Brad Lauster .com

I just got this domain registered, so it'll be a while before anything worthwhile is up.

(Note from Dec. 2001: The links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

I've put together this little web site to showcase some of the work I've done.

There are currently only two areas of the site. The resumé area and the work samples area.

I've received a few questions about how I built this site. So, here's the skinny:

I did the HTML in a text editor (TextPad to be exact).

The domain is hosted by Hurrah.

The pages are served by Apache, on a box running Zope (though the current site has static pages only).

The little picture of my head was inspired by DeepLeap's web site. I made it with Photoshop (be sure to check out the image roll-over).

I'm back from oblivion (or rather, my domain is)!

Five weeks ago, I moved bradlauster.com to a new host and in the process, consolidated all my domains with one registrar.
Two weeks ago, NameZero, the company through whom I originally registered bradlauster.com, decided to mass move all their domains over to a new registrar. Unfortunately, the program they used to transfer those domains didn't look to see whether or not NameZero actually owned the domains it was transferring. As a result, my domain was transferred to Network Solutions, with a completely incorrect set of name servers attached to it.

The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that the program that accepted the incoming transfers on Network Solutions' end, didn't check to see if transferee was actually authorized to do so.

To top it all off...Network Solutions has a policy of rejecting transfers on domains that they have held for less that sixty days. So, after NameZero incorrectly transferred control of my domain to Network Solutions, they couldn't transfer it back!

Frankly, I'm flabbergasted that this could have happened in the first place. Imagine if I had been running a store on my domain. I would have lost two weeks of business!
To put this in perspective: two weeks of sales for Amazon.com is about $62,900,000*. Yep, that's 62.9 MILLION!

If nothing else, this experience has fueled my fire to improve peoples' lives through better software design. Look out world!

* Source: Amazon.com 1999 annual report

About a week ago, I found out from peterme.com (whom I've really only met once), that tpodd (whom I met in Richard Anderson's Usability Engineering / User-Centered Design Workshop), has a web site! He's got some good thoughts...check it out.

While I'm at it, I should mention that my friends Brad, Mike & Jen S, also have their own homes on the web.

(Note from Dec. 2001: The links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

I am woefully green when it comes to writing my web log.

I've noticed that most people never seem to change what they've written - despite sometimes glaring inaccuracies. I follow a few 'blogs pretty closely, but probably wouldn't notice if someone changed a previous post.

My question is this: Are there generally accepted standards of practice for personal web logs?

Since web logs are about publication without rules, I doubt that such a thing exists. I also doubt anyone would follow them if they did exist.

The only mention of web log standards I've found so far, is from Array: 02/11/2000. If my search turns up nothing else, maybe I'll just write my own.

So, my search for web log standards turned up nothing! Plus, no one e-mailed me either...most likely because no one reads my site.

I've thought it over and I hate the idea of doing something that's been done before, so I will press on with the search.

In the meantime, consider this:
Web logs are a dime a dozen these days. On any given day, you can usually find the same or similar post on loads of sites. So why do we continue to visit these sites day after day? It's because we crave the humanity, the personality...and what better a way to learn about someone's personality than to have some unique insight into the path they took to find the thing they found interesting. Sort of like their mental model for that information.

For example:

In my search for web log standards today, I read Weblogs: A History and Perspective, written by Rebecca Blood. Here's how I found it:

bradlauster.com ← peterme.com ← Scripting News ← Rebecca's Pocket

Like I said before, I'm not big on doing things that have been done before, so I'm going to try to resist the temptation to post things that I've pilfered from other web logs, but if I do, I'm going to post the path I took to find it. Now I need a good name for the path...got any ideas?

(Note from Dec. 2001: Some of the links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

Added a couple things to the site today:
I put together some of my bookmarks and created, what I call, my start page.

I've also created an ad, because I'm selling my car.

Check this out! Selena (my girlfriend), registered a couple domain names last week. You can check out her site at either imwatching.tv or imwatchingtv.com. By the way, her dream set is the Phillips Flat TV.

Well, a couple months of work all comes down to today.

You see, I've been interviewing for this job that I REALLY want and today I should find out whether or not I actually get it.

Wish me luck!

Update - 2:30 PM
One of my old college roommates, Matt, wrote me this afternoon to cheer me up. Thanks Dood!

