maura_ea’s Neighborhood

It was a great Christmas... on the Eve, we didn't go visiting too much, instead just hung out at Kim and Jim's - they were great hosts and it was most fun. Christmas day was a little busy, then really relaxing. In the evening, we usually play video games - and I am once again hooked to my DS.

William was very good to me this year - when is he not? Lots of really thoughtful gifts - what a good husband.

Today 20ish people are coming over for dinner. It's planned that everyone meets at my mom's house then comes over here for dinner. It works out pretty well as we can get everything out and ready and nobody is bothered by the rush (except us and we certainly don't mind). Tonight is a party that we've attended for the last few years, but I'm not sure if we're going - it just depends how we feel when everyone leaves.

Life is good.

Okay - football. This is by far the worst year I've ever had picking teams. I was better when I picked to win based on which city I would prefer to visit. Seriously. There is no helping me now. I'm done done done.

Mr. Picklez must be a busy guy, as he hasn't posted his week 16 predictions, therefore I have no one to steal the format from - so I'll just hit a couple of highlights.

So Quinn injured his foot on the last play of the last game, and is done for the season. Well, at least it happened at the end of the season. At least they're not in the playoffs or anything. So the keys for the team are handed back to Anderson, and they had a chance to win the rest of the year... So, Oakland at Cleveland. Well, even with Quinn out, I'm so far in the hole I''m taking the BROWNS! That's right! Go Brownies!

Miami, although your playoff hopes and Superbowl dreams are put on hold, please beat Houston.

It's not a very crazy week - I don't see too many upsets, unless teams are really resting their guys (I hate that they do that!), I do predict that someone in one of my pools will be perfect this week.

It's feels like it's been while since I've made a post. Work has been extremely busy. There were more layoffs and now I have more work and more people around checking out what I am doing which means less internet surfing time. This should quite down now that the holidays are in swing and everything should be back to normal after the first of the year.

I have recently decided something though after months, actually a year on vox I have decided I like it and I'm going to stay. I know this place used to be better, more people, the vox team where more active and more helpful back then but it's still a decent place if we the users make it so. I hate to see a post from a neighbor explaining that they are leaving vox and why. There are still plenty of us here though so I have decided to stay.

and with that I am going to reorganize my blog a little bit. It'll be the same but I have added the things on a tuesday group and will be writing some more personal stuff , friends only of course. Some sex talk, bring some sexy back to Fridays. I want to get back to writing what every I feel like without holding anything back. This of course means more friends only post but I will also write about Orlando, and any other topic I find interesting as a public post.

I'll also be posting my New Years Resolutions and the ones I made last year, which ones I accomplished and which ones I didnt. It's something I do every year, last year I didn't post them to hear since I was so new to vox but this year I feel more comfortable.

I really do wish more of my pownce friends would have stayed here, I understand why they didn't. There was a bad taste in their mouth about Six Apart and I understand that, I also understand the nature of the web biz. It's a rough business, anyone that tells you to go into IT, Computer programming, interactive design and digial media entertainment because it is lucrative is fooling themselves. The company I work for has now made layoffs for two years in a row. At any moment we could be told to pack up and leave without much notice. It's just the way things go. No it isn't fair and these are hard working people who do a bang up job but sometimes things just don't work out and you save and salvage what you can. There isn't much else you can do.

So I'll be around and posting more again. I'll leave you with one of my favorite toasts. I believe it's an Irish toast.

"May the roof above us never cave in.
And the friends gathered below never fall out"

The lovely Dave bought me a 75-300mm lens for my camera and yesterday we went for an xmas walk on the beach. I cannot wait until spring when the light is better...prepare for lots of photo spam.

If you could kiss anyone under the mistletoe, who would it be?

You know for retail in Hong Kong, Xmas is huge and we spent a lot of time and energy planning for its arrival and departure.  In the past month, I watched almost daily this Treemap visually identifying category composition, which products move and how they perform.  In this particular interpretation which I hided confidential information, you can imagine the grids are product categories, the size of the rectangles are sales, height of them are quantity sold, while colors are margin.  Don't you think it is highly effective to spot out anomalies or patterns?  The best thing about Treemapping is that I can see individual product performance in relation to the whole picture of the department.

I've been using Treemapping for years and eventually settled on a German made Treemap software by Macrofocus.  They have constant updates to enhance features and import excel files almost instantly.  It has been a great tool for me for the past few years and I feel thankful for such great software development.

If you don't know what Treemap is, check out my previous post "A Visual Person's Links", Treemapping wikipedia or find out some of the treemap images from Google to get a glimpse or to start with.

How and where are you spending this Christmas Day? Make spirits bright by sharing a photo!

Well . . . I was supposed to be spending it over at my cousin's house but got a text this morning that he had a heart attack and is currently in the hospital. So I'm going there to check up on him.

We used to sell larger versions of these beautiful paper storage boxes from PLUS, the series is called Living Post which is very good for organizing your home and work desktop.  This year they released a smaller version which is also cheaper at about HK$98 per piece.  Instantly they became our top sellers in Xmas.

Most people have their stationery stuffed in a drawer without classification and eventually a lot of them are not used on regular basis, they are just lying there to be thrown away one day.  The problem is, like most of your other stuffs, that without organization, things are not being used to their potential and this is such a waste.

So instead of putting stuffs in drawers, Living Post offers to have your gears accessible on your desktop.  Yes you have to create a space for such storage boxes but the payback is guaranteed.  You make things beautiful so that they become useful.

I now use a square orange box to store clips, craft related stuffs such as MT masking tapes, leather tools.  The large drawer is just the right size for postcard or 4x6 photos, a calculator, Field Notes and Moleskine pocket size notebook fit perfectly well inside.  My other narrow black box is used for photo related stuffs such as shutter release, 35mm film canisters, tapes, etc.  It also serve as a place to put miscellaneous or temporary stuffs.

The Living Post drawers are tiny but enough.  If you are not a stationery freak, chances are you will find it useful in your own ways.  Say for storing daily cosmetic stuffs, for a dedicated place to store all your keys and cables, etc.

I wish they have a version with wood pattern which fits perfectly with my desktop theme at home.

Merry Christmas to all. Have a great weekend and have fun.