How was your Black Friday?

The whole idea of Black Friday really does nothing for me. Why on Earth would a store even bother existing if it depends on lunatic shoppers staying lunatic each year only a month before the year's end to ensure that it can turn a profit? If everything is on crazy sale, how does this help anyway? Aren't there safer ways to make money? (Not in America, Dave. Here, the lunatic shoppers are as dependable as the tides.) And from a shopper's perspective, how little is your time worth that you want to wait in insane lines at four in the morning to get the extra 15% off of crap you don't need anyway? I'm not a big fan of shopping as it is, and shopping in crowds is never worth it.

So naturally, I met Franny at the mall after she got off work Friday. I'm clearly an idiot. Luckily, we didn't last too long and had more fun wandering around downtown in the cold. Actually, the Pioneer Place Mall in Portland wasn't too bad. It's just a couple city blocks in the heart of downtown, so parking is kind of an issue. As Franny put it, lots of people want to be able to park their SUV's in the store.

I kind of wonder about the effect of Black Friday anyway. For one thing, lots of people shop online now, which is not really tied to being at the store opening at 0 dark-thirty, while still allowing you to get some great deals. You can still shop at three in the morning, but you can do it in pajamafied comfort after a case of beer, if that's what floats your boat. I've seen a few things here and there which would never be purchased otherwise.

Another thing that I would think might dilute the after-Thanksgiving sales is the pre-Thanksgiving sales, AKA Christmas creep. I began hearing Christmas music before Halloween this year. Costco had it, but in their defense, they they probably got it in HUGE batches that might actually take two months to completely hear. I was also working at a place where someone brought in AWESOME Halloween cookies that we were enjoying when someone found a radio station that had already switched to 24-hour Christmas programming. Not that there's much Thanksgiving music, but seriously, one holiday at a time, please. To paraphrase Lewis Black (Jewish, but apparently not intensively so), "How long does it take you people to shop?"

One good note about Christmas creep: Nordstrom and I agree on something, which is unusual. Nordstrom is all about fashion and other expensive stuff, while I have no fashion sense that I am aware of, and I am borderline miserly. My mother-in-law is a big fan, but I'm merely aware that it's a department store specializing in things I don't understand. However, Nordstrom apparently refuses to put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. For that I commend them. Perhaps I'll buy something from them some day, although for the life of me, I couldn't begin to guess what.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm sure this picture is on about 10,000 blogs today. I found it years ago, but I still chuckle a little at it every time.

We had a bunch of people over today, including my folks, with whom we haven't shared Thanksgiving in quite some time. It was nice to have experienced help in the kitchen, although that's not why they were invited. Everything was ready at about the same time, which is something that we don't do so well even if we only have a couple dishes to coordinate. As it was, we had maybe 10 different things to prepare or rewarm. My parents pulled it off despite a snafu with our oven being unknowingly turned off prematurely, which says much more about the design of our oven/timer controls than it does about our kitchen staff. (One start button, but two stop buttons. It still catches us from time to time too.) All in all, a great time, with food compliments all around.

Sesame Street is not normally related to Thanksgiving, but since I found that picture again, I can relate this story. Apparently, Children's Television Workshop is releasing some early seasons of Sesame Street with a warning that they are for adults only due to the behavior of some of the characters. Incidentally, we already own this set, but without the warning. They are definitely from another era. Cookie Monster smokes a pipe (and then eats it), Oscar is REALLY a grouch, and Gordon, a grown man, invites a little girl back to his house for milk and cookies. However, as far as I'm concerned, the only real problem with these old episodes is the disheveled puny-headed Big Bird.

Well, poop.

Today just didn't work out right at all. A couple days ago, I was going to have a couple quick stops this morning and then be home in Portland sometime in the afternoon, which is good since I was supposed to drop a piece of equipment off for my boss to use tomorrow morning. That slipped a little bit yesterday when I worked with another one of our techs and he was having trouble getting all his stuff done. He's only been with us a few months and apparently doesn't have the Speedy Gonzalez thing figured out yet.

