And the winner is…

Moviesaurus Rex from Brendan Cullen.

I really liked every suggestion, but as soon as I saw this one I pictured a fat purple dinosaur with big googly eyes tossing DVDs down his gullet with abandon.

Thanks, Brendan! You have won…absolutely nothing! Well, not true. Your idea of a name will go on, your name will forever appear in the credits for the application, and you will have my eternal gratitude. Sorry I can’t afford a real prize.

Now, don’t anyone expect this thing to show up anytime soon. My husband (for some reason) insists that I get paid work done before I work on my personal project. Hmph. Need I lament again about how hard it is to fit my job (well, the one I actually get dough for doing) done?

BUT, that doesn’t mean that this will sit around forever. And I really doubt anyone else will have much interest in it anyway. I’d actually be surprised if there is anyone even reading this far. If you are, here are the features I plan to include.

• Track movie collection (DVDs, VHS, digital downloads for when I get an iPod that will handle video)
• Print filtered/unfiltered shopping list
• Print filtered/unfiltered wish lists
• Track movies I want to see
• Track movie release dates (iCal/Google Calendar integration?)
• UPC/ISBN entry of inventory (lookup through Amazon?)
• AIR app
• E-mail reminders (movie release dates)
• Track movies loaned to people (Address Book/Gmail contact integration?)
• Track purchase price and provide total investment reports
• Provide net worth based on median price on Half.com and Amazon Marketplace
• Updates on wish list items available at Amazon, eBay, and/or Half.com
• Wish list import from Amazon and Half.com
• Multiple users
• Pretty pie charts by genre, price, format (useless eye candy)
• Search by title, format, keyword, actor
• Personal ratings and reviews/comments
• Critic information from Rotten Tomato
• Ratings from Amazon
• Images (hosted on Flickr or picasa)
• Suggest movies to friends or warn them of duds
• Look up title at library and place a hold
• Share wish lists with others to provide gift suggestions
• Series movies linked together somehow
• Similar movie suggestions

This is not a definite list by any means; just the result of brainstorming and a lot of “Gee, I wish there was an app that would do that” and “Wow! I could use the API to do this” kind of things. As you can see, this is quickly growing bigger than simply tracking what DVDs I have. I’m hoping to track a lot of things. For me it will be really helpful to be able to take a list of movies that I want to see with me to the video store, or a list of movies I have on VHS and I want to get on DVD to Half Price Books. I think there are lots of opportunities here to integrate with other applications and services out there, too. I can’t wait to get started.

When I was running my own DNS server, I didn’t have this problem, because I just copied the corporate domain into mine and served as a secondary provider. However, I got tired of updating it manually and started using OpenDNS (which is great, BTW). Now when I fire up the craptastic IE 6 and type in the dev box’s URL, it goes right to OpenDNS’s “not loading” error page. Damn.

I had nightmarish visions of messing with registry entries to wrangle the DNS server order into something that would work. Or rebooting my MacBook Pro repeatedly until the PC’s NIC got a connection (anyone familiar with that fun little bug?). However, the fix turned out to be exceedingly simple: edit the hosts file on the PC. I added an entry for the dev box and voila! I can now run tests in the favorite of all favorite browsers (known in our office as Stupid IE).

I remember being able to get into the zone in a nice quiet office. I remember coding away, finishing a module and looking up to find it was time to go home.

* sigh *

Now I’m lucky to get four hours strung together to just work. Even then, there are constant interruptions. Except at one in the morning. Then there are no interruptions. Heh.

I’m getting burned out working this way. An hour here, an hour there. Trying to get back into what I was doing and figure out where I left off. It’s hard, folks. Anyone who tells you that working from home is easy probably also has a bridge to sell you.

* sigh *

And the thing is, even when I have a Sunday with Ray home and I’m holed up in my bedroom office, I still have a hard time focusing. It seems that with the constant interruptions and scattered working hours I have lost my ability to focus. I can’t seem to get to that point where I’m thinking about the code and only the code, and progress feels incredibly slow.

