Anecdotes

“Airport Emergency” Has an Awful Ring to It

Denver International Airport has a distinctive way of paging passengers on its concourses:

Mr. Smith, Mr. Charles Smith; Mr. Atkins, Mr. Derek Atkins; Mr. Sorkin, Mr. Aaron Sorkin – please dial zero on an airport courtesy telephone.

The familiar rhythm is oddly comforting.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport also demonstrated a distinctive way of paging passengers during my layover there:

Charles Smith, please go to the nearest phone and dial 911 for a very important message.

I’m not sure how Charles Smith reacted, but I sure didn’t find it comforting.

The Red Thing’s Connected to My… Wristwatch

It’s great fun watching the IT department during a network outage.  Suddenly all these people normally holed up in their offices start to poke their heads timidly out into the hallway, and then begin to roam the halls in uncertain groups, as if exploring their environment for the first time.

It makes it easy to separate the whole of IT into its component groups.  The network engineers aren’t anywhere in sight – they’re busily at work troubleshooting the outage.  The support staff are also working frantically to answer calls from users who are convinced it’s just their office that’s been cut off.  The systems programmers have less to do, but can still talk amongst themselves about what systems might be affected, and what possible contributions they could make toward solving the problem.

And then there are the application developers.  We just gather in a group, as if surrounding a campfire, acknowledge that we cannot perform any useful function at the moment, and tell stories of outages gone by.

(My favorite story was from a couple years ago when we had a power outage.  The machine room was well protected, but our desktop PCs switched off like lights.  As did the lights.  Just as an ominous silence blanketed the building, it was instantly cut off by the brief but loud swearing from an unknown person down the hall who had clearly not hit the Save button in a little while.)

Is There Anything They Can’t Do?

When Denver International Airport first opened, my parents and I were delighted to discover a little pretzel shop by gate B-24 called “Auntie Anne’s.”  Even today, when I have ready access to Auntie Anne’s throughout the Boston area, I remember the exact gate in DIA where I can find the salty buttery treats.

The second time we walked up to the shop we saw an enormous line snaking across the concourse.  More striking than its length, though, was its composition: what looked like the complete flight crews from at least three or four different flights were queued up together to get their fix of Auntie’s delicious snacks before their flights carried them away.

I’d forgotten this until my return trip from Washington yesterday.  When I got to the airport I learned the earlier 4:30 flight was canceled, leaving the 5:30 and 6:30 flights inundated with standby passengers.  The gate agents were surrounded by a frustrated mob of late check-ins, stand-bys, volunteers who gave up their seats, and general riffraff desperately seeking information (which they gave readily, with great detail and pleasant smiles).  Nobody in an Airtran uniform was spared the third degree.

Finally, when the crowd had dissipated – the stand-bys off to the food court with $10 food vouchers, the volunteers off to their homes to wait for the morning’s flights, and the rest of us to our chairs to sit peacefully – a lone flight attendant emerged from the chaos.  Looking as if she’d spent her day chasing a particularly energetic child across the country, she asked one last question of the customer service agents, as one would ask water of a merchant in the desert: “Pretzels?  Pretzels?”

I thought she must surely have asked for “restrooms” until she reappeared a few minutes later holding an Auntie Anne’s bag.  “They’re sending me all over the place today; I don’t know what’s going on.  But at least by coming here I get pretzels,” she announced.

You ARE the Brute Squad

Something about this FAQ entry amuses me:

Q.  Whom should I notify in the event I cannot appear for juror service?

A. You may call the juror information number (1-800-THE-JURY)…

If you have any trouble, just call The Jury.  There’s only one, and it has an 800 number.

That’s right – three months after I informed the State of Vermont I couldn’t serve on a jury in a state that’s four hours away, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts offered to put me to good use.  I’m even 30% sure they’re aware I’m qualified to serve here based on their e-mail response to me:

The Office of Jury Commissioner has received your submission confirming that you are qualified for juror service, and that you do not wish to change your service date or location.  Your submission will be processed shortly.  In 1-2 business days you will receive a notification that your confirmation has been processed.  Approximately 10 days prior to your scheduled service we will mail you a Reminder Notice.

It’s really quite clear. First they sent me a confirmation that I’ve submitted confirmation of qualification, but some time in the future they’ll send me a confirmation notification that they’ve processed my confirmation of qualification successfully.

Despite the awkward wording and the somewhat retro site design, I give Massachusetts big points for integrating Google Maps.  After entering my badge number to get to the inner website I found a link to get directions to the courthouse.  I expected at best a map with a star where the courthouse is, but found instead point-to-point directions from my apartment.  This is a government website.  They know where I live.

Computer, Write a Blog Post For Me

I just watched WALL-E: a movie whose plot includes a future where humans are so lazy we require robots to do our every chore, right down to letting us converse with the people immediately beside us without moving our eyes.

Afterward, I went into the bathroom to wash the artificial butter from my hands by holding them under the motion sensitive faucet and then the motion sensitive dryer.  Then I just stepped on the escalator downstairs to go home.

The irony is not lost on me.

Independence Means the Freedom to Blow Things Up

I love a fireworks display that’s so intense I can literally feel my walls shaking 4.5 miles away.

This is why the woman sitting next to us at the Pops the other night explained, after we prompted her (by saying absolutely nothing and never once looking in her direction) that she comes to Boston every year.  She passes up New York City’s fireworks, which Wikipedia says are the largest in the world (and why would it lie!) just to camp out on the Esplanade and watch Keith Lockhart.

