strawberryJAMM's Security and User Experience WebLog : Personal

{pssst. I'm over here!}

strawberryJAMM — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:36:00 GMT

Just started a brand new professional blog! Check it out:

sJd UxD - http://sjd-uxd.blogspot.com/2009/09/hello-and-welcome.html

Long time gone and not coming back

strawberryJAMM — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:54:00 GMT

It's been a long time since I posted here, and that's because I left Microsoft back in November of 2005. As I was no longer working in Windows Security I no longer had anything to say on this subject and I didn't feel like this was the right place for me to continue posting about User Experience.

I haven't restarted a "professional" blog at this point in time, but I have maintained a personal blog at Live Spaces where I might start posting User Experience related topics again - I've been working in the Online Casino Game industry since March 2007, which has a very different set of user experience challenges from Security (although there is, as you might expect, a certain amount of overlap). If you see this, and liked what I have had to say in the past, feel free to check it out.

Signing Off,
Jenni

Back in the Blogosphere

strawberryJAMM — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 22:06:00 GMT

To anyone who follows my blog, my apologies for the three month-ish absence. Real life reared it's ugly head and various circumstances of health, happiness and quality of life collided, thereby requiring that I take a short leave of absence from work. During this time, I felt that it was also wise to keep all things work related at arms length, and so I allowed this blog to languish.

And now I'm back, and raring to go. Expect me to start posting again very soon. :-)

--Jenni (aka strawberryJAMM)

strawberryJAMM moves to Blogs @ TechNet

strawberryJAMM — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 03:00:00 GMT

blogs.TechNet.com has officially gone live and "strawberryJAMM's Security and User Experience WebLog" has moved off blogs.MSDN.com...(read more)

[OT] Lifetime Reading Plan

strawberryJAMM — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:50:00 GMT

Something a little more refined than usual and (for those reading my professional blog) a bit off topic, a list of "life time reading recommendations" was shared by one of the women in a Book Club I'm in:

The Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman (3rd Ed, 1988)

I'd include the list I received in email here, but I found the page it was copied off and the author has asked that it be linked to and not reposted on the web.

--=+=--

Well, I think I'm a bit behind with that list, so I'd best be getting right on it don't you think? :P

Actually, as I started perusing the list in more depth I realized that, considering I wasn't actually trying or anything, I've actually made a pretty good inroad so far:

· I thank heaven for my BA in Classical Studies--it single-handedly polished off all of the "Beginning" section

· High school and college English Literature courses ran the gamut of Bunyan, Joyce, Orwell; cleared a good solid chunk of Chaucer and Shakespeare; and dabbled with Dante and all of these poets: Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats, Eliot.

· Robert Frost is my all time favourite poet and I've read all his poems at least once. One of my two all time favourite poems is The Road Not Taken, which I have been able to quote from memory since I was about 10. It's also a good summary of my general attitude in life. (For the record, my other "all time favourite" poem is The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, who was contemporary with Yeats and doesn't rate a separate spot on Clifton's list, but could be included in Poets of the English Language)

· Childhood reading ticks off Lewis Carol and Mark Twain

· My husband took this awesome college course in "History of Speculative Fiction". I snagged each book after he was done, which captured Huxley's Brave New World, along with several other classics of the genre.

· The book club I mentioned at the start of this post has also accounted for a few including Austen's Pride and Prejudice, (half of) Gabriel Carcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (It didn't sit well with me and I just couldn't finish)

· A "Negotiation Strategies" practice group I've attended a few times reviewed a few sections from Machiavelli's The Prince.

· Finally, a result of a life time passion for literature and reading has also managed to put away:

o More of Shakespeare than school can account for (though still not all of them)

o Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

o Jane Austen's Emma

o All of Edgar Allen Poe's stories (and poems)

Interestingly, although I have read some Dickens, none of the works listed are included: A Cricket on the Hearth, A Christmas Carol, and (some of) A Tale of Two Cities

A 4th edition of the reading list ("The new Lifetime Reading Plan") was released in 1997, which included quite a few more items, most notably a significant number of eastern classics and some key works by that most prolific of authors Anonymous. Of the additions to that list I've also read:

· The Epic of Gilgamesh (English Lit)

· Parts of Sun-tzu's The Art of War (through the "Negotiation Strategies" practice group)

· Parts of the The Koran (just 'cause)

· The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (another just 'cause)

· Parts of One Thousand and One Nights (ditto)

· Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (ditto)

· Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (ditto)

I think I really will have to dig into some of the things on those lists I haven't read - especially the non-fiction works, which I'm not nearly as far along with as I am with the fiction works. Are you game?