So, please keep an eye out for me. My focus has to be around somewhere. If you see it, can you please let me know? I’ll keep looking.

In order to learn Ruby, I would like to start a pet project. Now, this isn’t something that I intend to publish or sell or anything like that. This is strictly a learning project for me. What is it?

I want to build a web application that will track movies. Yup, I know. Delicious Library and all that. But, remember, the purpose for me is to learn Ruby. To that end, I have a laundry list of features that I want to include. These are a mixture of features I’d love to have in an application and features that will allow me to learn new things, such as working with APIs from other sites.

The problem is that I just can’t think of a good name for it. If I’m left to my own devices, it will be called something like MediaTracker or MediaKash (get the pun? neither did anyone else). This, dear reader (I do have readers, right?), is where I need your help.

Name My Application

There are lots of really creative types out there and I’m asking you to come up with a name for my application. I have nothing for you to win, other than my sincere thanks. I can include your name in the credits somewhere so that everyone else can give you their sincere thanks as well.

Please post any suggestions you have in the comments. I will post the winner and it will be forever immortalized in my application and the domain it inhabits.

One of the topics brought up was how to enter in dates. Date pickers can be clumsy and ugly, with a host of browser compatibility issues. Providing a blank text field is confusing for the user. Several comboboxes can work, but they get long and there’s lots of mousing involved.

Someone asked about the possibility of a field that would be able to take a value such as “yesterday” or “last monday” and get the right date. There seemed to be some general agreement that this was a great way to go. Let me tell you about my experiences with that.

NSDateFormatter

In Cocoa, we have this really cool object called NSDateFormatter. This object has the sole purpose of taking user-entered date strings and converting them into NSDate objects. It can also take an NSDate object and present a string representation in the format you choose. Cool, right? Wait, it gets better.

With the allowNaturalLanguage option, your fancy-schmancy formatter will also take strings such as “yesterday” and “last monday”, parse it out, and provide the correct date in an NSDate object! We use this functionality all the time in our GUI applications. It really does work quite well.

Since we use an antique version of WebObjects to build our web applications, we are writing them in Objective-C, which means that we have NSDateFormatter available for our date fields on our web forms.

From the beginning, NSDateFormatters have been used to allow our users to enter dates in just about any way they wanted to. We thought it was so cool that a member could type in “today” and get the correct date. It would be great not to require a specific format and allow the user to enter the dates in whatever way came naturally to them. There would be no training required, no questions about how to enter the data. Users would love it!

User Understanding

Our users are constantly confused about how to enter dates. When they ask and we reply, “You can enter the date in any format you wish” they still don’t get it.

“Do I have to use dashes?”

“Yes, you can enter them that way. Or you can just type ‘today’ and it will get the right date.”

“What, the word ‘today’?”

“Yes, or ‘last week’ or ‘next monday’. However you want to enter the date, you can.”

“Okay, so dashes will work, right?”

“Yes, dashes will work.”

I’ve had that conversation over and over, and I know a few others I work with have, too.

Caveat

I do have a caveat to this. Our site was not designed for usability. It was created, written, and designed by developers. Admittedly, the site is complex and hardly user-friendly. Date entry is certainly not the only thing that confuses our users.

Going Forward

We have a port coming up of all of our web applications. Chances are, they won’t be written in Objective-C anymore, which means no more NSDateFormatter. I will not mourn its loss.

The next iteration of our site should be much more user-friendly, as it will be designed with usability in mind. Even so, I will provide a text field with a strictly enforced format. I have learned my lesson. For our users, at least, more choices = more confusion. While parsing out normal English, providing a text field with a strict format requirement will remove all questions about how to enter data.

