Anecdotes

Belated Consequences

Since the dawn of computing, people have joked that returning one library book late as a child will ruin your life in any number of ways: keeping you from running for elected office, showing up in a tax audit, et cetera.

Well, my girlfriend just tried to get a library card only to learn that when she was 11, someone checked out a book in her name and never returned it.  Now they won’t give her a new card!  My favorite part: this predated computer records, so someone specifically took the trouble to document this little girl’s missing book in the computer system when it arrived.

This is better, at least, than the man who returned a book 47 years late for a $171.32 fine.

Strollers are Good

Following are reasons strollers are excellent inventions:

  1. They increase the maximum possible speed at which a child can be transported from one place to another
  2. They decrease arm fatigue resulting from carrying the aforementioned child at the end of the trip when she has become tired
  3. They reduce dramatically the perception that I’m a creepy guy ogling the bikini-clad women coming out of the women’s changing room at the beach.

I watched about seven separate people today give me the dirtiest looks I’ve ever seen, glance down, notice the stroller, and then smile and walk by peacefuilly.

Nice Guy = Creepy Guy + Stroller

Mable

Mable the Monkey was born when I was a child on a trip to Estes Park.  She was sitting on a shelf in Geppetto’s Toy Shoppe with a variety of bears, horses, and several other monkeys of different colors.  Mable and her sister Julie were the only white monkeys in the shop, and we immediately bought them both to take home with us.

Julie stayed with me in my room, making friends with my other stuffed animals, getting constant attention, and finding her fur ever more matted and in need of grooming.  Mable stayed in a bird cage atop our foyer closet (living arrangements for which I never got an explanation I considered adequate) in my mother’s attentive care.  Her fur stayed a shiny white, and she stayed in excellent health.

When inevitably it came time for Julie to go to the Great Stuffed Jungle in the Sky, I was old enough to inherit Mable, and she continues to sit in a corner of my apartment with her gorilla friend Ian, fur still white, posture still perfect, and smile still endearing.

Naturally, Sophie has adopted Mable as her new friend.  I introduced them almost the moment she walked in my door.

This is Mable, the monkey!  And this is Ian, the gorilla!  They’re friends.

Sophie nodded, hugged them, and ran off to play.

Today, when I came home from work, Sophie brought Mable out to the couch and announced, “George is hungry!’

When I naturally answered, in Sophie-friendly language, “Who the heck is George?,” she just replied, “George!  He’s hungry!” and offered Mable for my inspection.

“No, Sophie, that’s Mable! She’s a girl monkey.”

That was three hours ago.

She’s still George.

We’re Number One! Occasionally!

The public transportation system in the Boulder, Colorado area is the Regional Transportation District or RTD.

As in most cities, there is no competing public transit network.  Boston has the T, San Francisco has BART, and even New York has its subways and buses cooperating nicely as the MTA.  In Boulder, it’s RTD.

I therefore raised some obvious questions when I saw this banner on a visit to Colorado last year:

We're Number One... of One!

We're Number One... of One!

Chief among those questions: considering the complete lack of opposition, what exactly happened in  1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007?

In their defense, I lived in Colorado for quite a few years, including most of those in question, and I took the bus virtually everywhere.  (My parents would rightly challenge me if I said “everywhere,” having driven me and my friends to every conceivable neighboring city on more than a few occasions — thanks, Mom and Dad — but on balance I used RTD most often.)

I did endure Dick (his real name, as far as I ever learned) for my entire middle school career — the white-haired man who, despite an undying hatred for children and everything they stood for, picked up both the morning and evening runs most likely to have middle school children aboard every day.

But to compensate, I had a driver for much of high school who was fantastic, and whose name I have now completely forgotten.  The proper bus stop I used was about a block from the end of my street, but every single morning this driver would pull slowly up to my intersection and open the door, knowing in advance that I’d be sprinting breathlessly down the street to meet him.  (I always felt guilty about that, but less so when another kid did exactly the same thing at the next stop every morning.)

People like that should get medals.

Or, failing that, they should just hang a big banner on the side of the highway proclaiming that in three out of 13 years referenced, the agency beat itself to become number one.

Verizon LG Bluetooth

I learned today, as evidenced in my previous post, that I can easily transfer pictures from my LG phone to my iMac using Bluetooth.  Since this was not immediately obvious to me, I’ll now share the steps I took for the benefit of all mankind.