Anyway, in a fit of stupidity, I said I'd pick up a couple things from him, which put me getting home an hour or two later, but no big deal really. Then the last thing I was working on last night ended up requiring a stop back again this morning. Again, not too bad, but not helping. However, when I got there, my contact was in a meeting, but "he'll probably be out pretty soon." Twenty minutes later, I decided to go get something else done and come back. By the time I got back, nothing continued to happen. "I'm sure he'll be done soon. This is much longer than they usually meet." Great. Now what? My next stop is 70 miles up the road, so I'm not exactly going back and forth, and I have to meet this guy before I leave since some of his stuff is broken and he needs to know about it. So, I wait, watching my getting-home time slipping further into the evening.

About half the equipment at the next two places (the originally scheduled places) was not working right, taking even longer. Now I'm looking at getting home at maybe 9 pm. Not what I had in mind, but it's still home.

And then I get the call from the office. It starts by asking can I stop by one more place tomorrow on the way home? I've got the only stuff to work on this particular equipment, so it's got to be me. Hell, no I can't stop by tomorrow. First, the boss wants the stuff I have tonight, and second, I don't want to be out here anymore. So, naturally, I'll be stopping by tomorrow. The boss decided for some reason to switch his schedule around, so getting home tonight, although still desirable, was no longer an absolute requirement. I ended up deciding that neither I nor the guy who desperately needed this last stop wanted to do it starting at 6:30 this evening. He didn't want to come back to work, and it would optimistically put me home no earlier than 10 or 10:30. Given the rest of the day, optimism seemed misplaced. So, I'll see this guy first thing in the morning, fully caffeinated and ready to go, and then drive like a crazy person to get home before the turkey day traffic gets too bad. It sucks that Franny is stuck alone with the Mizz for another probably too early morning, but what can you do?

We'll see if this plan holds any more water than the one I had today. At least I'm getting paid, right? Sorry for the rant. It's been that kind of day. For reading this far, you get a treat. I give you the true origin of hip-hop.

How smart do I write?

So, as of the previous post, I am apparently writing at a Junior High level according to the Blog Readability Test. I have to admit that I'm feeling a little inadequate after learning that fact. I mean, I wasn't exactly an English major, but c'mon.

I'm not actually sure how this reading level is determined. The website doesn't say what it takes into consideration, but I'm assuming there's stuff about sentence length and complexity, and probably some keywords it looks for. Maybe even something about proper grammar and spelling. Who knows?

Something else I just considered... Is it desirable to be at the Genius end or the Elementary School end? I've plugged some friends into the site and they span the whole range, even though they all seem like smart people. The site gives no clue whether a higher education rating means that you are smarter and it shows in your writing, or that you write things in such a complex way that people need more education just to figure out what you mean. I guess I should be happy in the middle of the pack. Satisfyingly mediocre.

Under a log?

I must have been under a log; I haven't posted in two weeks. I have been busy though. I'll try to be brief. We all know how that'll work out, I'm sure.

I had started a work trip almost two weeks ago. I went out to Bend for a few days of work before continuing on to Southern Oregon. However, a day into it, I had to run back to Portland to spend the night in the hospital with the Mizz. When Franny called me from the doctor's office, it was very clear to me that I had to get back there. I missed the worst of it, as the Mizz was finally asleep by the time I got there. That was the longest three hour drive I've ever taken. I have a very good imagination.

The problem was that the Mizz had a bad reaction to a shot he had received the day before for the croup. It was a normal enough prescription for his issue, but he experienced a rare side effect. Rare enough that it is not a warning you normally get with it, but common enough that the folks at the childrens' hospital understood what was happening. Luckily it seems to have caused him no lasting issues and he seems to be back to his normal toddler antics now.

When we felt that he was going in the right direction, I had to return to my previously scheduled job responsibilities. Friday night, it was down to Roseburg to be ready to work first thing Saturday morning. Worked on and on and on through today. Tomorrow is almost a day off, just a couple of hours of driving to be further down the road for Monday morning.

