Notes from the Range My wife was part of a mass shooting (see story). As part of her new-found activism, she’s traveled to Washington D.C., and worked with senators to figure out how we, as a country, can have some sort of smart gun management. The problem, she says, is not the lawmakers who…

What it feels like when your family is part of a mass shooting — You wake up worn out. You need massive amounts of coffee to motivate yourself to walk with your state rep Bob Morgan in your town’s Fourth of July parade. When you walk outside, the humidity hits you like a wet towel thrown in your face. You realize that the day…

Sifting through the mess At first, reading all these posts about ChatGPT squeezed the panic glands in my brain. Should I pack it up and find another career? Is this singularity, and will the robot police be showing up at my door soon? But after I calmed down a bit, I said to myself…

A case for reframing “wrong”. — The review was not fun. It was a project I labored over for months, and I was not thrilled as I watched fellow designers unravel my work. A lot of feedback they gave focused on the first sentence millions of users would see. The designers insisted it didn’t fit the…

A brief trip through the hellscape of AI holiday photos. Part 1: AI is awesome. I’m sure at some point, it will all come for our jobs, and eventually, us. Singularity will be the destruction (or salvation) of us all. But right now? Not so much: #1 Fig.1 I have so many…

I sat in bed while my wife helped my 5-year-old use the portable cassette toilet in our newly renovated shuttle bus. We had stopped in Albuquerque at a relative’s house after long-hauling from Chicago. When my son was finished, my wife reached out for the handle to flush. “Maybe you…

The Problem The user works in graphic design. While critiquing a design in a mobile app, their phone abruptly turns off. When they restart the phone, they reopen the app. The Solution I needed to write a message that the user will read upon reopening the app. I started with the basics. …

In the summer of 1998, I landed a job with Sony Signatures, the now-defunct wing of the Sony Corporation that managed the merchandise on…