First, I made the phone discoverable (Settings > Bluetooth Menu > Options > Discovery Mode > On)

Next, on my iMac I opened the Bluetooth System Preferences pane and clicked the “+” button at the bottom of my list of devices.  After some searching, it discovered my phone and let me select it.  At some point I got to a screen that implied the only thing I could do with this phone was use its Internet connection.  False!

I ignored that screen entirely — in fact, I quit out of the setup wizard at that point — and went back to the Bluetooth System Preferences pane, which now included my phone in the list of devices.

Clicking the “gear” icon at the bottom of that list, I chose “Browse Device.”

There were my files!

It also looks like I could transfer new MIDI ringtones to my phone in that way, although like a civilized adult I want my phone to make a ringing sound when someone calls me.

iMac & Phone: Connected or Not?

Connected?

You can see that the iMac was somewhat conflicted about whether the phone was connected, but otherwise the whole thing went quite smoothly!

Thanks, But No Thanks

I habitually thank MBTA operators whenever I pass them on my way off a train or bus.  I say, “thank you,” and if they respond it’s generally with “you’re welcome” or “have a nice day.”

I’ve done this every day for three years in Boston, and before that every day for probably seven years on Colorado’s buses.  Until today, I’ve never given the matter any thought at all; those are just the good manners one exhibits in polite society.

Tonight, when I stepped off the train, the exchange went like this (all quite clearly enunciated, so I’m sure I heard correctly):

Me: Thank you.
Motorperson: (with extreme annoyance) Thank yourself!

Is this like how “bad” was used to mean “good” for a while in the 1990s?  Did I just insult someone’s mother inadvertently?

Zip Lines Are the New Zipcars

A couple years ago, I went with a friend to Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire, which offers visitors the unusual opportunity to leap from a mountaintop, suspended from a zip line, soar through thin air (and in my case, a stiff breeze) down the mountain, and then bounce off a tension spring at the bottom.  Staff at the time said everyone reaching the bottom laughs aloud upon hitting that spring, and we were no exception.

I notice, however, that the residents of Los Pinos, Columbia aren’t laughing when they invoke a similar zip line suspended 1,200 feet over a river as part of their daily commute.

(via Kottke)

Browser of the Lost

About 45 minutes ago, I opened a new browser window to see if any cheap tickets are available for my trip this summer.  Let’s examine what tabs are open in that window now (click the image to see the full-size, unedited screen capture):

My Browser Tabs

To review, those tabs are:

  1. Kayak, where I began my search
  2. My 2009 Budget, which I opened to confirm how much I’d originally planned to spend
  3. American Airlines’ article on Wikipedia, which there’s no reasonable explanation for my having opened, since I will not be flying American
  4. An unremarkable photograph of an American Airlines plane
  5. The article on the Douglas DC-3, which came up in the airline’s history history
  6. The article on the Boeing 787
  7. The article on the Airbus A380
  8. The article on Economy class (of course there’s such an article)
  9. A photograph of economy class in an Airbus A320
  10. A photograph of the Airbus A380 cockpit

I seem to have wandered off a bit there, like in the classic xkcd comic on the subject.  Moreover, upon returning to the Kayak tab after all that, I see that I never even entered my search terms, so I still have no idea how much airfare will be, and now I really have to get back to work.

Battery Technologies of Mrs. Brisby

I sometimes find myself doing something so geeky I have no choice but to go outdoors without a computer for at least an hour to compensate.

After I filed some Shrek-related ratings with Netflix this evening, the site recommended The Secret of NIMH.  My first thought upon seeing the title was, “Wow, someone made a documentary about nickel-metal hydride batteries?”

My second thought was, “I might want to watch that…”  (After all, I not only watched but also immensely enjoyed the documentary about Helvetica.)

Self-Returning DVDs

Netflix has (albeit inadvertently) added a nice feature: self-returning DVDs.

While I was in Phoenix with my girlfriend, we watched at our hotel a movie that happened to top my Netflix queue.  Netflix sent me the DVD before I had time to remove it.

And then it didn’t arrive.  I waited patiently for three days with no sign of it, but just when I was ready to report it “missing,” it got marked “returned” and Netflix sent the next movie on my list.

(Speaking practically, I assume the label got torn off and someone at the post office, having no idea where to send it, just sealed the envelope shut and sent it back — a wise and helpful solution.  But it’s more fun to think it’s just a self-returning DVD.)