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For a number of years I’ve been collecting screen shots of ridiculous messages given to me by poorly written programs and web pages. They need a better home, so I’ve started a UI Hall of Shame category for this purpose, because I enjoy commenting on them too much to send them to The Daily WTF. I’ll periodically post some of my favorite snippets of stupidity.

To go along with all of the new things going on in my life, the first entry is from the web page I had to use to set up automatic payments for the cable company I was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with to get Internet access. This was a disappointing experience altogether, but the page below contains the most egregious violation of intelligence. To get to this form, I first had to enter my zip code to get to the correct sub-conglomerate site. Then in the screen before this one, I entered my account number and clicked “Register”. Having arrived at the correct site for my zip code and given my account number, they were able to look up my name and print both my name and account number back to me so I could then copy and paste the account number into the field just below where they printed it. And reenter my zip code. Or was I supposed to apply some obscure mathematical function first and arrive at some entirely more enlightening number?

Double feature: going along with the theme of making me do extra work for no particular reason is a dialog box from Windows Vista that I encountered before I finished writing this post (no, not on my computer):

“Change settings that are currently unavailable”. What the heck are they and why aren’t they available? And if that’s really true, how is it that I can change them anyway after clicking this unnecessarily ambiguous thing that may be a button but could possibly be an html link because we’re trying to blur the lines between the Internet and your computer for our devious purposes? It turns out that some extra settings lower down that are initially grayed out become active when you click that identity-crisis-laden button, though there’s no indication that you would want to follow that course of action to adjust those settings. This adheres to what seems to be the general theme of Vista, which is “hide the useful settings as deeply as possible so that they’ll never find them (phase 3: profit!)”. There is no extra functionality added, just extra work for the end users. But who cares about them?

It is, unfortunately, a reality, not a Scrubs episode.

In the last month, I:

Quit my job of four years

Sold my house (in the midst of a major local mortgage lender’s bankruptcy filing)

Sold my car (on craigslist – highly recommended)

Sold, donated, or trashed most of my belongings

Finished an independent study, the last class needed for my master’s degree, and found a professor who will let me work on my project remotely

Flew to New York City with 104 pounds of luggage plus carry-on, after thanking one of JetBlue’s fantastic employees for waiving the slightly-over-50-pounds-on-both-your-suitcases-sir fee (he asked how long I was going for with all that luggage, then skipped the fee part when I said I was staying; ahhhh, JetBlue)

Squatted at my aunt and uncle’s house while apartment shopping at night and starting my new job in lower Manhattan while commuting from the Bronx – ugh (though the long commute was made up for by the joy of staying with family)

Relied on good friends and family to finish dealing with what I left at my house up to the last moment

Found a great deal on apartment (i.e., one that’s not too much more than my house in Tucson was) which I moved into mid-renovation, the day after my house closed

Sifted through the incredible amount of paperwork involved in all of this, including a lovely time at the NY DMV waiting in lines to get numbers that permitted me to wait in other lines (after which I was given a temporary license and told to wait two more weeks; hey, AZ MVD, if you’re reading this, give the NY DMV a call and let it know where to buy the printers that spit out licenses in 15 seconds instead of 15 days), and the literally hundreds of pages of documentation generated upon my resignation

And did a slew of other things that I’ve since forgotten.

Things I’ve learned recently:

It’s actually quite interesting how little stuff one really needs. The first realization is “this is not worth shipping; I’ll just give it away and buy a new one after I move.” That thought is followed closely by “actually, I don’t need that at all; why did I even get this to begin with and why didn’t I throw it out a year ago?” I think the abundance of space in Arizona turns us into packrats, because there’s no need to throw out that widget you may use in 7 years. It feels good to purge and break free from the stuff. And incidentally, people in New York aren’t generally aware that the descriptive term “packrat” is derived from actual animals of that name that rip out your battery cables and horde them in their nests until they are brutally (achem, painlessly) executed.

New York City, despite the millions of people and all, is really pretty small. It’s quick to walk many places, and driving isn’t too scary (though I’m thrilled to not have a car). It also has less crime (including violent crime) than Tucson. If you ask people for directions, they will happily oblige (though the very same people will, if asked for money, avert their gazes and quicken their paces as if they are being chased by a ravenous monster that can only see those who see it). Also, the friendliest people hang out (ok, ok, they just shop) at the Park Slope Food Coop.

I’ll try to find time to write more and post pictures soon.