David and Jennilyn

As I grew up, my parents did not allow me to own a video game console. Although, I eventually got around that when we owned our first computer (albeit, I had to justify that the game was educational initially).

Looking back, I’m very thankful that my parents forced gave us the opportunity to use our imagination instead of being entertained by flashing pixels on a television. I made up a lot of crazy plots while helpless G.I. Joe or Transformers action figures did my bidding.

I’ve rekindled that imagination as I watch our daughters play with the simplest of things and having the greatest joy doing so. From peekaboo with a baby wipes box to today’s tug-of-war, I’m amazed again and again how much fun can be had with simple objects.

My cousin Eileen graduated from Benson last night. It marked an end of her high school career but it also the end of Benson High School as I know it. Class of 2010 will likely be the last where Benson is a four-year polytechnic program—the program that gave me a head start in computer science fifteen years ago. My senior project was my first jump into web site design and I’m sad that the opportunities Benson offered are gone for future generations.

At Wanda’s funeral, I was initially touched that the memorial ground keepers would provide flowers for each grave since almost every grave had flowers. I was even more touched when I realized that it actually was each family’s descendants who placed flowers.

One of the sessions at a web conference last week talked about how our brains are pattern recognizers. One of the strongest patterns I’m sure our brain recognizes are faces, which would explain why there is a Flickr pool dedicated to pictures of faces in places.

One of the things I’ve learned in my design work that while it might seem instinctual to always give more choices to an opportunity, giving too many options actually is counterproductive. While I don’t lament the passing of our old washer that no longer finished its cycles without human intervention or our dryer that needed 1.6 cycles to dry our clothes, my first reaction to the “wealth” of cleaning and drying options on our new washer and dryer pair was “Hmm… cool buttons, but lots of cool buttons.”

I wouldn’t have guessed it when she was first born, but now, Violet looks very similar to me when I was a baby. As I look at her profile, she has my lower lip that sticks out. She’ll probably be an under-bite like her daddy.

She started crawling last week and I haven’t gotten use to her being semi-mobile. She reaches out with her arms and pulls her body along. She hasn’t quite figured out to lift her hips and use her legs to propel her, but it’ll only be a matter of time.

I get a wonderful smile from her when I come home from work. If she’s really excited, she’ll throw her arms up and down like she’s doing a breast stroke. Speaking of arms throwing, she’s figured out to clap her hands. She misses hand contact often, but we know what she’s trying to do.

I love that she is a cuddler. I will always have fond memories of holding her to my chest and rocking her to sleep—either in our dark bedroom at night or in the middle of a noise Chinese restaurant during late-afternoon dim sum.

Four years ago, I purchased my first bluetooth headset, thinking it’s the future. The problem with being on the cutting edge of technology is sometimes you get ostracized. Granted, bluetooth headsets have the most annoying and unconventional user interface design (why blink annoyingly at everyone else and the user can’t see it?!), wearing one of these was not a statement of “coolness.”

On one occasion, as I was preparing to leave a meeting, I slipped my bluetooth headset on and two of my colleagues teased me of being borg. I was slightly embarrassed and after that, I only put the headset on after I got in my car.

At long last, with the new law requiring hands-free devices for talking while driving, I see people with bluetooth headsets everywhere. Now, we are all borg—borg with annoying blue blinking lights.