Original post:
You know, I never thought, after getting a Bachelors of Science in Information Systems, with a concentration in Technical Communications, and working in industry for over three years, doing usability and quality evaluations, programming and interaction design, that I'd be in a position where I can't get the job I want because I don't have enough experience and I can't get experience because I can't get the job I want.

This is so foreign to me. I've never tried so hard for something and not gotten it.

E-mail me. I need some inspiration.

(Note from Dec. 2001: The links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

Well, I'm back to the beginning of my job search.

I've decided to take a little time to reevaluate what I want to do with my life, what I love and the things I hate. I'll begin by looking at my start page. You sure can learn a lot about a person by looking at their bookmarks!

Taking a look at mine, it's immediately obvious that I'm interested in design and more specifically, interactive design. It's also apparent that I'm peripherally interested in the outdoors, ecological building, the environment and transportation.

Hmmmm. So, I should get a job doing interaction design for ecologically sound methods of transportation? I never though of doing that before! Maybe I need to think about this some more (and make sure the things I'm interested in are accurately represented in my bookmarks)...but, at least, I think we're getting to the crux of it all.

Perhaps you saw something else when you looked at my start page? If so, let me know, I need your help.

They've got it and we want it.
If you do only one thing today, please sign the OS X on Intel petition to get Apple to port their (now in beta) new operating system to Intel hardware...highly unlikely, but we can dream, can't we?

Oh yeah, I've given a name to the group of links I promised to post when I link to a site who's link I found on someone else's page. Partially as a throwback to that wonderful UNIX tool, traceroute (tracert if you're on Windows), I've named it tracelink. So, here's the tracelink:

bradlauster.com ← Slashdot ← MacSlash ← OS X on Intel

My friend, Jerry (sorry, no web site), turned me onto the Simpsons Intelli-Tronic Figures & Playsets, and now, I MUST OWN THEM ALL!

Memes:
It seems that memes (pronounced meems) themselves have become memetic.

The October 2000 issue of Scientific American has an article about memes, called, "The Power of Memes," arguing that our proclivity for handling memes was major influence in human evolution.

I only read about half of it while I was waiting for the plane yesterday, but I liked what I read. Unfortunately, the article is not online, but the
synopsis is. I'm going to buy the issue this evening.

Movies:
Dave Anolik, a fellow Intel employee, and Don Brown have produced a documentary about do-it-yourself film making called digital american dream.

I'm going to the premiere! It's tomorrow, 09/28, at 8:00 PM at The Roxie, which is at Valencia and 16th, here in San Fran...come with me!

...just a quick update today:

I've posted the Polaroids we took at our "Please Don't Fall Off The Roof Fest'."

I'm getting closer to knowing, for sure, where I want to take my career. As I think about it, I keep coming back to a need I have to make peoples' lives better. I suppose that's a pretty broad statement, but regardless of whether that means making life easier, helping people feel more empowered or simply making the world a more beautiful place, the statement still rings true.

Hmmm...that doesn't narrow it down much, does it?

In addition to looking for a new job, I'm also considering a return to academia. I've spoken about this, briefly, with tpodd. He's been working on a survey of graduate programs in the domain of human-computer interaction.

In the off-chance that this will expedite his work: please send me your grad school recommendations.

Phew! I had so much stuff to do this week...I'm feeling better now that I've got nearly all of it done.

I have yet to decide whether or not I'm actually going to apply to grad school, but I am beginning to find some programs I'm interested in. I'll probably break out my GRE review books and do a little test preparation this weekend.

Like I said, whether or not I'll actually apply is still up in the air, but right now I'm leaning towards the Georgia Tech program. I'm attracted to it because it seems to be rooted in the humanities and social and cognitive sciences. Georgia Tech also has it's own industrial design program, which is exciting to me.

Speaking of Industrial Design, tpodd pointed me to the web site of prolific Industrial Designer, Marc Newson. Very cool! Check it out...I bet you'll recognize some of his work.

Oh man...I love The Price is Right!

It's really all about the music for me.

...who could forget this little number (mp3 from tpirsite.com)? tpir stands for The Price is Right, in case you didn't catch that one.

