One Saturday night, I found myself looking up from the text message on my cellphone to the frail old woman in front of me; and it struck me—I just might have been given the wrong address.

Hearing the sounds of quiet conversation next door I headed over and knocked on the door. It was answered, and I saw a bunch of people sitting and talking over some wine at the table. The fireplace flicked and the mood seemed very somber. The person standing there shook his head. “Sorry, no, he doesn’t live here.”

A few houses over, I was ready to give up, when I heard something. The thump of bass, muted only by the brick wall it had traversed. Following the sound, as seeing the reversed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” sign in the window, I was confident that I was in the right place. Barely a knock before the door opened and I was greeting by music and dancing and laughing. I was pulled into hugs and high-fives before everyone dispersed back to their social activities, and somehow through all of that confusion, I found myself already holding a glass of champagne and wearing a large smile.

It was a small, modest bungalow in Cap Hill. Cheap chairs surrounded a television which seemed to like to flicker the red component of its color on and off at random times. Christmas lights were strewn about to form the only décor and the wallpaper on the wall peeled. People drank wine from plastic cups while someone was drunkenly trying to demonstrate that he could break dance. He almost knocked over a girl who was hunched over what looked to be a large speaker. Avoiding the break dancing guy, she pouted right into the arms of her boyfriend, revealing what the large speaker was.

The smile from my face faded when I saw the setup—an iPod Hi-Fi surrounded by about six or seven iPods from every generation, ranging from iPod color to iPhone. The pouting girl finished the playlist she was making and replaced the 160 GB Classic with her red Nano and on came Bon Jovi blaring through the speakers. The floor rumbled and groaned as everyone at the party jumped and danced, arms in the air, and a dozen voices yelled “SHOT THROUGH THE HEART!!” in unison to the lyrics.

I was broken from my reverie when my friend, the birthday boy, introduced me to an attractive girl while giving me a smirk that indicated his design for me to flirt with her. He mentioned that I worked on a cool new MP3 player called Zune. She had never heard of it. I explained to her that it was a media player that Microsoft had made, trying to bring great music listening experiences to people like her. She stared blankly at me, until I conceded. “It’s like an iPod, but much cooler.”

Her eyes lit up with recognition and she demanded to see one. I shyly pulled out a red Zune and handed it to her. “Wow, it’s classy,” she exclaimed, as her lips widened slowly into a pretty smile. She played around with it for a couple of minutes, demoing me the cool things she saw as if I had never used a Zune before. Then she saw a song by The Shins that she liked, and without hesitation, turned around and tried to put it on the iPod Hi-Fi.

As she struggled to get it to work with the iPod dock, I found myself smiling again.

As Ms. Spears' estate was placed under temporary conservatorship and Attorney John Eardley fought with father James Spears over if James Spears should be allowed to continue with taking control of her financial assets and physical custody, it is easy for us to feel distaste for this Hollywood starlet, that was simply once just a young girl from Mississippi.

It is easy to be cynical about Ms. Spears' recent decline, an more than one writer has commented on how many millions of dollars this rich lady may have lost now that her celebrity xrank has dropped from first place, to a mere second to Jennifer Lopez. It begs the question: what has Lopez done recently?

It has become normal to send barbs in Ms. Spears' way; "the entire thing is just a publicity stunt"; "they manufactured her to be able to cry, too?"; "going after the paparazzi is biting the hand that feeds"; "I bet she sure is upset while swimming in her pool of millions of dollars".

Since when did money buy happiness? Is there some sort of life-changing event that occurs which you reach the depths of celebrity that the high priests of celebrity will present the keys to the garden where happiness grows on trees? Certainly not. In fact, economics tells us that there is a decreasing marginal utility of money as someone makes more and more, so if happiness is in fact purchasable, shouldn't the poor be at best position to buy it?

But I digress. To really understand Britney Spears, I think we need to look at another depressed celebrity. This woman was someone who was loved and revered worldwide. Many thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, and she was legendary for having romantic ties with actors and presidents alike. To the surprise of everyone, she was also insanely depressed. I am, of course, talking about Marilyn Monroe.