ADDENDUM

There are very few "modern" works on these lists but the site that is linked to includes some among the Great Books Lists: Lists of Classics, Eastern and Western page. I haven't explored them in depth, but it got me thinking about what I'd add to a "Lifetime Reading Plan" of my own devising. The following immediately came to mind:

· J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

· Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vols. 1-4

· Arthur C. Clark, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Hammer of God

· William Gibson, Neuromancer (Remembering Tomorrow)

· James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

· Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

· Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

· Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Puck of Pook's Hill

· Hugh Lofting, (complete tales of) Doctor Doolittle

· Richard Adams, Watership Down

· L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, A Tangled Web

So, how about you? What books would you add to a "Lifetime Reading Plan" of your own devising?

--
Jenni A. M. Merrifield == strawberryJAMM

Now playing: "Get the Party Started" by "Pink" in Windows Media Player 10.

Edit: Added [OT] to title to make it clear that this isn't a technical topic.

All About “strawberryJAMM”

strawberryJAMM — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:35:00 GMT

I thought I'd start off this blog by introducing myself – it’s nice to know who is talking at you right?

My name is Jenni A.M. Merrifield, though (as I'm sure you've guessed) I also go by “strawberryJAMM” here and about online. I work for Microsoft as a User Experience Program Manager (UX PM) for the Windows Core Security (WCS) group. I joined the WCS in Feb 2004 and was originally tasked with driving the user experience issues for the “TrustBridge” team federated identity management project. Unfortunately for me (‘cause I really liked working with them), the entire TrustBridge team was re-org’ed out of WCS and into the Active Directory (AD) group where the product was officially christened “Active Directory Federation Services” (ADFS). Hopefully they will stick to my original plan and the snapin will be both useful and at least somewhat usable.

Currently I’m on the Application Security (AppSec) team and am focused on issues around the user experience when running with a Least-Privilege User Account (LUA) versus an Administrator Account, and around the configuration and application of Software Restriction Policies (SRP) in both the Home and Enterprise environments.

I have a little over seven years of industry experience in the User Experience field for client/server applications and systems development. Prior to my recent move to the WCS group I was with the Content Management Server (CMS) team in the Windows Server System group for almost three years and I worked for NCompass Labs, Inc. (a small startup located in Vancouver, BC, Canada that developed “Resolution” – the web content management client/server application that became “Microsoft Content Management Server” after Microsoft acquired NCompass in May 2001) for the four years before that.

Prior to hooking up with NCompass Labs (June 1997) I did time at university (11 whole years of time) and completed two separate undergraduate degrees: a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with a major in Classical Studies (The art, history, architecture and archaeology of Ancient Rome and Greece) from the University of British Columbia followed by a Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc) with a major in Computer Engineering (and a personal focus on human-computer interaction, user experience and ergonomics) from Simon Fraser University.

As you may have guessed, I originally hail from “Lotus Land” – (that would be Vancouver, BC, Canada) – and “I am Canadian”. My family and I moved to the Redmond/Seattle, WA area from the Vancouver, BC area in August of 2001 (about four months after the Microsoft acquisition of NCompass labs). Since then, my husband Ron, son Nathan (He’ll be six on Sep. 21st) and I have lived just south of a small city called Mill Creek which is, in turn, North West of Seattle. We do, however, make a point of regularly visiting our friends and family who still live “North of the 49th”. I expect… No, I know I’ll move back someday, I love that area too much, and while the Seattle area is similar, it just isn’t the same (close, but not the same). Still, I’m quite happy where I am at the moment, both with my career and in my life, so I’m definitely here for the long haul.

On a more personal note, when I can actually eek out some spare time (admittedly not nearly as often as I’d like), I love to read (almost any genre, but with a definite preference for science fiction and fantasy), I regularly DM and play in tabletop fantasy Role Playing Games (mainly D&D 3e5 and d20), and dabble in digital artwork and web site design for fun and (occasional) profit.

And that's the scoop on who I am and what I'm about. Now it’s up to you to decide whether the words that pass from my fingers to my keyboard and onto the pages of this blog are worthy of your attention. J