Velvet has a tangerine day

Velvet was having a tangerine day. On a tangerine day every interview she touched would flow and glow and she was reminded of that song by Talking Heads which right now she couldn't stop hearing even if she wanted to:

I dont know why I love you like I do
All the troubles you put me through
Sixteen candles there on my wall
And here am I the biggest fool of them all

I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river and drop me in the water
Dip me in the river, drop me in the water
Washing me down, washing me down.

Yep. It was one of those drop me in the water days.

There had been alot of those days since the retooling. The retooling was when she sent her laptop back to the company. Then, a few days later she got back a Wii.

It wasn't really a Nintendo. It was still a laptop. But it was also a Wii.

It was a Wii because now when she dragged the external data sources avatar onto the interview and there were still too many unanswered questions, she could shake and bake.

Shake and bake was a new resource. It used something called "connecting the dots" to turn unanswered questions into answered ones. The reason they called it "shake and bake" instead of "connecting the dots" was easy. Because you just didn't activate the shake and bake plan by dropping it on the interview and its lost sections. After you dropped the plan, it had to be simmered and cooked. That was when Wii came in.

Velvet would pick up her laptop and move it from side to side and back and forth until there was a fit and the answers covered all the questions.

The company never really explained the Wii except to say that the laptop was now capable of doing "lateral thinking" but the thinking had to be shaped. Hence shake and bake and Wii. And hence visualization. And hence the interviewer as cook.

It was all very natural. Smile.

Velvet wanted to look under the cover of shake and bake just like she would look under the cover at her boyfriend. But she knew this time she wouldn't understand anything she saw. Even so, Velvet couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. The sleeping dog in this case was a tip -- you know, one of those yellow popups that surfaced under a mouseover.

When Velvet moused over the shake and bake plan she got the tip. The tip said "self-organizing map". Sometimes it simply said "SOM". And sometimes there was the video.

Yep. Take me to the river and drop me in the water. It wasn't better than sex but Wii was it fun.

Read More...

Summary only...

Future Instruments -- Part III

Carl was about to begin a new interview. He knew the drill. He would snap and shoot the respondent and an avatar would appear in the resource pool. He then would drop and drag the avatar onto the pipeline and, after a pause, the questions would begin.

Only today there has been a refusal right after the snap and shoot. Perhaps it had been stage fright. In any event he wouldn't get to see the respondent's avatar first turn busy and then progress in hues from gray scale to whatever rgb his monitor was set at as the interview unfolded. Indeed something new occurred as Carl changed the avatar's status to "refusal". Carl had been trained for this eventuality but the eventuality had never happened before.

Carl checked the resource pool on the dashboard again. He had not been mistaken: a match had occurred. In a match the actual respondent avatar and a funny one were joined at the hip: a twin was born.

Carl remembered a Starbucks around the corner. It was no telling how long working the match would take.

Once in line Carl ordered a triple short mocha and after almost no wait, he sat alone at a table ready for the eventuality.

Carl dragged the match onto the pipeline hoping against hope that now his heartaches would begin. A heartache, Carl had learned in training, was when an interviewer had to join the match.

This wasn't normal. Generally matches, the product of advanced simulation, didn't require interviewer intervention. But Carl's company which had developed advanced simulation in the first place (patent pending), had also written the book on active participation.

Active participation was a training module. It was also an avatar in the resource pool. This avatar had Carl's face. Carl would use it if advanced simulation called on Carl to speak.

The trouble with advanced simulation, Carl had learned during training, was that sometimes a match gave answers that would fail the consistency check. There were two types of failures (called lies by experienced interviewers) that the match might be caught in. K failures had face validity. With F failures a match made a complete non-sequitor.

In either event Carl would get to say the answer.

Carl kicked back, dropped the match on the pipeline and watched the match do the walking. He did steal a glance at the resource pool and saw himself. Carl smiled at his reflection. It wasn't every interviewer who could say: I am in the house. This required specialization.

Read More...

Summary only...