I can't seem to find the "bad noise" though. You know: bum bum bah bum! Maybe you could send it to me?

Well, I've been busy playing around with XML, but I had to break the silence and wish Selena a happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Girl!

Yes, I am still alive!
Life has been super hectic lately. I'm currently in recovery mode from a couple brutal weeks at work.

My parents also came out for a visit, which was fun! Among other things, we did a lot of eating! We went to Eric's, Pisces, Belle Roux, and my personal favorite, FireFly. Of all the restaurants we went to, my Mom seemed to like Eric's (about thee doors down) the best! She was really down with the $4.50 lunch special! She even thought it was better the "The Great Wall" Chinese Restaurant. That seems to be the obligatory name for Chinese restaurants back home, in upstate New York.

Ok...no more posty for now. I've got to go decide how I'm going to vote tomorrow!

Voting was a real dilemma this evening!

Let me tell you how I voted and why:

I was really torn while deciding. On one hand I'm very much in support of Ralph Nader's platform. On the other hand, it's very important to me to keep George W. out of the White House.

I won't bother to go into why I think George W. doesn't even deserve to represent my garbage, but I will go into why I didn't vote for Nader.

The decision for me was: do I help Nader get 5% of the vote or do I help keep George W. out of office? The polls I saw before the election didn't show Nader getting anywhere near the 5% he needed to secure federal matching funds for the party in 2004. So, I waited until late to vote. As a result, I had a pretty good idea of how things were going and the way it was going was not good for Nader. It was quite apparent that he would not get the votes he needed, so I cast my presidential vote for Al Gore and promised myself that I'd contribute to the green party in the future.

It looks like my strategy played out as I thought it would. It now appears that Al Gore will take California. I guess I should be happy, but it just not easy to get excited about Al Gore.

Can you believe how close this race is? I guess I'll just have to wait, like everyone else!

I've been working on a personal web site for our intranet, at work, lately. My boss' boss is giving $200 bucks to the person with the best design.

It shouldn't be too hard to beat a FrontPage template, right?

I think I'm going to roll my intranet site design into bradlauster.com. Here's a sneak preview:

Notice the pie menu, offering quick - and for you bradlauster.com junkies, habitual - access to all areas of the site. Also note the color coordinated scroll bar, visually indicating your current location in the site.

Perhaps you've got some comments?

Why, oh why, won't The Carnegie Mellon School of Design update their web site describing their PhD Programs?

I'm SO psyched! I ordered a Wacom Intuos 9x12 Tablet today! Now all I need is a Spaceball for doing 3D work.

In other news...Selena and I are going to see the Delgados at Bottom of the Hill tonight. I hope tickets are still available.

E-mail me if you wanna come with...

I went to Bottom of the Hill twice this weekend; once for the first time. What a great place! Everyone was so friendly. When Selena and I got there, much to our chagrin, the show was sold out. But, like I said, people were friendly and we found tix in a few minutes. Yay!

The Delgados were good too. Selena thought they sounded a bit like Drugstore. I replied, "Drugstore?" I'm such an indie band nit-wit. Selena has a wild CD collection, including Drugstore. Sadly, it is completely unorganized. So, rather than spending hours wading through the black hole that is Selena's CD collection, I downloaded a Drugstore tune called Sober on Napster the next day. The two bands really DO sound similar! Check it out for yourself:

Thirteen Gliding Principles, by The Delgados (mp3, ~5.3 Mb)
Sober, by Drugstore (mp3, ~4 Mb)

On Saturday I hung out with the TI crew and tpodd. Brad brought over chicken enchiladas. Yum! He's a trained, French chef you know...I know, now you're thinking, "French, eh? That must mean he's a prick." Au contraire! Anyway, after the great enchiladas, we headed out to a party in this warehouse formerly inhabited by The Four Non-Blondes. Luckily, all four of them moved out long ago. I had a good time.

At the party, Todd told me about how he went to go jam with Jack Saturn earlier that day. All the music I've been around in the past 72 hours has made me wish I was in a band. I don't really have the instrumental talent though. As I like to tell people, "I'm not so much a guitar player as I am, someone who plays with a guitar." And even though I play a mean Trombone, not too many bands are looking to fill that particular musical niche. I mentioned to Brad though, the second time I was at Bottom of the Hill this past weekend, "As a singer, I'm all about the lyrics." Brad's a great singer too, so I was surprised to hear him say that lyrics didn't matter too much to him. The problem with being a singer is, it's damn near impossible to find a band who needs a singer.

