INFORMATION DIARY FOR MONDAY, FEB 12, 1996  -  Matt Gorbet
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8:05am  - woken by bro from SF (5.05am his time!)
        telephone call.  Ans. Machine got it.
        Wrote note to myself to return it later that day.
9:00am  - woken by alarm clock - news:  It's going
        to be VERY cold today and tonight.  Bundle
        up.  made mental note.
9:30am  - telephone call - father will be in town this
        week.  arr. to see him on Friday night.  Gave
        me name of hotel and dates, times of arr. and
        dep.
11:00am - arr. Media Lab - checked email - message
        taken by housemate from HIS ans. machine,
        to call a friend of the family about a 
        "request for information".  Phone number 
        included in email message.
11:15am - called Susan (see last entry) - she was trying,
        on behalf of another friend, to get in touch
        with my father.  Gave her his new business number
        (from a business card in my pocket) and told
        her info about his whereabouts this week. 
        (see 2 entries back).  Also, caught up on 
        personal information.
11:30am - wrote email to a friend to make tentative 
        plans for dinner tonight or tomorrow night.
11:40am - received email back re: plans
11:40am - responded.  Plans still tentative. 
        NOTE: Neglected to check any type of schedule,
        ignorant of conflict with tomorrow night! SHIT.
12:00pm - called brother back.  Used number from my 
        "little black book".
12:40pm - engaged in "zephyr chat" with 3 friends.  
        mainly gossip.  Made plans to catch up with one
        of them at 2:30, online, to make further plans
        for this evening.
12:50pm - "plans" friend arrived face to face.  discussed
        tentative plans.  Still tentative.
12:55pm - received reminder from automatic scheduler
        on my computer that there was a lunch talk 
        in 5 minutes.
12:55pm - invited "zephyr friend" to lunch talk with me.
12:55pm - invitation accepted.
1:00pm  - Attented TTT talk.
2:40pm  - "caught up" with zephyr friend online, and made
        plans to meet her this evening (~7:30).
3:30pm  - received email from room-mate that said I had 
        2 messages on ans. machine.  Called to check them.
        both were already outdated (Zephyr friend from 
        2:40 and bro from morning - 
        **no communication to roommate that I already 
        got messages**)
All Aft - received many email messages about goings-on
        in the Media Lab.  Many mailing lists, discussion
        threads.
5:00pm  - engaged in Zephyr chat with another friend.
        This lasted about an hour, on and off.
6:00pm  - missed dinner at house.  Too involved in code.
6:30pm  - remembered dinner.  Went home.  Ate.
7:30pm  - met friend at library.  Went for coffee.
        talked face to face for 2.5 hours.
10:30pm - house meeting.  Lasted 'till 1:30am.

----------------------------------------------------

OBSERVATIONS:

* Only actual "news of the world" was from the radio,
        first thing in the morning, by serendipity.
* Used scheduler for the very first time ever, and it
        worked well.
* >90% of my communication with others today was by 
        email, zephyr, and telephone.
* MISSED two major things - dinner and prior commitment
        for tomorrow.
* Just because I had received a message or some info
        didn't inform "info delivery system" that I had
        received it -- i.e. ans. machine messages.

Recommendation/Suggestion - it would be GREAT to have
something that simply double-checked what I already had
planned for me, as I make new plans.  I don't want to 
have to enter everything into a central location.  It
would be nice to email (free-form) commitments to a
smart manager that would then monitor as i make more 
commitments (perhaps it would parse outgoing email 
messages, listen to phone calls for key words, etc, 
and ACTIVELY remind me of things).  The reminder
calendar worked very well, but I had previously (last
week) entered the lunch talk.  I would rather have
simply forwarded the announcement of the lunch talk
to a super-agent that could have parsed and organized
it for me.

That would be cool.

Plus, today I spent almost the entire day in front of 
a computer.  For days when I am not in front of the 
computer, it would be great to have email delivered 
to my person (pager?) and some sort of non-intrusive
zephyr analogy for sporadic, parallel chats at a 
distance and not requiring much effort.  Only quick
analogy I can think of might be a taxi radio or a 
walkie-talkie, but those are fairly intrusive.  IS
there a zephyr-like form of communication for the 
non-computer world?

Let me think more about that.