Most cannot imagine how someone so beloved could feed depressed. Certainly Marilyn had more importance and substance than Britney, so why would she fall prey to negative emotions? The answer to this mystery lies in something psychology calls "external attribution". When someone becomes known for something, when Marilyn becomes known for her beauty and Kurt Cobain is known for his music and Paris Hilton is known for simply being famous, these people become targets of praise. Surrounded by yes-men, adoring fans, letters of praise, billboards and magazine shoots, their celebrity becomes bigger than the person themselves.

Imagine the situation of a stunningly beautiful girl at some trendy New York bar. Gentleman after gentleman, (or sometimes a lady), will approach this beautiful girl and likely start the conversation with some compliment to her, whether refering to her beauty or something else. The act of simply cold approaching this girl is a compliment in and of itself. Eventually, this girl is going to learn that people treat her better because of her beauty, and not that they deeply appreciate her unique qualities or her clever sense of humour. The positive comments that are supposed to bring up our sense of self-esteem, for these people, suddenly get externally attributed. Subconsciously, they learn that people are just saying that them because their beauty. Or celebrity.

The same defenses, however, are not built for negativity. They do not learn how to also externally attribute the negative comments, even though there are likely just as many negative things said rejecting the beauty, fame, celebrity and success. And that is why Britney Spears, like Marilyn Monroe, is deeply depressed right now.

As I walked home, in one of those peculiar moments that MP3 players will give you when on shuffle, it decided to take me from the mellow sounds of Death Cab to a random Dane Cook bit:

"And then you get a tap on your shoulder. And when you turn around, who's behind you? The world. Right on your shoulder going: Hey what's up."

He explained to me in graphic detail through my headphones the steps that we go through when we go through when we need to cry. A deep, soulful, emotional cry. As a person who's had things piling up in my life and giving me probably more excuses than I need to cry, strangely, his description made me laugh.

Objectively, it's probably easy to prove that I'm have been in a tough situation as of late. There is increasing tension as I try to figure out what is going on with my career. I've been without a girlfriend since last summer. Revenue Canada seems to think I owe them more money than I currently have in the bank. I'm trying to save money but somehow the bills are never as small as I need them to be. And the little things, getting a dentist, a doctor and getting my Washington state driver's license, all have been falling through the cracks.

As I walked and happily enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my face, I wondered why I wasn't depressed, or upset, or ready to let the weight of the world get me down. Am I holding it in? Is it repressed? Am I just jaded? What was wrong with me?

That evening, I sat in my living room, by myself, smoking a hookah by the fireplace with a glass of wine in hand. I read a misogynistic yet strangely insightful book called "An Average American Male" while music played to the Decemberists. Colin Meloy declared passionately: "They'll never catch me! No they'll never catch me now! We will escape somehow...somehow."

And I smiled. I would not rather be anyone else.

Life is good.

Earlier this year, I decided to write and film a little short film called The Delicious Caper. It was a lot of fun to make and for a production written, filmed and edited complete with custom music, it was amazing we did the entire thing in about a week, while still working a fulltime job. Check out the script here: The Delicious Caper. (The video itself is only available to my friends on Facebook.)

I got it in my head this weekend that I really wanted to make some homemade pasta. Perhaps it was the tasty fresh pasta I tasted in my last visit to Toronto at Cucina, or just watching Hell's Kitchen and seeing Chef Ramsay yell and scream at people all day that got me in the mood.

Either way, I went ahead and did my first attempt at it. I got a pasta press, some semolina flour and some eggs. I love the simplicity of it all, simply turning the two into a dough, letting it rest, rolling it out and flattening it with the hand-cranked machine. The machine also cut the pasta into beautiful noodles of linguine, and let it dry for an hour. It cooked really fast, giving me perfect al dente noodles in about four minutes.