...oh yeah, further compounding my musical quandary: my old roommate, Matt, is coming for a visit over the Thanksgiving holiday. If he weren't going for a PhD at Georgia Tech, he'd probably be opening for Eric Johnson or something...point is, he's an unbelievable guitarist. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't get lessons from him in college...too busy with the whole school thing, I guess. Maybe I can convince him to move out here and start a band with me.

Summary of the above ramblings: it was a good weekend.
Note: You may have been confused by the fact that my name is Brad and my best friend's name is also Brad. Feel free to re-read the whole thing. I'll wait...

Hardware failures kept bradlauster.com offline for much of the weekend...but no matter. I had friends in town and was too busy to update anyway. I wish they could've stayed longer, but I think I got to show them quite a bit of the city none-the-less. I'm especially glad I got to show them more than just the touristy places...though we saw those too.

Matt and Alison came from Georgia and Jerry and Sam came from Virginia. It was odd hearing them talk about life without good public transportation. Frankly, I had forgotten what life was like without it and I'm not sure I want to live anywhere that doesn't have it. Ahhh, J Line, what would I do without you?

By the way, we did the Thanksgiving thing over at Treasure Island again this year. All I can say is...mmmm, deep fried Turkey!

While listening to election reports on NPR today, I was inspired to create this...come on, you knew someone was going to do it!

Feel free to put it on your own site - all I ask is that you don't remove the message about bradlauster.com.

Hell, if you're feeling extra generous, maybe you can buy me the new electric Xootr scooter as a thank you. ;^)

I can't BELIEVE people are tired of hearing about the Presidential Election coverage, saying, "Oh, I think Gore should just concede. I'm tired of hearing about it."

Tired of hearing about it!?! What the hell? If you don't care that the will of the people is reflected by the results of the Presidential Election, then why did you vote in the first place?

Bush's attorneys are saying, "The ballots have been counted three times and Bush was the winner each time." The fact is, all the ballots have NOT been counted. There are at least 14,000 ballots that were not counted - for whatever reason (source: NPR News). CNN is reporting that, based on Florida's certified results, Bush's lead is 537 votes.

It doesn't take a high school education to figure out that 14,000 is far greater than 537!

Frankly, I'm not particularly enamored by either candidate (I voted for Bradley in the primary), but the idea that one candidate should give up, when we KNOW that there are ballots that haven't been counted, is insane! My concern is that the results of this election reflect the will of the American people.

Oh...and if you're one of those people who think that the voters in Florida, who screwed up their ballots, were just idiots, read this usability study done on mechanical lever and punch card voting systems, done in 1998. Their recommendation: the punch card ballot should be "redesigned...or replaced entirely with a less problematic system."

Our Conference Room Scheduling software releases next Monday! Until then, check this out:

Move over Metropolis (my favorite design mag), there's a new guy in town: One - Design Matters. Whether or not it'll be any good remains to be seen.

...a bunch of randomness today:

You guys would be so grossed out if you could see what I was doing right now (6:51 PM ). I melted a big block of Velveeta and mixed in some salsa to make this cheesy chip dip. It's chunky and orange-red in color and all congealed along the edge of the bowl. Blech! ...I can't stop shoving it in my face though. I'd suggest you try it yourself, but I don't want to be held responsible for any cheese food induced manias.

My parents got TiVo today. Woo Hoo! Everyone who plays with ours wants one.

It dawned on me today, during a fit of HTML writing (for the help file of our conference room scheduling application) that The Sundays are the only band I can think of that hasn't done one single song that I don't like. I mean, three albums and not one tune that I don't care for...what are the odds? (I just know that now that I've posted this, I'm going to come up with a bunch of other examples...c'est la vie!)

I made an icon for bradlauster.com today. If you bookmark my site with Internet Explorer, you'll get a little icon of my head by the bookmark and by the URL in the address bar. I made one for tpodd too! It was fun...

