I went back to where I grew up just outside of Detroit this past weekend. It was a great treat to eat at the places I loved as a kid (Buddy’s Pizza), go to a Detroit Tigers baseball game in their awesome ballpark, and spend time with family.

My wife & I flew in just before a huge storm.

I have to gush a little bit because for my 29th birthday my lovely wife bought me a 22″ Widescreen monitor that matches the one I already own.  I love working with dual screens when doing everything from programming to just surfing the net because I can leave my communication tools open on one screen while I work on another.

Maitre D: And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint.

Mr Creosote: No.

Maitre D: Oh sir… it’s only wafer thin.

I have been using iWork ‘08 since Friday as a part of their 30 day trial program and I love it.

One of the things I’ve always bemoaned about my beloved MacBook is that I have to run Crossover Mac + Office 2003 to get office suite interoperability in a nice package. iWork now features an application called “Numbers” so that I have interoperability between Word (Pages), PowerPoint (Keynote), and FINALLY Excel (Numbers).

I often think about user interface design for computer applications and specifically web based applications.  My thoughts often revolve around the “rules” of these interactions.  For example: Most users interacting with an application will do it using their keyboard, their mouse, and a web browser of their choice.  Since I cannot impact those tools,