Informational Geometry

I'm sitting here writing this on my dad's old iMac realizing I could have done a better job helping him with technology over the past few years. I feel like a bad daughter, an interaction designer ought to do a lot better for their parents. My dad was very capable, and fiercely wanted his independence, so I didn't bother him.  Still, I was already doing "tech support" for friends and strangers, and I'm realizing now that I could have saved myself a bit of work after he passed me on his gadgets. So here's my advice to people who have an older parent or friend, even if they are not a luddite! Make yourself the Admin. Set up their gmail, give yourself access.  Give them their password, make sure it's super easy to remember but tell them not to reuse this password for any reason anywhere. Set up their iCloud, Amazon Prime, YouTube etc tethered to their new Gmail.  Yes, plug their credit card into these accounts, they're still independent! G...

" Stress makes us depressed, fat, sick - and we do it to ourselves " This is great news! Now that we KNOW what's hurting people we can DO something about it! ... oh wait, that is easier said than done. In the UK people use this expression, "I can't be assed" which means, basically, "I cant be bothered". Imagine ever saying that in an office? I never hear this expression over here but I hear it all the time when I travel abroad. I think this says a lot about how we deal with stress vs. the English. You have to have a certain amount of personal pride to just state your limits out loud. I love to compare ourselves with the UK. They also have a national health system, four plus weeks of vacation, and an extensive network of pubs. I've found that most of my stress is caused by money, or other people. Usually stress comes from a cascade of people influencing other people with money mixed in. Work seems to cultivate this like a petri dish especially ...