Day XVII: The-Program-That-Must-Not-Be-Named

Well, today began with a pretty simple task that took up a disproportionate amount of my morning. I tried to calibrate the Px 5 video from our Waldo/Lego test. I was using The-Program-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, but that wasn't a big deal...or so I thought. I went through all the appropriate steps, but there was either a problem with the track or my process because I could not get more than three of the nine points to be accurate. I must have redone the calibration eight or nine times before Nick came to my rescue. It turns out I was suffering from Perfectionism, which seems to be a common problem with calibration. Almost no calibration is perfect, and The-Program-That-Must-Not-Be-Named is still Beta, so it's noisier than most. So, I ended up with a reasonable calibration and even got four out of the nine to be on-target.

Then, Andy came to us with a rather unusual request. "I need a couple volunteers to push a car up a hill." I volunteered, of course, 'Do a good turn daily' and all that, and the rest of the lab ended up following us. Andy had happened upon this guy on the way to work, and his transmission had failed. So, he helped push the car a fair distance until he got to the hill, at which point he (Andy), went for reinforcements. We pushed the car around thirty feet before Andy realized that the car still had the Emergency Brake on! So it was much easier going after that. We laughed on the way back, and that was my workout for the day.

At that point, a man named Nick from Proctor and Gamble arrived to pick up the Gen 6 eyetracker for his company. Apparently the system they have is not working the way they need it to, so they're buying two of ours. He was cool, from the UK initially but now works for them in Cincinatti. He said he's one of about 10 engineering psychologists in about 120,000 employees, which is impressive, and he spends his day mostly 'coming up with clever ways to make people work harder', which I thought was pretty funny. We had DiBella's subs for lunch, which was a pleasant surprise, and then I got onto working on the presentation and the poster.

Really, that's about all I worked on today. Erika finished the video, so that'll go on tomorrow...yep. Editing and revising before turning it in. Oh yeah, Optimax as well. Cool!