New World of Geis

New World of Geis
Originally uploaded by Geis.

The best part is that if you go to the site right now, there's a picture of the worldOFgeis in my recent flickr pictures bar.

It's awesome.

Sushi Lunch

Sushi Lunch
Originally uploaded by Geis.

I went a little crazy and got some sushi for lunch today.
Although it looks prepackaged, it was actually made on the spot. The other nice thing is that sooo many people eat at the Sushi Shop that there's no way they have any stale food there since they get cleaned out so quickly.

La Basorouse

La Basorouse
Originally uploaded by Geis.

Dinner was a little bit more formal tonight.
I wandered into Old Montreal after the Agile Development With HCI class. I was amazed with how few people were over there, but was lucky enough to find Chez Suzette still open.
Everything at Suzette's comes in a Crepe. When I spotted La Basorouse which is a crepe stuffed with bacon, avocado, and sour cream, I decided to test Denovich's theory that 'any meal with bacon in it is a good meal'.
It was good stuff. I precluded the meal with a bowl of baked french onion soup. Also very good.
At the end of the meal, I got into a bit of a discussion with the waiter and eventually decided to ask what La Basorouse referred to. He said that it sort of meant like 'a meal of german liking'. I told him I just wanted to make sure it didn't mean 'A Fat American' (you know, with the bacon and everything) and that I fell right into the trap. He assured me that this wasn't the case.
He brought up the conference and we briefly discussed it. The woman at the table next to me wanted to make sure that there were representatives from Microsoft at the CHI conference because 'they usually dont do a good job with understanding what the user wants'. I ensured her of their presence.

XBox 360 Design Critique

XBox 360 Design Critique
Originally uploaded by Geis.

Microsoft showed up this morning to the CHI2006 conference to critique their own design process.
Interestingly enough, they admitted openingly that they did extensive user testing, and then decided to choose an interface that came in a distant third because of the difficulties necessary to implement the more usable interface in only 3MB of space (this was their restriction since they knew the wouldn't necessarily be shipping all XBOX 360's with harddrives).
It was an interesting talk. I've put up a bunch of photos on my Flickr Site.

Semi-Cool Dinner

Mmmm
Originally uploaded by Geis.

Being how the rain has yet to relent, I decided to grab a few Guinness Draughts, a chicken gyro, and some rice (from a Mediterranean restaurant) and come back to the hotel to do some work and goof around on the internet a little bit.
I figure if I can finish up everything I have to do tonight, then when the weather's nice on Thursday and Friday, I'll get to run around a little.
It's supposed to be below freezing tomorrow morning (-1 Celsius) with a slight frost. Good stuff, Montreal.
Anyway, I'm not trying to over-blog this trip or anything, but I felt a need to post this at least.
And by the way, the dinner was awesome. If I wasn't eating it in my hotel room, it would have been perfect. I saw a Sushi place right in the Palais des Congres where the conference is being held and I think I'll hit that up tomorrow... I'm pretty psyched about it actually.

PAIX (This means PEACE in French, but I somehow doubt it translates into the attempted Gangsta sign-off that I'm trying to do here)

This Weather is so French

It's Crappy Out
Originally uploaded by Geis.

Est-ce que je peux avoir mon ticket de caisse?

Now that Vocollect has removed the per diem policy, I have to remember to get my check when done eating.

So far, I find myself marveling in my ability to spit out half-baked french sentences to the waitresses and have them actually respond to me in french, that I never remember to ask pour le ticket de caisse.

I've found out that by attempting to speak french, I simply put myself in a worse position because I often cannot decipher the return response. I then have to say something very obviously English so that they realize that I know about 10-12 commonly used phrases which I am pre-pending to an oftenly multi-lingual noun in hopes to saying something meaningful.

Oh well, so far I've spend about $12 that Vocollect won't have to worry about. But I'm staying at the Delta (Centre-Ville: in case you care to look it up) and living it large, which I can hardly complain about...

Oh yea, it's been terrible weather-wise. Hopefully things clear up so I get a chance to take some nice shots.

Sparks

Sparks
Originally uploaded by amyadoyzie.

its been too long since i've Sparks-ed.

Taking it all in

IMG_1703
Originally uploaded by Shaft0rz.

Just wanted to throw up a post with a link to Big Pete's Photo's from Las Vegas.

Matt's are located here:

The Loop

Seriously, you need to watch this show:





The chics are hot and the humor is completely inappropriate. It's a can't miss.

Action Jack

IMG_3956.JPG
Originally uploaded by Geis.

Heather and I picked up some sandwiches from Franco's and headed over to Boyce Park with Jack this afternoon.

Here are some good shots of Jack and Heather: Flickr Pictures