My shower is broken. In particular, the cold water faucet is defunct - the knob spins freely, but no water actually flows. I'll note that while taking a shower with only cold water is unpleasant, taking a shower with only hot water IS NOT DONE.
Back to fooling around with computers.
I spent a good while this afternoon doing some usability testing for Kontact Mobile (see this blog post). Currently, it's so slow that I can't be bothered to test it again until performance improves. It kinda worked, which was kinda cool, but was so overshadowed by frustration at the poor performance (we're talking over 5 minutes between pressing the on screen button and anything happening) that I wouldn't even dogfood test it. Maybe when it gets faster...
I felt almost bad sending tough feedback to the developers, but they asked for it. And ultimately, if I were a developer, that's what I'd want - to improve my product, at the expense of my ego. I look forward to my Usability/Design class.
The more I learn about Dan Ariely's works (I'm currently reading The Upside of Irrationality; you should watch his TED Talk as well as Dan Pink's TED talk), the more I wonder if my past academic successes are in fact largely attributable to my nonchalance toward them, simply learning by myself as much as I'm interested. Ariely's studies show that for intellectual work, high incentives worsen performance. I also wonder how much of said nonchalance I possessed as a child, and if I've grown more productive or less productive. Hard things to gauge.
Our shower is now fixed. I am clean!