Surveys show that 8 out 5 schizophrenics agree.

I starting to run around fairly raggedly in trying to get things organized for the upcoming trip. Getting the gear and clothes is fairly straightforward, especially since I've used most of it recently, however the time consuming part is doing the planning for all the sites I want to visit. I'm setting up a pretty organized plan of what things I want to see an do one what particular days. I have to get all the point of interest loaded into the GPS, laptop, and print outs of the particular things of interest in case the technology fails. for just a few days I'd typically wing it, but this will be a 26 day multi-state tour (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico) with a couple of dozen various stops such as state parks, national park sites, and even geocaches.

I did take a a little over two hours today to participate in a focus study group. Every few months I get a call from a local research/survey firm to determine if I am eligible for one of their marketing surveys but most of the time I do not 'qualify' whether it be because I don't use a particular product, am unmarried, or some other aspect. This time it seemed I had the right aspects for which they were searching and they offered me a position in the group. Since I signed a non-disclosure agreement I cannot talk about what the subject of the focus study might have been, but we spent a couple of hours looking at different versions of a product and offering ideas and opinions concerning layout, usability, and preferences. It was neat enough to experience and though it only took about two and a half hours, the participants were offered a small lunch of sandwiches and also paid $100 for their time.