PixelRN

I used to be a painter (Ireland)

Subway Yearbook

I love how toycamera handles clouds

Does Posterous have usability issues?

I was thrilled to get a compliment on my Gen X Nurse post from Jennifer, who writes an excellent Generation X blog, but one thing about it troubled me. She writes:

"This post is anonymous. As best I can tell, it's not even linked to a specific blog."

Now, it's very obvious to me that if you can either click on "PixelRN" at the top of the page or click on the on the "Back to blog" link, and see who this blog belongs to. I even link to my Linkedin profile from the sidebar. So I'm far from what you'd call anonymous.

But even though I say it's obvious, I'm not trying to be snarky or imply that Jennifer should have been able to find my info. Far from it. I see it as a fault of posterous. My philosophy on usability comes from the web design classic "Don't Make Me Think," by Steve Krug. What I learned from Krug is that you should never ever assume that something about your blog or website is obvious and easy to your readers, just because it's obvious to you.

It's funny - You would thing the minimalism of posterous would create great usability, but maybe it's just too minimalist. Maybe people look at a single posterous post and just see a blank piece of paper with a few paragraphs on it.

Fortunately posterous just launched theme and customization abilities this week, so maybe that will help.

OCNJ - a gallery on Flickr

Gen X Nurse

I'm a Gen X nurse.

What does that mean?

In the most obvious sense it just means that I was born in 1970 and I'm a registered nurse. I try not to put too much stock in all of the generational stereotypes, but I have always felt like I was Generation X to the core. Gen Xers tend to be cynical. We're hard on ourselves and others. We have this reputation for being slackers, not because we're lazy, but because our standards are too high to just grab whatever old McJob comes our way.

When I graduated from college in 1992, I had a liberal arts degree and no clue what to do with it. I wasn't interested in graduate school. At that point I was ready for the next step. I wanted to play the game. I wanted to get a paycheck.

The conventional wisdom at the time was to pick a company. (How? Based on what?) Get an entry level position (doing what?) Establish yourself and move up the ranks (to become what, exactly?) It was all so nebulous.

So I got a job in a bakery. I have always loved working with food. It was extremely low-paying but that was okay. I was happy.

I knew it was a dead end job though, so I started taking community college courses. First in psychology (I thought I wanted to be an art therapist) and then in graphic design. Meanwhile I "moved up the ranks" and became a waitress. I started to make a lot more money and it was a job I rather enjoyed.

I did this for 10 years. I travelled a lot. Bought a house. Always in the back of my mind was, "You have a college degree! You should be doing something else!" But that voice was never quite convincing enough.

Then in August of 2001, I attended the funeral of a close friend's brother. He was a young, wonderful, hard working person who was ruthlessly killed by a drunk driver. Nothing like a funeral for a young person to send you into an existential tailspin.

I fell into a temporary despair. I desperately tried to come up with ideas for what I should be doing different, how to change my life.

And then September 11th happened. Despair turned into anger, followed by numbness. My existential tailspin was curtailed by the need to just go on living. To try and make sense of day to day things without being overcome by rage. I thought about joining the military.

8 months later I made the decision to start nursing school.

Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make you see what's really important. And the important thing for me was to do something that I could define, something that had meaning, and something I could take pride in. Sure I could pay my dues and work for a company, sell things, market things, design things, manage things, get promoted. But nursing is different. It's so much more simpler:

What does a nurse do?

She takes care of people when they are sick. And gets paid for it.

And that's why despite all the bitching and moaning I like to do about cleaning up poop, I'll probably always be a nurse.

A Lonely Bench

Toycamera Clouds

GAME DAY! The social media sports bar

Last fall I got a little disenchanted with the whole social media scene. I blame the US election. It seems as the election got closer the tweets got meaner and stupider. And I'm talking about both sides here. It was really disheartening.

You know what saved me though?

Sports.

First it was the Phillies. As they got closer and closer to winning the world series, I always turned to Facebook and Twitter so I could feel more connected to Phillies fans. As a Philly transplant, it was kind of lonely watching the series here in Maryland. Tuning into twitter was the next best thing to sitting in a sportsbar in Philadelphia, watching the Phils win the world series for the first time since 1980.

And then there was football. We have a little bit of a conflict in my household. My husband is a Redskins fan. I kind of toggle back and forth between the Ravens and the Eagles. But the bottom line is that we love to watch football; any team, any time. So last season if the Redskins and the Eagles were playing at the same time, I would use twitter to track both games.

Eventually I would have 7 or 8 search windows open so I could track multiple games. You could tell if something exciting was happening in one game because the amount of tweets would shoot up dramatically. It made game day extra fun. Again, kind of like sitting in a noisy sports bar, cheering for your team. 

So I had to laugh when I read this:

Sports and Social Media: Where Opportunity and Fear Collide

Just another example of how old media just doesn't get new media. How ironic. As the NFL, the SEC and ESPN put more and more restraints on how players and fans use social media, I am finding social media makes me more of a sports fan than I was in the first place.

My prediction is that social media and sports are already colliding in a big, messy, incredibly entertaining way and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.

I also predict that the Ravens are going to have an awesome season.

Another breathtaking story from Traumaqueen...