I spent several days on the Southern Oregon coast, even stretching down into California. I thought I was going to get rainy weather all week, but it was beautiful on Sunday when I went out to the coast. Then Monday is was raining with gale force winds. Then it was beautiful, then drizzly, then sunny, and then rainy again, with rain heavy enough to make even Oregonians complain. Most of the time, our rain is just a drizzle. I have a raincoat, but I almost never put it on. With this stuff, however, you could actually get wet.

Lots of places (including Portland) like to make the claim that, "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes." This is intended to help you understand just how unpredictable the weather is in the speaker's particular part of the world. Most people act like they invented the phrase, and hey, aren't they witty. However, although it may actually apply to other places too, the Oregon coast in the Fall is the place I've been that most deserves to say it.

Thursday evening, I made my way down to Eureka, California. It's not super far, maybe 100 miles south of the border, but it was a pretty long trip down US-101. It was slow and twisty, drizzly, foggy, and since that section of road is called the Redwood Highway and goes through Redwood National Park, there were giant freakin' trees right up to the edge of the road. "Elk Crossing" signs too. Somewhat stressful. It was much better on the trip back north the next day. Beautiful, with either huge trees in the mist or ocean vistas. I found the elk. They were lounging on a lawn in front of some cabins by the side of the road. These ones seemed to know about the lack of hunting on national parks. I also passed the "life-size" statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox at Trees of Mystery. It's a side-of-the-road attraction in the middle of the park that has a tour through the redwoods to show you just how interesting 1000 year old trees can be. I remembered the statues like it was yesterday, even though I was only 9 or 10 the last time I saw them.

Eureka is in the middle of Humbolt county. It's reputation preceded it. On my way through the redwoods, the only radio station I could get for a while was playing 2 straight hours of the Grateful Dead. It was interrupted only by commercials for greenhouse and hydroponic equipment dealers. However, despite being in town for almost 14 hours, not one person offered to sell me pot. Luckily, I live in Portland, so if it's ever an issue, I'll just roll down Belmont or something.

I spent today with one of the crassest individuals I've had the privilege of meeting. They customer is always right though, I hear. He has several small locations, so I got to follow him around the mountains all day. I'm done with him though, so tomorrow it's a little further south, and then home by Tuesday. I've put on something like 1,400 miles so far this trip, and I have another 500 or so left. I'm sick of the road.

So much for brief, but you didn't really expect that, did you?

The Mizz is ill

It's been a while since we've had a sick kid on our hands, but daycare sent the first gift of the season home on Friday. The Mizz appears to have croup. I'd heard of this, but until Friday, I had do idea what it meant. It's a horrible sounding cough that apparently isn't normally too bad of a problem. As Yahoo! Health notes, kids with croup usually sound much worse than they feel or actually are. It's true, he sounds awful. His throat is not right, so as Franny noted, he sounds like Minnie Mouse -- much higher pitch than usual, which is an odd thing to hear from a toddler who is already pretty high pitched. The cough itself is often described as sounding like a barking seal. Geek that I am, I also think it occasionally sounds like Gollum. Other than the occasional horrible cough, the only symptom is fever. Not surprising, since apparently the most likely cause is the influenza virus. As long as we keep him calm and give him ibuprofen when he gets too hot, he seems to be doing okay. The real problem is proving to be sleep. He wakes himself up coughing and then is up for a while. It took me about 11 hours last night to get maybe 6 hours of sleep, and that was in four spurts. 6 hours is livable, but not when you do it like that. Franny is especially hit hard, since she's not getting much sleep as it is. We dug out the humidifier this evening. Here's hoping tonight works out better, although it hasn't started out well.

Web 2.0?

Franny asked what the heck I meant by Web 2.0. I don't know if it was a serious question or not, but here's a primer to the webs.

Web 1.0 (although nobody called it that) -- The Internet Bubble. Put up a website full of information for people to look at. Then, um... profit. That's what was supposed to happen anyway. Mosly we just transferred venture capital into the Housing Bubble. Nice one, guys.

