A couple weeks ago Jenn saw an ad seeking couples to test a new contraceptive gel for a month. Because they don't know whether or how well the gel works, these couples must be wanting to have a child, but simply not mind if it's delayed a month.

And because they're paying out $500 in cash and gift cards (better than $3 they paid back in college for psych experiments), it seemed like a good deal to us. Besides, half the couples get a placebo gel, so there may be no delay whatsoever on account of participation. We had our first meeting with them today and are officially enrolled.


Also a couple of weeks ago, in spite of my manta "Never be first, never be last, and never, ever volunteer for anything!" I jumped in for some extra work at CSUN. This is because we have an accounts-maintenance page that suffers horribly from a usability standpoint, and I let a number of people know how I felt about it.

Since I have a few spare cycles at work, I figured I might as well offer to fix the page rather than just criticize it. This means I now have to learn Fast CGI, WDialog, OCamel (Objective Camel) and RMWD (remote middleware daemon, a home-grown system). At least I won't be bored.