So if it updated overnight, and I happen to have unsaved data, it would just restart my computer. Not that I should have any unsaved data but still.

And if I’m using the computer, am busy and can’t afford to reboot yet, I have to get interrupted every 15mins. Imagine if I was in a presentation or something.

It’s like the kid who says, “Are We There Yet?” “Not yet” “What about now?” “Not yet” “Whataboutnow?” “NO JUST SHUT THE HELL UP YOU STUPID BRAT.”

Coolest part of it all, aside from Hans being just plain talented, is that Hans can focus on being talented and not worry about FTP servers and other details related to running his comic, because we deal with that for him.

Presenting, Bug Bash – http://www.bugbash.net

###Music Volume
Around 25Gb.

###Last CD Bought
I think OKGo and The Donnas simultaneously. No wait. I just bought a box set of four Initial D soundtracks and yes, they’re legit.

###Song Playing Right Now
None. But last song playing was Paul Van Dyk’s “Connected”

###Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Hm. I can do it by artist more than anything. Listening a lot to …
- John Mayer
- PVD
- Franz Ferdinand
- The White Stripes
- Maroon 5

###Five People to Whom I’m Passing the Baton
- Creative Freedom
- Kathryn
- Joshua Kaufman
- Hougee
- Brendon Wilson

As Molly H. puts it, “If you’ve been passed the baton, leave a comment so we can find yours. If you haven’t, consider me passing you an extra baton: blog it and trackback here, or leave your answers in the comments.”

The coffee link goes to Yahoo Maps and a list of coffee places in SF. Neat. I have a lot of thoughts on Yahoo 360 but haven’t had time to put them together in my head. It’s a great attempt but a lot of work needs to be done to pull all their offerings under one umbrella. Visual and Interaction design needs a _lot_ more work. Still, the stage is definitely set.

Oh yeah and if I know you, shoot me an email and I can invite. Random commentors who want an invite will be publicly humiliated.

It’s Friday afternoon and the weekly OK/Cancel strip is done but there’s no accompanying article. I believe the week this happened was, coincidentally, about dating a user experience professional. Kathryn was in the study, and I came in, sat next to her, opened a text editor and immediately, without pause, started typing furiously.

“How do you do that?” she asked me. Kathryn is a very careful drafter of the things she writes (which may explain the differences in our blog frequency) and spends time crafter the perfect way to say something so my approach was rather alien to her.

The truth is, I didn’t just start writing then. I had been writing the article in my head for a couple of days already. It was at least 80% done in my head, I simply had to translate it to somethign other people can see.

My approach to everything is the same way. As a structured procrastinator, I tend to prefer multiple simultaneous projects. That way, I can start in on something until I’m deep enough to intelligently analyse the task, then I can start on something else.

All the while, in the background, I’m processing these other tasks and trying to solve them.

My work is the same. If I work on a project continually, I hit a wall at some point where I am no longer able to innovate. I can still _do_ the job but the quality is much higher if I work on other things in between.

Of course, the true secret, which most have discovered, is that the best ideas come from The Toilet.

So it should come as no surprise that in a conference for web geeks, people would actually know my work, right? But call me stupid because I was surprised.

In every circle, there are mini-celebrities. Some of them transcend into other areas. Will Wright and Sid Meier are names some may have heard of even if they don’t play computer games. Ditto Jakob Nielsen or Don Norman even if you don’t practice usability. But while most game developers might know say, Roberta Williams as the King’s Quest designer, people outside won’t know who you’re talking about.

In the world of web designers, there’s a tight knit community that all know each other: jason, andy, hicks, doug, dave. I’m not in that circle because frankly, that’s not what I primarily do. I’m also not in the web standards crowd because it bores me to bits, but I love what they (eric, molly h, simon, dunstan and co) do. Social software, blogware, tagging? Interesting stuff. I love to talk about where they tie in wherever I’m working on projects but I don’t study them in depth like matt, jay, molly s, tantek, or danah.

And that’s why I don’t expect the SxSW group to know what we do. Yet, conversations often went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Kevin”

“Hi, I’m (so and so). So what’s your blog/website/job?”

“I work on a webcomic on interaction design called OK/Cancel?”

“Oh YEAH! I know that, yeah. Cool!”

“(blink blink)”

It’s strange to meet some people and not even know you’re familiar with their work. Stranger still to know they are familiar with yours. Somehow, it doesn’t lessen the intimidation factor though. You still feel like with every introduction, someone’s going to look and you and figure out that you don’t quite belong.

Such was not the case. As narrow and niche as we are, it appears we have broader appeal than I expected. Rock.

No prizes will be awarded for friends and family of the sponsoring company. Which means everyone who reads this isn’t eligible for the non-existent prize.

This meant I was arriving in SF on Wednesday, out to Austin Friday night (waiting 2hrs at 4am for the car rental company to open), back to SF on Wednesday morning, out to HK Weds night, and back to SF on Sunday.

Hopefully, I can work out a more sane schedule. In the meantime, my most entertaining anecdotes still come from good ol’ US Immigration (where even Canadians have to finger print and get pictures taken now).

This time, they gave me a quote that I pretty much sums up my current state,

I don’t know what to do with you.