HCI 513 was basically a class about “An integrated study of design, technical, and strategic issues for Internet commerce”. Since I work full time as a web administrator I didn’t think I would learn much, but the professor was very informed and provided addiitional insight into the various aspects of e-commerce. Particularly, I learned even with the nice web services offered by FedEx and UPS, that implementing shipping on an e-commerce site is fairly complex. The projects we have worked on at work always charged a flat rate, although we are working on an implementation now that integrates our publishing group’s DB, which has a shipping calculator. But that is done on the inventory/fullfillment app side, so all we do is pass the address and get the data back from the API.
Daily Archives: October 13, 2004
Mt Fuji covered in snow
I have been to Japan several times now. Each trip has been enjoyable and thought provoking. Being married to a Japanese means that I do not see just the tourist areas, but instead have had the opportunity to see daily Japanese life. First, I love japanese food (that is an understatement), so that makes staying there quite easy. Second, well I mentioned it already, I am married to a Japanese.
I will post some of my journals from the trips over the past year at some point soon. Actually, that is another reason why I started to put this site together. The main banner for this site (the standard design) is from a shot I took from Fujisawa city where my inlaws live. It was during December 2003. I don’t speak Japanese yet, but am planning on learning (well, I have been studying on my own, but it is slow going, until I finish my grad degree). At any rate, I mentioned in conversation with my wife’s family, that I was going out to take a picture of Mt Fuji from the roof of their apartment (which my wife translated) and her dad laughed because he did not think I would get much. I went up on the roof of the apartment and could see Fuji-san quite clearly and took some good shots. As I said above, I will post more pics and text when I have time.