I teamed up with Kostas who made a fresh pesto the old fashioned way, grinding up basil leaves, romano, parmesan, pine nuts and olive oil by hand to make a very pungent and delicious pesto. Having some extra pasta leftover, Kostas then made another sauce with San Marzano tomatoes and ripped basil leaves, putting some very creamy and fresh mozzarella at the end. It was delicious, the tomatoes form San Marzano are so incredibly sweet and tasty, and they alone could form a delicious sauce with nothing else needed, unlike the standard tomatoes I cook with which normally take a long time to cook into something sweet and not too acidic.

It seems that most of the recipes I've seen use all-purpose white flour, and yet it seems clear to me that pasta is traditionally made with semolina flour. I used completely semolina, but I have also heard of the two flours being mixed together for ideal results. I think I also made the pasta a touch too dry, causing the texture to not be as smooth as I would have liked. I'm going to have to play around with different amounts of olive oil and different types of flours to see what effect it has on the final pasta.

I'd also like to find a guide to different thickness of pasta and how that affects what the ideal sauces are for the noodle. I think there is a lot of interesting knowledge handed down from chef to chef, but perhaps unsurprisingly, I want to approach this from a scientist's point of view and understand the theory of food. What effect does salt have on water, and why do eggs come out mushy if you add them before cooking? Why will a wet fish end up being steamed unless you cover it in salt initially? To me, these are truly the most interesting questions in cooking.

It's strange that some reality show on cooking has the effect of inspiring me to attempt to cook, but Chef Gordon Ramsay talked about food with such love and such passion that I can't help but get excited over the preparation of food. It makes me regret getting an apartment with such a small kitchen. At the time of decision, it wasn't so terrible an idea; just over a week ago, if you opened my fridge, it was completely empty except for some bottles of vodka! At least now there are some eggs in there. :)

All in all it was a great experiment with great results, and I will definitely be making more homemade pasta over the next few weeks. It really is remarkable the difference that it makes to use completely fresh ingredients and make something from scratch. Everything just tastes so much better, it is so much cheaper, and you can completely design and make the meal to fit exactly what flavors you enjoy. Who knows, maybe my next big thing is learning to cook!

I'm 23rd in line at the Bellevue Apple store for an iPhone. I wasn't sure I was going to be here just a few weeks ago, seeing as it was a lot to pay for just a mobile phone. The iPod features won't change the fact I'm having a better time with the device and subscription service I have now with Zune. But then I realized that this would be a full web browser taken with you anywhere and I was sold.

The first guy in line here got here at 5pm yesterday. Anyway a guy just came by and asked what line this was. Someone piped up: "this is the line for Ratatouille." This is going to be a fun day.

Update 10:02am: They handed us all Smart Water at about 9:15am. Very nice of them. There seems to be someone who's job is just to talk to us and make sure we have a good time. The woman just said she's going to get us some coffee. Cool. There are 49 people in line right now.

Update 11:57am: Free coffee from Starbucks is here. They're also letting people in line use the backroom restroom in the Apple store. Someone also strung out an extension cord, but there's only three plugs. I'm gonna have to fight for one of those later. The Starbucks girl to #4 and #5 in line: "how long have you guys been here??". Them: "Five PM yesterday." She's like: "For a phone??! A phone! Really?" #4 and #5 are highschool kids, why is she flipping her hair and flirting with them?

Update 2:36pm: The black curtains have come up, and the store is closed. Looks like they're going to revamp the store interior in the next four hours.

Update 5:27pm: They took down one of the curtains, revealing the iPhone doing a countdown until the store opens. Ridiculous how much effort they put into this launch. I feel like we're in line for the cure for cancer or something, the hype is in almost stupid levels that I'm kinda not digging this anymore.

Epilogue: They let us in 15 people at a time. They had 10 people just standing in the front of the store, cheering and high-fiving every customer as they walked into the Apple store. I purchased my iPhone without incident and left. I've been playing with it ever since. It's true that the weakest point for the iPhone is the slow AT&T network, but it is a great device otherwise. There are other flaws with it, but nothing so major that made me feel this wasn't a revolutionary product. Kudos, Apple.