Take aways

For me, I have more than the concrete takeaway of a strict date-entry format. It is a huge reminder to keep focused on the users and not on what I think is really cool. I’m a geek, my users are not. My users tend to be quite computer illiterate. I see this slowly changing as our oldest members retire and new, Internet-savvy members come in, but it will be a long process.

Lesson for others? Perhaps it is just to remember that even the coolest features might not be the most user-friendly features. Yes, they are a ton of fun for us to implement and they make our fellow developers “ooh” and “aahh”, but stay focused on your users. After all, they are the reason you’re building that site in the first place.

When we arrived I saw no one. I breathed an inward sigh of relief. Then a tiny little boy toddled over a hill, followed closely by his mother. Soon I spotted his big sister going down the slide. I stiffened a little bit, but the woman seemed nice and her daughter was Timmy’s age, so there didn’t appear to be any threat of bullying.

Timmy and this other little girl immediately hit it off. He ran right up to her and yelled, “Hi!” She yelled an enthusiastic “Hi!” right back at him. From that moment they chased each other, raced down the slides, and told jokes to each other that only three-year-olds get. Kellie and the baby brother did their best to keep up. All four children had a great time and us Moms relaxed. Then they left and the next family came.

This time it was a lady on a cell phone and three boys. The youngest was Timmy’s age, but the older two were quite a bit bigger. This made me worry and I prepared myself for the tantrums as I dragged my kids off the playground and to the safety of home.

But these kids were awesome. You’ve never seen two older boys who were more eager to play with little kids. Each boy had a bottle of bubbles. The youngest wasn’t interested in his and ran for the swings. Of course, Timmy came running over yelling, “I want bubbles, Mommy!”

The lady was really super nice and gave the youngest child’s neglected bottle of bubbles to Timmy. He happily blew soap solution all over himself while the older boys blew magical clouds of bubbles for Kellie to run through.

Watching my children interact with other kids and make new friends so easily, I couldn’t help but remember being a kid and the absolute dread I had of strangers. Still do. Seeing other kids on the playground would have been enough to make me beg my Mom to take me back home. Painfully shy, I’ve always had a rough time making new friends. To this day, I have a terrible fear of walking into a room of new people by myself and I make my husband promise to stay by my side if I don’t know anyone. (Lucky for me, he’s the understanding type)

So seeing my kids greet these new people without any reservations or fear just makes my heart soar. I can’t help by admire the reckless abandon with which they met these strangers. Kids so much want to be like their parents someday, but maybe someday I can be like them.

“That’s right, because you jumped on me when I had hot coffee.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why Mommy tells you not to jump on me when I have hot coffee. Do you think you’ll listen now when Mommy tells you not to do something?”

“No.”

Well, at least he’s honest. BTW: he didn’t really get burned, just a drop splashed on his face.

Talk about horrible user experiences! I tried to call the electric company to notify them of the lightning strike, but all I could do with the stupid IVR was report that our electricity was out. I thought maybe I’d get a chance to speak with a person after that, but it refused to let me do anything else, politely informing me that they are now aware of the problem.

So, I tried the customer service number. Same infuriating IVR! Luckily, this one has an escape hatch for “Other Services”. I listened to musak and how important my call is for about 5 minutes, then finally got a very friendly, if slightly testy, customer service rep. I explained the situation to her. She said, “We already have your report that your electricity is out. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you when someone will be out because they are extremely busy due to the storm.”

“I understand. It is just that the smoking pole in the backyard is a bit worrying.”

(getting testier now) “I have added a note to your report about that. The technicians will be aware. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

It took all I had not to answer, ”You mean you actually did something for me? When? I missed it.”

Ray and I prepared for a long, hot, sticky night. The kids actually went to sleep quite quickly and didn’t seem to mind the heavy air. There was a bit of a breeze once the rain stopped, so we opened all the windows. Ray and I played cribbage until it got dark, then I actually got to go to bed. No electricity, no work! Yee, haw!