The new issue of Wired (Jan. 2001) has a big section on design. It's becoming increasingly apparent that (making a HUGE generalization here) most designers are pompous gas-bags, more concerned with looking cool to their designer friends than creating something that (non-designer) people can really feel good about using. This is disconcerting because I'm really striving to gain enough knowledge and skills to be able to, comfortably, call myself a designer. A pompous gas-bag is really not something I'm shooting for, ya know?

It seems that there are companies out there that do strive to create products that people will value and feel good about owning and using. I get that impression that IDEO is one of those companies. Cooper Interaction Design is another. In fact, when I interviewed at Cooper, I specifically remember one of their buzz phrases being about design without the ego. I like that.

...which brings me to the topic of starting my own design firm. I've been thinking of launching my own company for a while now. Without giving away too many of the details before I've really thought things over, I think I might follow the model that Joel, of Joel on Software, followed to created his fledgling company Fog Creek Software: gather your thoughts together in a 'blog, write a book colligating those thoughts into a unified vision for your company, launch the company. Simply genius, I think. ...now to start a more concentrated 'blog and begin writing my book. This is going to be a long process, but keep your eyes peeled for it on OpenLeaf.

...one last thing: what the hell is the point of Driving Over Jakob Nielsen?

Can I just tell you how cool my parents are?

They got me a Fuji FinePix 40i.

What a great gift! I'm so excited! This totally makes up for the Xmas I got a calligraphy kit. (Heh heh...my Mom will get a kick out of that.)

...oh yeah, bradlauster.com is goin' multimedia baby!

Depressing music:
What is it about depressing music that is SO appealing to me?

Here's my off-the-cuff explanation: When I get depressed, I seem to get more introspective. It seems that the times when I'm feeling the most introspective are also the times that I'm feeling the most creative - artistically. So, in some way, creativity must be tied to depression. (How's that leap for ya?) I like feeling creative, so I guess the depressing music is appealing because it enhances my creativity...or is it that I just like feeling depressed?

I wonder what happens, physiologically, during the kind of mild depression experienced from, say, a depressing song? Perhaps the old adage of having to suffer for your art is true?

Music=Presentation, Computers=Implementation
I struck me, while listening to some tunes last night, that you never hear musicians talking about how they implemented a song. I've never heard a song writer say anything like, "This song is based on how the fourth beat in the 5/4 time signature is emphasized more than the other four."

On the other hand, programmers (maybe Alan Cooper's term, apologists is more appropriate here) talk about how things are implemented all the time.

Why is that? The only good reason I could come up with was that the tools musicians use to create music are way more refined than the tools programmers use to create programs. This makes sense because musical instruments have been around way longer than, say, Java 1.whatever or Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE.

...but more on that later.

You know what? I am totally excited about the upcoming year! I feel really refreshed and focused. Last year at this time I was looking for an apartment in San Francisco (driving down here from Sacramento every weekend was absolute hell), hating my job and was really unclear with what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

It's strange, how my life progresses. I tend to experience things at different times than other people who are my age. Take this whole what I want to do with the rest of my life thing. Seems like most people went through that kind of discovery in college...but not me! Three years into a pretty decent career at Intel and all of a sudden I decide, "This isn't really doin' it for me."

This year, though, I feel great! My life has direction and I've got a good idea of how I'm going to get where I want to go.

While writing this I've been pondering whether I've been building up to this point for a long time or if there was some event that just set it off. I don't know for sure, but I certainly can't discount the great start I had to the New Year with my friends on Treasure Island.

I was in one of those (rare) chatty moods. It's always funny when I get talkative, because I usually don't speak too much, so when I do, everyone is always like, "Holy shit, Brad's talking!"

Anyway, I hope you're all feeling as refreshed and upbeat as I am. Happy New Year to the readers of bradlauster.com!

...all three of you.  ;-)

The omnipotent Kottke made a great observation today. He commented that while previous decades all had their own unique monikers, the 90s seemed to have been a "Where's That From? Decade" or a "Meta Decade."

I've pondered this before and completely agree. I can recall thinking of the 90s as the "How Many Other Decades Can We Copy During This Decade? Decade."

I'm always amused by Jason's posts. He has this uncanny ability, it seems, to tap into my thoughts and post them on his site. That is, he always seems to post things that I've pondered, but just never thought to put on my own site.

I wonder if others feel the same way about his posts?

