Today I was at the grocery store gathering a few necessities such as trash bags, and milk. I think I speak for most of us when I say the natural desire is to park as close to the door as possible. Yes there is the occasional ass that parks at the back of the lot sprawling diagonally over 2 spaces, but even he probably doesn’t want to park too far away. We do this as an instinct in order to reduce the amount of effort it will take for us to get there. I’ve witnessed drivers that will conveniently stop traffic while waiting for the perfect spot. And we’ve all seen the vultures that circle just to gain a few extra feet toward the glorious door—as they dart for the space that opens up.

There are a few occasions where this is acceptable—rain, too hot, too cold, handicapped, or if acid is falling from the sky. But I’d say most of us are just lazy. More of us should consider parking farther away. We need the exercise, it’s good to be outside, and it’s much more convenient for the rest of the drivers if you will just park in the first space you see.

If you really are concerned about walking have you considered the fact that you have to walk the cart back to the store? If you don’t walk the cart back, you really should take a look in the mirror for a few hours. In many locations, the closest parking space is still pretty far away when you consider returning that cart to the store front. Although I haven’t measured a test group of grocery stores, I firmly believe the best place to park is directly next to the cart return. There is a nominal amount of extra walking if you have a cart because you don’t have to take the cart back to the store, these spaces are usually available, you don’t annoy as many other drivers, and you feel good about making an intelligent decision. So park by the cart return and begin to judge the vultures from your pedestal of intelligence.

I realized today that I’ve been accepting this notion of “Open Recent Files” for quite some time. The idea is simple. In my mind, as an end user, it means that I should be able to open a file I was working on yesterday or perhaps one that I’ve saved and closed in the previous 5-10 minutes, or hours. Whatever the case may be, for as long as I can remember “Open Recent Files” doesn’t actually show a list of the most recent files I’ve worked on. Perhaps on some days it works as desired, but most of the time it shows something I worked on several days ago, or in this case lists the same file “GenericPoster.ai” 5 times. Now I know for a fact that I worked on other things in this particular program after I worked on the Generic Poster. And, I haven’t opened that file in a week. So, this morning, I went to “Open Recent Files” in Illustrator in an effort to open a file I worked on last night, and of course, it’s not listed. I somewhat recall a similar phenomenon when working on Windows XP, however I’m not completely sure.

I’m a believer in creating reasonable expectations in order to avoid the frustration of unkept promises. So maybe it should say something more like “Open Random, Semi Recent Files” to clear up the confusion. Okay, I think “Semi Recent” should have a hyphen, but I don’t want to fix the jpg. That was probably the attitude of the programmer, so I guess I’m not one to judge. Also, is it necessary to repeat the file multiple times? Absolutely not. This software isn’t cheap, and neither is the hardware, or the operating system. Its nearly 2006, we’ve cloned things, and we haven’t worked this one out yet. Interesting.