Travelogue: the miracle of technology
September 25, 2012
In flight from SFO to MSP.* Can’t tweet about it, so I might as well write an overdue blog entry about something, anything.
And what’s on my mind at this moment, big surprise, is the travel part of the trip. This is the first time I’ve flown since June 2010. In the meantime, things have gotten all appified. I flew on United Airlines and with their iPhone app, I never even had to look at a counter or live person. You frequent fliers are probably sitting there thinking, aw, isn’t that cute, but I got a big kick out of tapping a few buttons on my iPhone and having everything magically taken care of. Just showing a QR code on your iPhone screen to the magic red hole at security and the gate? Come ON! And when I crammed all the California beer that I bought into my suitcase thus necessitating a checked bag, how convenient to order that up via the app, too. Okay, so I had to briefly visit a person at a counter to drop it off, but still.
The car rental was very nearly as painless. Renting a car is something I never do. I’m going to say the last time was ten years ago, and that was only because my own (previous) car had trouble mid-trip and I had to leave it for service. Usually I embrace the local public transportation system (London, Chicago), but for this trip I had to get to a couple of inaccessible places on Saturday and Sunday. Anyway, the car rental process was very streamlined as well.
My only complaint about any of this is that the employees of these various companies process hundreds of people a day, probably, and it’s obvious they go on autopilot with what they’re saying which can make them a little difficult to understand, particularly if they have an accent. Though I could easily have gotten between airport and hotel Thursday evening and this (Tuesday) morning on the train service, I drove. On my free days Friday and Monday, I took the Caltrain into San Francisco from San Carlos and yet again, it couldn’t have been easier.Once in San Francisco, I got all excited and bought a day-pass for the MUNI and scratched off the date before I needed to use it, and then ended up not using it at all because I just walked and walked and walked. I regretted that had I comprehended better how it works, I could have saved it for Monday when I was back in San Francisco. But that day, I also just walked everywhere. I guess I don’t mind paying an extra $14 knowing I don’t have to stress out about a car in the city.
So now I will soon be back home, where I’ll hop on Minneapolis’ own light rail line, which will deliver me mere blocks from my home.
Technology and public transportation, for the win!Addendum: Today, three days after my return as I was bidding my coworker auf wiedersehen for her trip to Germany, I learned that she, too, was flying United. I promptly gave her a spiel about the app and sent her on her fröhlich way.
*As you may have guessed, I wrote this one before “I go out walking.” But “I go out walking” seemed more interesting a week ago, and it probably still is.Operator, would you help me place this call?
February 16, 2012
I resisted a cell phone for a long time. Just ask Jim and California Rob. They were early adopters (though not so early that they had those bricks from the ’80s, at least I don’t think they did) and I believe they grew quite frustrated at my willingness to remain wired and unreachable, particularly on the occasions when we were trying to make plans to meet up at the now-defunct City Billiards for a night of beer, billiards, and flirting with Liz the waitress (who I still see once or twice a year at a different bar).
Once I did get my first cell phone (a very lovely Nokia candy bar model, of which I had two, until I couldn’t get it anymore. Similarly, I’m on my third iPhone model. Because, if I find something I like, I buy multiple versions of it, such as shirts in all the colors. But I digress.)
Once I did get my first cell phone, it didn’t take long until I canceled my land line. Well, why would you keep it? Because when people know you’re footloose and fancy-free, they’ll call the accessible, portable version that they know you have on your person rather than the hit-or-miss, tethered version. They will impose themselves upon you. In addition, long distance is included, so any “plan” you have through the landline is redundant. And I don’t spend that much time on the phone anyway, local or long distance, so it quickly turned into a no-brainer to go solely with cell.
Consequently, when I bought and moved into my current place, I had no use for the existing phone jacks. And there were plenty of them. Apparently one of the previous residents of my space was a blind fellow called Blind Elvis. There were outlets in every room. Every now and then I think that if a place were going to be haunted, it would be mine, by Blind Elvis, because he died while he lived here. Not under any nefarious circumstances; he just died.
I ripped out the phone jacks and covered them up, or I must have. Though at the moment, the only one I actually remember doing that to was in the bathroom, but what did I use? I don’t recall cutting out small rectangles of drywall to patch in. … Nope, I’ve gone into the bathroom to review. The other locations were just wires coming out, not full-blown outlets. I pulled them out and covered up the tiny holes with patching spackle stuff.
I covered them up, all except one. And it’s the one that’s in the middle of the kitchen/dining room, the most visible location possible. You would think that after eight and a half years I would have been bothered to installed a covering plate. But I haven’t been. And usually, the jack part is just hanging, dangling from the hole. I posed it nicely for this photo.
Five times more remote
March 5, 2011
When my friend R still lived here and I’d cat-sit for Cleo, I remember looking helplessly at the remotes required to control his audio-visual Starship Enterprise. Now, it seems, I have my own if not starship, at least shuttle.
A week ago I bought a new television. It was about time for an upgrade in this digital age. I’ve been trying really hard to remember how old the old TV was—whether I got it while I was still in Madison WI, in which case it would be seventeen or more years old, or whether I got it after I moved back to Minneapolis, in which case it would be sixteen or fifteen years old or a couple less. At any rate, it was old, analog, and 4:3.
Another sign of the times, is that the cable service required me to get a “digital adapter.” I’m a little confused about this. I don’t think the actual feed is digital—wait! I just had a thought!
Did I need the digital adapter only because the television itself was not digital-capable? Hmm.
Now that I have this new TV, maybe I don’t need that horseshit adapter box that creates an extra three-second channel-changing lagtime because first my TiVo remote registers the channel change, then the TiVo infrared gets sent to the cable digital adapter so that it can actually change the channel. It’s a convoluted mess so that I can still use my TiVo remote to control things. And on top of everything, the adapter powers itself down several times a week. Tomorrow, when it’s during the day and not bedtime, I will have to try removing it from the chain and seeing what happens.
A few years ago, I guess when I moved into this place and was setting stuff up again, I started running my video audio through my stereo, so that entails another remote. For as giant (relatively speaking, going from 19” 4:3 to 32” widescreen) as the new TV is, the built-in speakers don’t sound like much, so I still use the stereo for TV audio. It sounds damned good.
This evening, I watched a DVD on the new TV for the first time, so that accounts for the fifth remote. I was hoping for better visual quality, but I suppose because it’s DVD and not HD, it’s not really going to look that crisp. That’s why it’s advantageous to sit ten feet away. From ten feet away, it looks like widescreen. I can’t really see the jaggies at all.
None of this is important. The upshot is that about midway during the DVD, I realized that I had a bunch of remotes piled up on my desk and I was sort of like R. From left to right: new TV, stereo, DVD player, TiVo, cable digital adapter box.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 