i'm off

After a weekend of concerts and other social outings, I'm packing up and about to head to FEMA training. I'll be spending the rest of my week in Emmitsburg, MD, in preparation for a deployment to the gulf early next week. When I return, I hope to have more information about where and what I'll be doing.

If you're still bored at work, check out this NYT Magazine article: Life Hacks. It discusses the study of human interaction with computers, and how to more effectively design computers to maximize our productivity. It describes the conflict inherent in multi-tasking, that we are able to do more things simultaneously, but distractions are also interrupting us like crazy.

Researchers find that 40 percent of the time, workers wander off in a new direction when an interruption ends, distracted by the technological equivalent of shiny objects.

To prove this point, I've been working on this blog post for several hours.