Journal: News & Comment

Front of the nose

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

A few weeks ago, my work colleague Noel asked to borrow my copy of Steve Krug's excellent web usability book Don't Make Me Think!. (If you're involved with website design and development at all and you haven't read it, go do that.)

When I received my copy as a gift from Fazal Majid earlier this year, I read it eagerly and put it on a shelf in the living room for easy access later. Yet somehow when I searched for it to lend to Noel, I couldn't find it there. So I looked on other shelves in the living room, in the den, in the bedroom, and in my office downstairs. No luck. I thought the kids had stashed it somewhere.

This morning I was sitting on the couch, dazed and half-awake, drinking my first coffee (my wife and I attended a nighttime wedding yesterday). Not really thinking clearly, I absent-mindedly skimmed the bookshelf with my eyes, not looking at or for anything. And there was the book, on the same bookshelf I had first looked at. It's a thin book, and I had gone right by it in my previous searches.

Good think I'm not a private detective or anything.

 |