Not the algorithmic kind, the real kind. The kind of sorting that was around long before even the first computer. Back then, perhaps I had some coins. Coins used to be a popular way to facilitate exchanges. So there we were back when this ancient computer was built. But we didn’t care about the computer. I had coins, you had beans, lets talk and make an exchange. Being competitive, I wanted as many of your beans for as few of my coins as possible. And thats where sorting comes in. See, I have a handful of coins. And in order to figure out what I am willing to give away - I need to know what I have. So I sort them into groups and mentally weighted them with value. Gold doubloons? Those are important so I won’t even bring those out at the exchange of beans for coins. What else can we sort? Well, I occasionally use cash but prefer not to carry it (However, all my coins go into a little piggy next to the fireplace). Every day, six days a week there might be new mail. Today I tried to be mindful as I checked the mailbox. I know mew housing developments to have them all grouped together at strategic points in the community; and this is nice, but there is something about seeing the corner of a brown envelope sticking out of my mailbox when I drive home. Enjoying a smile as Hannah asks me if she can check the mail and proceeds to take forever to open it up by telling me she already knows how to do it before accusing me of intentionally not helping me. I know, clearly fuzzy logic at work here And that’s kind of funny in a memorial sort of way. Today, I unlocked the (is this a new UserSession?) mailbox and grabbed everything inside. There was an Amazon envelope that was slightly sticking out of the slot and five or six letters to Julie. No big deal. Some days there are no personal items, only local coupons and other bulk mail items. Today, I grabbed (my favorite LayoutStrategy) and put the large envelope on the bottom. Pulling the smaller things out, I organized them into largest on the bottom to smallest on top. When two or three people (different LayoutStrategies) get mail at the house, I still sort it into the smallest to biggest range until I get inside to start cooking my beans. Then in front of the counter I start with the first item and create mine, Hannah’s and Julie’s pile in front of stuff that I am going to toss off to the side. Anyone can do it. Julie has her own LayoutStrategy’s that I am sure is different than mine. Hannah, well her LayoutStrategy is random at best but full of energy and entertaining to watch. This is important because a digital analog needs to accommodate this. There I was on a Friday afternoon standing in the sun with a handful of mail. I saw the mailbox as a stream or a manufacturing conveyer belt. There are digital mechanisms to push a view through the layout strategy And how we do it in real life is related to how we can interact with our data on devices today. Grids are nice for that especially the ones I saw few years ago in that jQuery plugin (Masonry?). The one that tiles blocks of content on the page Auto magically. I need something like that for my specialize tableView. With the belt of mail going by one could drag or flick the piece up or down if they were going horizontally and left or right if they were going up and down. Or drag them from the stream into buckets that live in the navigation controllers. Even better would be to apply rules to each bucket. Who sent the item? When did I receive the item? Now I can just stuff this into memory and tomorrow I can pick up where I left opart old things happen everyday. Tomorrow one good thing might be standing under the tree and brushing tufts of tree slough before I open the mailbox. But only if Hannah doesn’t ask me for my keys. Even if she does I will still get to stand in the sun, close my eyes and breath. I will get a moment to think about things I like about mail. Things that have very little to do with the process of managing it but the provide a stron anchor for the best things (good news, thank you’s and new shoes) and spending a (semi) quiet moment with my child. These memories would not be possible without all of the mail items. They relate to the mailbox my parents had when I was smaller. Somewhere, in the process of managing the physical mail I get, there is life: insights and revelations about those who mean the most, potential for exciting new adventures and data points marking the path of my history. Some of it is the warm comfort in routine and sometimes it is the shock or thrill of discovery as a heart can drop or soar faster than a speeding bullet. I would have gone with faster than the speed of light but I don’t think the chemical process in our brains is faster. Tomorrow is Friday and I hope I get my second iPhone in the mail. I stood in line for the very first one and while its been decommissioned after training the next generation for device oriented interaction, I still have it. After the original one I went to Palm until they died or got murdered by incompetence - I’m not sure which one is correct. Probably both are but I moved one to try other things for a Moment or two. Now i am almost back where I began. Waiting for an iPhone to go on sale. This time I was smarter about it and skipped the line. It will be nice to check the mail tomorrow and the few days after that if my order took a bit longer to process than the interwebs tell me it did.
9/20/2012 ~ 6 min read