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I had a good conversation with Selena, over diner, last night. We got to talking about starting our own business. We came to the conclusion that everyone we know likes to hang out, listen to music and drink. Awww yeah...a business unlike you've ever seen is in the works!

...by the way, my friend Jenn has got some pics up at drsnaggle.com. You should check them out. Jen used to be a copy writer and it shows...SO WITTY!

Earlier this week, I was thinking that newsgroups had really gone down the crapper. One out of every two messages in alt.design.product was either an ad for an alternative to viagra or spam from a porno site.

As you can probably imagine, I didn't expect much when I posted to the group asking about universities offering new product development programs. But, lo and behold, a few days after I uploaded the request, a kind person e-mailed me with a link to a cool program that's right in my own back yard (practically). The link was to the Product Design Program at Stanford.

As a result, my faith in newsgroups was temporarily restored - right after I wrote a rule to automatically delete all posts with the word "viagra" in the subject.

I'm going to take a couple classes during the Spring Semester at SFSU. Let me know if you want to join me.

Here are the classes:

Drawing Workshop
Instructor: Edward Stanton
10 Saturday mornings
Mar. 3 - May 12, 10am - 1PM
SFSU CAMPUS, FA 286
$165

Interaction Design
Instructor: Janice Crotty
6 Wednesday evenings
Mar. 7 - Apr. 11, 6:30 - 9:30PM
SFSU Downtown Center, 425 Market St.
$455

As a Green Mountain Energy customer, I'm proud to offer this solution to the rising energy rates in California.

By the way, I signed up for Practicing Information Architecture yesterday. Let me know if I'll see you there!

Well, I've got that thing that's goin' around! The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told me that the Coronavirus is to blame. Whatever the cause, I'm down for the count!

...in the meantime, keep your eye on I'm Watching.TV. Selena's finally doing some work on her site.

Though I'm feeling better, I'm still not 100% over what Jenn has officially dubbed "the sickness."

By the way, I've been working on my re-design and playing with a nifty little tool called Greymatter. I recommend checking it out. It's very handy...and hey, who can turn down free source code?

(Note from Dec. 2001: The links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

Hey, I learned something else new today: Netscape doesn't recognize cascading style sheet class names with underscores. If that's not the most absurd example of crappy coding, I don't know what is.

With that last little bit of knowledge, I solved a number of design problems that were troubling my pretty little head. If you'd like to keep an eye on the progression of the design you can take a look over here. I'd love to get your feedback, so if you've got comments, let me know, ok?

In other news, Selena's imwatching.tv launched today, complete with an I'm Watching TV Cam, so you can watch her watch TV. TOO FUNNY!

What's Pe-mail, you ask? It's my fabulous new product idea!

In short, Pe-mail is a Peer to Peer e-mail system that is going to solve all of the current problems with e-mail. Woo Hoo! You're excited now, right?

It's sort of a hybrid between traditional e-mail and instant message. Without going into the details, here's what I'll be focusing on: client usability and back-end scalability.

I suppose I could work on developing it myself, but I really want to get some more design experience. I'm thinking of making it the first design project for OpenLeaf and running the development as an open source project.

So why'd I name it Pe-mail? I just thought it was funny, in a fourth-grade-humor sorta way. Certainly "Pe-mail" isn't as funny as, say, Back Orifice, but hey, if you come up with anything better, let me know, ok?

Formerly known as the Mexican Jesus, though you wouldn't know it from this picture, Josh has been a good friend of mine since high school. It's his birthday today. Woo Hoo! Happy Birthday, yo!

...and for you OS interface freaks: Mac OS X has been all over the news this week!

First off, the question, that just won't die (this time, from Slashdot): OS X on x86?

Also, the interface gods, namely Jef Raskin and Bruce Tognazzini, speak out about the short comings of OS X. A post on Slashdot, linked to this article about things Raskin has said about OS X. Unfortunately, I can't find Raskin's original comments anywhere. Bruce Tognazzini's Top 10 Reasons the Apple Dock Sucks can be found on his web site (actually, the mirror - when the hell is he going to fix that?).

