homage to my ceramics mentor tattooed on my arm, and I thought a lot about the poetic nature of life, creativity, time, and death.

I got real drunk in Montreal, and then I spent a lot of time working to plan a cool conference for San Jose.

I learned how to draw again.

As cheesy as it may sound, I'm looking forward to a new year of new things, which will probably involve a new city, new people, new houses, and new perspectives on life.

Cheers.

After a long day of flying, J and I are back from Arizona.

Here are some pictures from a great holiday week.

I've been trying to stay away from writing about the anecdotal minutia of everyday, and instead have been using this space as a way to remember things that J and I have been doing. However, I had such an amazing occurrence with the government today that I just had to write it here, so as to remember it.

I need to qualify this by stating that I have about the lowest possible opinion of menial government workers as anyone I've ever met; the people I've encountered in these positions seem to make up the lowest common denominator of demeanor that I've ever stumbled upon. From the DMV to the TSA to the Unemployment people, these seem to be the most unhappy, irresponsible and unresponsive people I've ever met.

I was recently summoned for Jury Duty. The summons looks and feels like a summons - as if I've done something wrong, or as if it's anticipating me doing something wrong (like, for example, ignoring the summons). It also bears a strong resemblance to the old snail-mail style phishing scams of "you've already won one of these three prizes!", but that's neither here nor there. I don't have a strong opinion about Jury Duty, and would probably find the entire thing amusing, except that my summons happened to coincide with the first week of Winter classes. I could defer, except that would leave my deferral summons open to potentially falling on the first week of April - the CHI conference - and that wouldn't do, either.

I called the Jury hotline, and after listening to a hopelessly long recorded message spelling out the obvious ("parking will not be reimbursed!", etc, etc), I was instructed to call another number for more information, but only between some strange hours like 2 and 4:30pm. It was 5pm; the chances of anyone answering were fairly abysmal, but I gave it a shot.

Not only was someone there, and not only did she answer, and not only was she nice, and not only did she defer my summons to a "later date", she told me I could also defer again if the rescheduled summons conflicted with my trip in April.

I was floored.
I'm still floored.

My faith in government is ... well, certainly not renewed, but, maybe, just a bit better?

:)

The Savannah Chamber of Commerce, and The Creative Coast, sponsored a talk by Richard Florida. I gave the COO of his company a tour of Gulfstream, and he seemed like a pretty fun cat - he dropped some bizarre nugget of gossip in casual conversation that went something like "oh, and my brother, who started the band The Talking Heads ...". I went to hear what Richard had to say. He's become a big deal, recently, but he's still the same guy he was at CMU; I don't know if he remembered me, but I certainly remembered him from all of those Trilogy recruiting events. The talk went well, but I wonder if Savannah really heard him; the town had more creative potential three or four years ago, when the property values weren't as absurd as they are now, and that would have been a better time for this sort of discussion.

Then last night, J and I went to the Primary Christmas party; it was a hilarious whose-who of the hipster, punk rock "scene" in Savannah, and I drank a lot of wine.

Some pictures:

J and I did our early Christmas yesterday. Among other things, I got her one of these (this one), and she got me this.

Here's a few pictures.

:)