It Was Like a 23109 of the Mind

I’m not sure which should be more surprising: that I showed up to work this morning in the back of a police cruiser or that I was disappointed none of my coworkers were around to witness it.

(I may have given a demo for the police first thing this morning and then accepted a ride back to the office.  At least, that’s the story I’ll be telling.)

Play Ball!

Tonight’s Boston Pops concert (part of the ongoing OoP day celebrations) featured music from the Baseball Music Project, including a 1969 novelty song called Van Lingle Mungo.  Far funnier in theory than in execution, the song’s lyrics consist entirely of the names of 1940s baseball players – particularly those that sound funny.  The first verse:

Heeney Majeski
Johnny Gee
Eddie Joost
Johnny Pesky
Thornton Lee
Danny Gardella
Van Lingle Mungo

The author, David Frishberg, got to perform the song for Van Lingle Mungo himself, who griped that he wouldn’t get any money despite his name being the title and the refrain:

“When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely downcast. ‘But it’s my name,’ he said.  I told him, ‘The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called Dave Frishberg.'”

They also performed a far more entertaining song titled Let’s Keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, accompanied by slides of the team.  Tip for the future: don’t show slides of a Brooklyn team wearing what is, in the end, the Red Sox insignia on their caps.  We’re easily confused about that sort of thing.

It’s Almost as Good as Getting an Actual Tour!

I went to tour an apartment recently in a brand new building.  When I arrived the leasing agent took me into the office and gestured for me to sit in front of a large plasma screen.

This immediately conjured memories of the BU Experience video – a 25 minute video designed to appeal to would-be undergraduates touring the BU campus.  They also show it at employee orientation.  Nobody gets to talk about health insurance until we’ve all listened to the immortal words of Martin Luther King (which, according to banners outside Marsh Plaza back in February, included the phrase “lorem ipsum“).

The Experience was a $3 million experiment that ultimately proved nothing more than that people are capable of editing segments of video into a presentation.  It carries graphics on par with Fox News, and flashy integrations of interviews and inspirational music.  It’s really the same video colleges have been producing for years, but instead of sending it out on DVD to students’ homes BU shows it in a theater dedicated to the purpose.  Promotional material and uncomfortable seats.  It’s a bargain.

Only students at Appalachian are really envious of BU’s approach.  Watch that video for even a few seconds and you’ll understand why.

In the leasing office of my potential future apartment, I saw a far more effective use of high technology as a marketing tool.

The plasma screen was mounted at an angle, with chairs in front of it.  At first, it just showed a 3D rendering of the floors in the building. Touch a floor, though, and it expands to show the layout of apartments on that floor.  The layout is color coded by price range, and labeled with the basics (e.g., how many bedrooms are in each unit).

Touch a particular apartment and it expands to show the floor plan inside.  Touch a secret spot (hint: it’s the corporate logo) and the screen adds the monthly rent to the display.  Touch buttons at the bottom of the screen and you can see views inside the space and perhaps out the window – features that I couldn’t use, since there were no photos available yet for the brand new building.

Nothing about this display is inherently novel.  Anybody in the world can download the same floor plans from the building’s website, and can explore prices for available apartments.  Touch screens have been around for decades, when their most public use was to order roast beef sandwiches at Arby’s.  Semi flashy animation is ubiquitous even on the web now.

What makes it exciting is that it organizes information in a way that makes sense, perhaps for the first time in the history of apartment leasing.  It generates the desire to explore.  I might want to check out the price differential between similar apartments on different floors of the building.  That takes just three taps per apartment.

You might be interested in comparing the views and floor plans for different apartments in the same price range.  Check out the dark blue apartment on one side of the building and you’ll see a small one bedroom with gorgeous Boston views; check out the dark blue apartment on the opposite corner and you’ll see a spacious two bedroom with views of the railroad yard.

It doesn’t take a lot of energy (just a lot of creativity) to put technology to good use.  An overproduced video?  No.  An interactive apartment finder?  Yes.

On the other hand, this was the same buildling that has a plasma screen in the mail room with little icons for apartments with packages waiting – 1313 with a little hanger icon means there’s dry cleaning waiting.  My current apartment solves this organizational problem by leaving a little tag on our mailbox – a system that hasn’t crashed once since I moved in.

And the Rain Crashed Down

Imagine that you get off the T and find that although it is cloudy out it is not raining.  You need to walk one block but it begins to sprinkle lightly.  Describe the most appropriate emotional reaction to this situation.

If you’d asked me at 5:26 this evening, I would have answered, “You’ll get wet, and in 45 seconds you’ll be indoors and dry.  Only an infant would complain about this situation.”

If you’d asked me at 5:27 this evening, I would have answered, “It’s sprinkling?  If you value your life flee the streets for dry land with all the speed your legs can offer, sacrificing whatever possessions and money you must to secure the nearest shelter.”

I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that in the time it took me to walk one block the skies opened from “no moisture of any kind” to sheets of rain so thick that when I tried opening my mouth I had a very realistic fear of drowning right there on the street.

Then the leasing agent I went to see showed me apartment 1313.  I can’t discount the possibility that some very powerful forces want to keep me out of this building.  Besides, what happened to superstition (the jokes featured in the latter half that 1.5 minute video)?

Now, to make up for telling a story that, while admittedly very exciting for me at the time, basically reduces to, “I got very wet today,” I will balance it all out with a link to some of the best music ever written, beginning with the song And the Rain Crashed Down.