Around one in the morning I was awakened by the sound of the electric company’s truck out front. After another twenty minutes or so, we had power! Still no A/C, though. Luckily, I am married to a pipefitter and he soon found the problem. But, since the night was wearing on and everyone was fairly comfortable, he left the fix until this morning.

So, the night wasn’t actually that bad. I got to spend some quality time with my husband and I got to bed early. What I thought was really weird was this feeling of isolation that I just couldn’t shake. It was totally irrational, but I felt like I had just entered a Stephen King novel and I was going to find that there was no one else in the world; that we were alone and would have to permanently live without electricity. I was just waiting for the water to stop! The irrationality was amplified by the fact that I live on a street of very close houses and we could hear several of our neighbors barbecuing. What was up with that?

It could have been due to the amazing quiet that settled over the house. There was no chatter from the television, no alerts from the computer, the telephone couldn’t ring, and the A/C wasn’t kicking in. My house is always a cacophony of kids and dog and TV and computer; the silence felt so alien. Today things seem so much louder.

What was too funny was the kids’ reaction. They couldn’t understand why we weren’t putting TV on or why they couldn’t turn the lights on. Every time Timmy went to the bathroom, he angrily asked, “Why isn’t the light turning on?!”

Kellie asked me to put on a movie for her. I told her I couldn’t because the electricity was out. She said, “No, in the playroom.”

Later on, Timmy stomped into the living room and announced (gesturing grandly), “We have to buy all new big TVs! These aren’t working.”

When they had to go to bed, they were quite disappointed that there would be no Mozart: “The music is broken, too?”

This morning, the first thing Timmy said when he got up was, “Mommy! There’s light! Is everything fixed now?”

I would love to plant more, but we will (hopefully) be moving soon and I won’t be able to take them with me. Plus, the time and attention thing.

While cleaning out the garage on the 4^th I found a couple of old pots. FLASH!

This morning my daughter and I picked out this lovely pink miniature rose. It has a place of prominence on the kitchen table, which is where I frequently work. I know it is small and silly, but just looking over at that rose while toiling over authentication algorithms just puts a smile on my face. I was like a kid with a new toy: I couldn’t wait to get it home from the nursery and get it into its new home.

I really do find that small things like this can be huge pick-me-ups. If you are feeling down, find something small that will cheer you up. Read a book you’ve been wanting to read, see a movie you’ve been wanting to see, color in a coloring book, make your favorite cookies. When things are at their darkest, a small favor for yourself will let the light shine in.

When we got to church it was a madhouse. There were two registration tables set up in a narrow hallway and all the kids, parents, and siblings were being funneled through them. The two elderly ladies handling sign-ins could barely hear me when I shouted his name! There were kids crying everywhere, with Moms telling them how much fun they’d have and just to give it a chance and they’ll make all kinds of new friends. I started to worry that my little man would want to go home, too. But he didn’t seem to notice them. He was anxious to get to school.

We walked back to the preschool classroom where the three-year-olds and four-year-olds were and got his name tag. As soon as he saw all the familiar toys, the play dough, and the other kids he took off. I had to call him back for a kiss! Not to worry, my little man would love school.

When Kellie and I picked him up, the first thing he said was, “Mommy, I was getting so angry.”

Puzzled, I asked, “Did you get angry at one of the kids?”

“No.”

“Were you angry with your teachers?”

“No.”

“Why were you so angry?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

We met Daddy for lunch at Bob Evans because he happened to be working very close by. At lunch he told Daddy the same thing. Daddy asked the same questions I did and got the same responses. Then a lightbulb went on.

“Buddy, were you angry because school was taking so long?”

“Yeah. I was angry because it was a long time and you weren’t picking me up, but then you picked me up and I said, ‘I was getting so angry.’ But I was not angry anymore.”

Uh, oh.

Since this conversation we’ve asked him several times if he still wants to go and the answer is always an emphatic “Yes,” which is a good thing. I just hope the answer doesn’t change in the morning.