Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 18:00:03 +0100
Subject: "The Periodic Adventures and the Adventurous Periodical of Marleigh," Issue 3

Hi all,

Hard to believe I've been here a month already.  Wow, my internship is
1/6 over, and I feel I've barely done anything.  Not much happened this
past week.  The weather has remained un-snowy, which is pleasing.  I
hear that there's a project that we'll almost certainly get funding for,
which Richard is going to have me work on.  He doesn't want to have me
start yet, just in case we don't get funding.  This group is very
concerned about not having me do useless work, which is why I don't
really have anything to do.

Ralf, Richard and I played with construction paper the other day.  When
one is designing a user interface, it seems to be common practice to do
a paper mock-up of it.  This means cutting up paper and drawing little
windows and stuff on post-it notes, so you can demo your idea to
others.  It's all very kindergarten.  I feel kind of guilty getting paid
to do the sort of thing I did in elementary school art class, but that's
what they want me to do.  I came up with some more ideas that they
hadn't thought of before, so the group seems to be pretty happy with
me.  I think I'm getting a reputation for asking difficult questions
though, which brings me to the...

German Word of the Week
(rather, it's a phrase this week)
"Gute Frage!  Naechste Frage?" = Good question!  Next question?

Maybe it's just because they've been having me read this book on basic
methods of usability, but I keep asking these questions like, "Why
should I spend so much time making a really complecated on-line
bibliography cataloging the books our group has, when the only people
who are going to use it are you guys, and you already know what books
the group has?" or "So why should we put in this big window to access
documents, when we've already got a convenient little button on the tool
bar that does the same thing?" (incidently, as a bonus word of the week,
the word "redundant" is the same in both languages)  

Yes, I'm such a trouble-maker, always keeping those pesky objectives of
the project in sight.  Or maybe I just feel sorry for the poor grad
student whose thesis this is, who has to implement whatever we come up
with (his name is Tomas, he had this look of dispair at the last
meeting).  Anyway, when my questions get too tough, or the real answer
is something like "the boss said so," Ralf always says to me, "Gute
Frage!  Naechste Frage?"  I think Ralf is fond of me.  I suspect he's
already thought of half the questions I ask, but can't get away with
being quite so tactless.  I asked Michael to justify the bibliography
project to me (this being that goofy boring thing I was spending the
first two weeks preparing), and Michael had a rough time doing it.  He
still hasn't explained the need for it to my satisfaction.  Through the
whole thing, Ralf just sat there and grinned.

Note to all:  My laptop is going away on Monday, to return the
following  Friday or Monday (Ralf needs it for a conference).  This
means I can't use the computer at home, and I can't check my
@wohnheim.uni-ulm.de email account.  I should be able to check both the
[***************] address and the
[************] address from work, though, so feel free to send me
email to either of those addresses.  Or to the wohnheim one, I just
won't get it right away.

Honor and Glory...
	to Mum and Mike P., for sending me mail.
	to being able to wear fall jackets.
Dishonor and Notoriety...
	to people who call every 10 minutes until I get fed 
		up and answer (or unplug) the phone.
	to having to pay extra for ketchup.

Tsch|_!

Marleigh