On the delicate art of not sucking

Padlock

For those who don’t know me, some introduction. I am an IBM usability specialist. I am also a bit of a computer security hobbyist. I am lots of other things besides, but for the purposes of this article, these two are the relevant bits. As a usability specialist, I work on WebSphere Integration Developer, possibly one of IBM’s most usable software products to date, certainly one of the biggest usability challenges since it involves taking Nth-generation IT concepts like services-oriented architecture and loosely-bound component based application design in a J2EE application environment, and making it accessible to business people without programming skills. As a security hobbyist, I have worked (informally and unpaid) with companies like Cisco and FedEx to fix security issues in their apps before some nastier person got ahold of them. I really don’t want this to sound like strutting because it isn’t, there are lots of people in each domain with much more impressive resumes. It’s just an attempt to establish bona fides so that the next thing I say won’t sound totally stupid.

Security and Usability are basically the exact same kind of problem, and you’re probably doing them wrong.
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So You Want to Buy a House

Mortgage Application

With RRSP season out of the way for the time being, and with all my money spent on the recent cruise it seemed somehow fitting to talk about things I have already spent my money on for a while. Since buying a house was, at the time (before the wedding), the single largest and most complex financial undertaking we had gone through, I can relate to the fact that some people find the prospect daunting. Honestly, I think it could stand to be a little more daunting, and that there are people buying houses out there that really shouldn’t be, but that’s exactly the kind of talk you’d expect from a guy who’s already on the in-list, and is just trying to keep out the riffraff. I don’t know why you people keep reading, honestly.

Buying a house is much more complicated if you aren’t rich. And the less rich you are, the more complicated it gets, so the first piece of advice is that if you can be rich before you buy, it will really help you out, and you should totally do that first. Even if you aren’t rich though, the process is straightforward enough and can be really happy-making if:

You can actually afford it
You build a good team
You keep some perspective

Don’t DO NOT Don’t buy a house until you’re okay with each of those. Let’s talk about them in turn.

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RIP Bryan Archer

For those who know the name, but didn’t know the news, Kristine’s dad died last week after complications during heart surgery. Combined with Virve’s dad a couple years ago, I will no doubt look back on this as the point in my life when my friends’ parents started dying. Followed none too distantly by the point in life where my own friends start dying, no doubt. I will avoid reflecting on the experience too much here since there is not likely to be anything new for me to contribute to the human corpus on the subject of dying, but suffice it to say that a) it sucks, and b) it was really quite nice to see some of the people there again, some for the first time in a decade. For those not in the know, Kristine is a friend of ours from high school, and so were many of the folks we bumped into there: Rajit (of course), Jocelyn, Virve, Janice, Miguel. We missed Alex, Paul, Craig, Joydip, Nick and Apeksha, all of whom are either on their way or were there and gone before we arrived. Weddings and Funerals – it’s how we stay connected when all else fails.

Kristine if you read this you know you are in our thoughts.

On Cruising

The fascination the world expresses with my travel plans and outcomes is, of course, an affectation put on solely for my benefit. I understand this. Against the possibility though, however remote, that people are genuinely interested in my experience both generically as a prototypical 20-something first-time-cruiser and specifically as Johnath, writer of long sentences, I will endeavour to be, if not precisely interesting, at least tiresome on new subjects.

The particulars of such things are rarely important but for your reference, our ship was the Legend of the Seas, our cruiseline Royal Caribbean, and our itinerary included Tampa, Grand Cayman, Belize, Costa Maya, and Cozumel. I will try to focus on the experience as a cruise, since I sense that many of my friends (dare I say, readers) have not cruised before. Continue reading “On Cruising” →