Go Hawks!

Go tbirds, originally uploaded by Patty OK.

Creme Christmas

Creme Christmas, originally uploaded by Patty OK.

Bill Paying Blues

Today I get a text message on my phone that my cell phone bill was late. So I thought why isnt that on automagic bill pay? Then I thought why arent all my bills on auto magic bill pay? Well I spent an hour trying to figure that out...

From Puget Sound Energy...
From T-Mobile:And my most favorite from Seattle City Light:

What the hell? What is wrong with the internet? Is it me? I hope not. Each of these services had equally painful recovery processes. Trying to recover from the error puts you into an endless loop of password resetting and retrieval that I still could be in, even now. My only relief was that customer service on the Seattle City Light site puts me out at the Citizen Actions Bureau - citizens beware online bill pay sign up is broken.

Spring Break!

Its Spring Break. I have about one hundred things that I want to do now that I am not chained to the computer but I can be here by choice. Ill list them and see how I do.

1. Make some owls
2. Make the blog public
3. Read a fiction book
4. Use our Marjorie Gift Certificate (done! YUM.)
5. Go to the Sculpture Park
6. Visit with Friends
7. Buy some shoes
8. Clean the House
9. Finish the project I started in school
10. Tend to the Garden
11. Cook some dinners

The problem with reading online

Went to do my class reading for the week, remembered that I had to write my classmate back who sent me a crocheting question. She was asking if I thought amigurumis would be hard for someone new to the needle arts. I had to do more research. I found these anapaulaoli.etsy.com
and I bought the mamas and baby patterns. Someone I know just had a baby that might like a mama and baby owl. Uh-oh. A is going to be home soon with some beer. We are going to watch 30 Rock which is my favorite new show. I didnt get my homework done...

My Famous Roomz

Michael Hsiung mad artist gets interviewed.


Gosh and I remember when he was just ol roomz.

On the bright side

My i-pod is on the fritz so I thought I might look into a new one. Just checking the prices and I ran into the iphone. I have largely stayed away, not wanting to get sucked into the hype. But man that is cool.

I love the touch-screen. All the devices in one. I want it!

I work for a bank

Today I sat in a meeting where we learned all about the ups and downs of sub-prime loans and credit card fees. Ugh. I work for a bank.

The Peacock

If I were to take A's name and append it to my own, my initials would be p-kok. Or Peacock. Thats where this here name came from. Trying to find a little graphic element to spice up the page I was looking for some peacock imagery. They are cool looking. Of course then I wanted to create my own.

I started to build it in illustrator and just liked the idea of the representative elements of the peacock.



Taking some inspiration from Charles Harper, A's owl drawings, and vormator, Im going to work on some peacock graphics built from limited graphic shapes.

This site is a wealth of information on peacocks, I got to go back and read it all some day, its got Math!

Visualizing Data

For my class this week, we had to read a bunch of articles detailing the Tufte vs PowerPoint debate. Ohh Im so over that one. But mostly because I think the articles missed Tufte's point.

He had a strong interest in presenting large amounts of information in a small amount of space. Thats hard to do. I have been playing around this quarter with presenting information visually, mostly in my knowledge maps. This is something I want to do more of.

By this time next year I will have read one of Tufte's books.

This site is super interesting: Many-eyes .

Documenting Things

Some time ago, I resigned myself to being a generalist. There are just too many topics out there worth pursuing, for me to concentrate on just one. One reason I decided to take on grad school is that I find myself interested in every subject that I get can get real information on, and entering graduate school was a commitment to one area of interest. Communication, Information and Technology is a pretty broad subject still but at least I can rule out (for now) organic chemistry.

Limiting myself to the realm of communication, information and technology, is not really that limiting and I still find myself wanting to pursue most topics even further. But going to graduate school, working full-time and still trying to have a life prevents me from doing that so well. So I pursue one topic for an afternoon, think about what I can do to explore that topic further, make note of a book or web site somewhere and then run to catch up with the rest of the class.

As near the end of my graduate education, I'm finding that the classes have actually built upon each other, (despite the wacky scheduling in my program) and we do get back to topics that once captured my attention if only for a day.
If only I could go back to what I had thought about this topic six months ago, that would help me now. In coming back to these topics, I get a deeper understanding of each topic and become an incremental specialist.

One thing that this has taught me is that specialism does not happen overnight. I have time to explore each and every topic over my lifetime. Documenting each area will help me do that. This blog is intended for myself to keep track of the topics that inspire me over time, so that I can track my own thinking and ideas.