Big News

Some days are better to go to work for than others. Yesterday was one of those days. I was focused at work, and got a lot done, which is always nice since there are times that I struggle with staying on focus. Then came ‘the talk’ in my grand-boss Brendan’s office…

“Well, I have good news and great news. Good news – here’s your bonus…” and he slides over a piece of paper to me. I did pretty well, getting some performance bonuses on top of my standard number, which means a little more money (that will be paying off bills, sadly). It’s a nice chunk of change to get, and I’m happy to hear about the ‘performance modifier’, since ir reflects on the work that I did. Granted, I’m not one of the highest-paid CEOs in the area, but it was still nice.

Then comes the bigger news – I got promoted. I’m not a brand-spankin’ new User Experience Lead (UX Lead), meaning that I will have control over throngs of IA minions and their daily pursuits of interactive happiness. Or I would, if we had more people. As it is, there are no minions, so my power is mostly figurative. Or would be, if that was really what I’m going to be doing. In reality, I’ll be managing a book of business and allocating work to different IAs under me … when there are any. As it is now, I’ll be mostly saying, “I like that one and this one, don’t like that one – who can I beg to take this project?”. But later, then my ability to lord over others will commence… bwah ha ha ha!! (« evil laugh).

Actually, I knew that this was coming because I helped develop the position, a new one here at my company. Previously, we had “IAs” but that title was only part of what we do. Our jobs have been hybrids of IA, User Experience, Interaction Design and User Research – making my title something like those casting people in movies: Marty DeAngelo – IA/UX/IX/URx/MOUSE/Jedi Master. This is our attempt to bring all of those disciplines into a single job title, and the new responsibilities are great because they give me more ‘say so’ among the company, the one thing that was a little lacking around here. We’re regarded as the experts, but our influence was a little lower than we would like – this will be a step in correcting that. Better yet, it came with a nice step up in salary, which is always a nice perk.

In Other News

We also had a fairly good weekend, too. Shari went out and got some beautiful shots of my cousin Erin and her fiance, Chas. They are getting married in June and she wanted to do an engagement shoot for their announcement stuff and to study their skin tones. The shot I have up at the top is my favorite of the bunch. The weather conditions were tough, but she did a great job. I worked on ZeroPercentCards.com stuff for Van for a few hours, struggling through a couple hours of ‘Doh!’ moments because I missed an obvious coding error that was throwing everything off. I also worked on our taxes some more – with Shari’s new business, it’s making things more interesting, of course.

We also watched a few more movies. I started Apocalypto when I was sick last week, but haven’t finished because I thought she might want to watch it too. So, instead, we watched our first Netflix movies: “3:10 to Yuma” and “In the Valley of Elah“. The former was really good – Christian Bale is always reliable, and I thought Russell Crowe did a good job, too. I’m not a huge western movie fan, but I liked this one. “Elah” was a great movie – very intense material, but the cast was great and the story was stark, sad and riveting. Despite it having a fairly slow pace, it really did a great job at showing off the effects that modern warfare have not only on the solders but the people around them, too. Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron were brilliant – I haven’t seen all of the Oscar nominees, but I think her performance beat Tilda Swinton from “Michael Clayton” hands down.

Link Compensation

• Journalist becomes the story at Mark Zuckerberg SXSWi keynote – CNET
• Star Wars Link of the Day: If Saul Bass did “Star Wars” – cool new intro concept.
• Pro Golfer Tripp Isenhour should be strung up
• Worst Shots Ever Created: Campus Squeeze
• PicLens