(Note from Dec. 2001: Some of the links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

Hi! I'm back! I can't believe it's been 20 days since my last post! I wish I could say I've been super busy, but life has been pretty low key. Here's what I've been up to:

My sister, Adele, visited, which was cool, but the weather was crummy and she was sick for half of the time. We did get a few nice days though, one of which we used to head over to Muir Woods. That was fun for me...I love trees!

While Adele was here she also managed to get Selena sick. Her sickness was just kicking into gear when Selena and I went to Mama Mia, the musical based on music by ABBA. We thought it was going to be cheesy, but it actually turned out to be pretty funny and entertaining.

I've also been doing a lot of reading. I finished Understanding Comics a couple weeks ago. I also got to see Scott McCloud in person at the Alternative Press Expo. I've also started reading The Humane Interface again...it fell behind my desk and was lost for a few months. DOH!

...and finally, I've been working with Brad, on the interface to his XML translator for Biologists. He calls it WAX.

Oh yeah! The redesign is almost complete.

(Hover over the pictures for descriptions.)

(Note from June 2002: I get a lot of hits from Google searches looking for "refurbished xootr," so I thought I should update this entry. This sale ended a long time ago (note the March 2001 entry date). I bought two Xootr Cruz scooters and love them! If you're thinking about getting one - DO IT! They're very well built. Feel free to post a comment if you have questions.)

Xootr is having a sale on factory seconds and refurbished scooters. You can get a Xootr Cruz for as little as $100! ...I imagine you now want to leave to check out the sale?

I made a few minor changes to bradlauster.com today. I don't imagine they'll change the way you use the site. Please let me know if you find any busted links.

Also, Jenn's first piece of work from her new job went live today. Way to go Jenn!

Adele is my sister. She wrote me today with these astute questions/observations:

For starters: what the hell's a 'blog anyway?
Glad you asked! The term 'blog is short for weblog, a term I believe was coined by peterme. For more info., I highly recommend reading Rebecca Blood's essay "Weblogs: A History and Perspective."

Also, grey is not a color, its a shade (see entry from 19-March-2001), but you're right, your arrow is way better.
Yeah - you're right about grey...what was I thinking? About the arrow: thanks! Take THAT Jakob Nielsen!

Didn't you used to have a wish list link on your page under: perhaps you'd like to...?
I sure did...if I put it back, will you buy me stuff?

Under your buy my car link you have SIX pictures of the outside of your car, but no interior shots. ...this would be especially good for your car as i imagine it to be virtually spotless.
You're right, my car IS spotless inside! I just know someone out there is itching to buy it...would pictures of the inside put you over the edge?

Your links page is nice, but can you rearrange some of them so there aren't so many big gaps?
I COULD do that, but I doubt I will. Can you do it for me?   :P

Finally, you need to develop your picture section more. You only have two entries! and then you put other pictures on your blog. Why bother with a picture section if you aren't going to develop it.
I actually have a TON of pictures all ready to go. I just have to make pages for them. I should probably write a script that does it, so I don't have to make all those pages by hand...sometime soon, I hope!

She ends the message with this:
...if you don't find any of this helpful, hey...at least your sis wrote you! :)
tell Selena i said hi
love you lots bro---del

Thanks Adele, I love you too!

This is not an April Fools joke: I sold my car today! Woo Hoo!

...and here's a link for good measure:
Find out the distribution of people in the U.S. with your last name at Hamrick Software's - U.S. Surname Distribution page.

Nathan Shedroff's new web site is up.

(Note from Dec. 2001: The link in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

I bought some $18 shirts from Zoza.com last week. They have an interesting site. It's very non-standard: um, ok, I wrote those sentences a few days ago and I forgot what my point about the site was. Oh well, I highly recommend the Z Shirts (mens, page 12).

(Note from Dec. 2001: Some of the links in this post were no longer valid, so I removed them and italicized the words that used to be linked, for reference.)

It's launch time baby! Welcome to bradlauster.com 2.0!

I've got greymatter running and it looks like at least most of the pages are working. ;^)

Anyway, not much is new as far as content goes, though I do have a couple new sets of pictures up.

I expect that you'll be seeing updates a lot more often too, now that I have something of a content management system.Please have a look around and let me know what you think by posting a comment (just click on the little speech bubble down there on the right. See it? Go ahead, click it...you know you want to).

Above all else, enjoy!