Wonderful consumer applications often will present the user features that create delight. Delight is one of the most important concepts to understand, and one of the least understood by engineers, especially in the software profession. Software engineers bathe themselves in objectivity, practicality and scientific analysis.

If it isn't measurable it simply isn't important.

Taken to an extreme, we get to the world of Linux, where the ideal text editors have cryptic memorized commands to simply navigate your document. Pressing 'j' and 'k' move your cursor up and down, and 'h' and 'l' move your cursor left and right. The reasoning for this? When you type, your hands are supposed to stay on the home keys. Since moving the cursor is something a user will do often, they map keys on the home row to movement so that the user does not have to move her hand away from the home row. Once a user becomes an expert at all of the cryptic commands, they become far more efficient at text editing than on any other editor.

The critics of Cover Flow in iTunes complain that it is superfluous, unnecessary, and an inefficient way of navigating through your library of music. Perhaps all of these things are true. But they are missing the point.

Cover Flow creates smiles.

There are little features that create delight for a user. In one of the first few posts on this blog, I described my experience unboxing my first iPod:

Well, finally it is in my hands, and I have to say that this is one of the coolest toys I have ever played with. If first impressions are everything this has won me over already. It is housed in the best packaging on any product ever that I've ever opened. It may sound silly, but opening the iPod box is really an experience. Everything slides open, folds open, fits perfectly, and is overall very slick. You can tell the packaging was really well thought out.

And there it is. If the experience of opening the box of a product gets someone giddy, something powerful is happening there. Human beings are emotional creatures, and emotions can override objectivity and practicality on a daily basis for everyone–except engineers.

Engineers, scientists and generally those in technical professions are trained out of style over substance, and instead are laser focused on metrics and objectivity. There is important for a few reasons, least of which is that you certainly hope that bridge builders care more about stability than aesthetics! As long as product designers are not killing their users, they should focus on the emotional effect of the product itself.

If users are delighted enough, they will actually overlook flaws in your product. I remember I debate I was having with coworkers over the iPod spin wheel thingy. They argued that it was impractical and impossible to hit exactly what you want in the UI. I argued vehemently, stating that it was possible with the right amount of practice. I exclaimed that I had been using iPods for years and could hit exactly what I wanted every time! So of course, I was challenged to prove myself. So I whipped out my iPod and did a demonstration. And as I bounced up and down trying to hit the menu item I was looking for, quickly my smug look faded away as one appeared on my colleague's face.

This is not an isolated incident. When enough delight is built into a customer's experience, they will march with you until the end of time. Delight creates emotional experiences. And once emotion is evoked between a user and a product, only then can a user fall in love.

Dare Obasanjo has just made the best post I have read on Copyrights and a great argument and explanation as to why those who are anti-Copyright simply have a ridiculous case on their hands.

It's a topic of particular interest to me, since not only do I make my living on the creation of thought and its protection, but also on the business model dependent on copyright of the songs we peddle.

I had a wonderful conversation with a wonderful friend of mine last night over dinner at a homey, rustic little restaurant. I've been grinding so hard to write code day in and day out that I forgot what it was like to just have a great time with friends. Having lived in Toronto, Mountain View, Waterloo and Seattle, I've managed to pick up friends all over North America, and an even larger set of acquaintences from the increasingly large list of places I've visited throughout the world.

Are friendships fleeting? How does one nurture these things? Or do we expect them to just come and go like the wind?

Do we really have to pick and choose what people we have time for in our lives?

There are varying degrees of laid-backedness I've experienced, and people are definitely more stressed out on the East coast. On the West coast, things are a lot more relaxed, and Microsoft is very, very good and presenting a good work/life balance. My problem, then, is that I love my job. I am so passionate about my job that I spend so much of my time thinking about it and working on it, and I can tell that my own manager has concerns that I might just burn out if I keep going at this rate.

Friends are important. We need to spend the time to nurture our social lives because we are social creatures who need love and attention and friendship. I guess I'm going to try for a better balance in work/life and see if I am capable in reconnecting with those people that are important to me.