Web 2.0 -- User Generated Content. Put up a web site, and then let the people fill it with information. Think Wikipedia and YouTube, but also Twitter and the LOLCat Bible Translation Project. In case that last one doesn't ring a bell, LOLCats are silly pictures of cats (usually) with pidgin sayings that make them ever so hilarious. At least they did for a moment, but they won't go away. I suppose that if you're 40 years old and still living in your mother's basement, sometimes you take a break from the porn and still need something to occupy your time.

Web 3.0 -- The Internet Becomes Self-Aware. Expect terminators to start showing up sometime next year. But don't worry too much. They'll still be running Windows and will need to reboot from time to time, completely forgetting what they were doing. The governor of Kahliforneeah will be very confused. The machines will end up being deported for lack of documentation. Good luck with that, Austria.

Extend your Battery Life

Franny forwarded me a link regarding tips to extend battery life for the devices in your life. Some of the tips are not necessarily helpful for all battery types, but they probably won't hurt.

The biggest issue with batteries (of all types) is temperature cycling. Everybody knows that keeping batteries in the freezer until you use them keeps them good longer, right? Yes and no. The cold of the freezer doesn't really do anything good or bad. What is good about the freezer is that it is a constant temperature. Anyplace that stays more or less at a consistent temperature is a fine storage place. This means that although carrying your laptop in your car with you is fine, leaving it there in the hot sun or overnight in the cold will not do it any favors. (Plus it'll probably get stolen, but at least the thief will have a dead battery. Ha. Who's laughing now?)

Laptops are especially prone to heating problems, mainly since some people seem to want to use them on their laps. The vents are usually located on the bottom and can easily be blocked, potentially causing the computer to overheat. The vents usually don't do anything for the batteries; they are meant to cool the processor, which cranks out quite a bit of heat. However, the batteries are also typically on the bottom and get warm during use. (Anybody remember Toshiba's exploding laptop batteries?) If they are set on a lap or pillow or whatever, they will not properly cool and will likely have some of their life sucked away each time this is done.

I hope this is helpful for someone, and thanks, Franny, for passing it on.

Why Twitter?

For those of you unaware, one of Web 2.0's more annoying, yet for some reason, popular features is Twitter. It is similar to a blog, but you can only add very small messages. The theory is that you continually update your audience, presumably your friends and family, on the mundane activities of your daily life. "Going to lunch now. Tacos, I think." "Eating a burrito instead." "Back from lunch now. Catching up on email." "Drooling on keyboard." Can't you just taste the excitement?

Anyway, I live with the live action version of this phenomenon in the form of the Mizz. He's at a wonderful stage where he's learning words as fast as possible, but has not yet developed a filter between a thought and an out-loud statement. I'm sure it's just practicing to see if he gets the expected reaction, but from the other end, it gets a little old. Putting him to bed now goes something like this: "Turn off the star light. Music on. Turn off the hoodle (little) light. Chill out on Daddy. I huggin' Daddy. Night night Daddy, see you ina moning. Daddy gonna go out. Daddy goin' out. [Muffled through the door...] Daddy out." This is pretty continuous. "One on and one off upstair. That's a stereo. I eat turkey and bread at school. I pway wif da wed ball; Mama pway wif the blue ball." On and on and on...

Why a full grown adult would want to live like this just because it's on the internet is beyond me. Perhaps I'm older than I feel.

Separated at Birth?: Fonzie edition

Make a fist. Make a fumb. Make a AAAYYYY!

Science with Franny: Device Chargers

Everybody has a tangle of wires somewhere that is supposed to charge the various devices that our lives demand these days. We have cell phones, cell phone bluetooth headsets, mp3 players, PDAs, digital cameras, and whatever else we've managed to accumulate. Every one of these things comes with its own unique charger/cable. I have long wondered about this, as has Franny, although she has been much more indignant about it. I have been somewhat more forgiving about it knowing the different voltage and power specifications of different things, but I have certainly thought that it must not be that hard to standardize on something, or at least a minimum number of somethings. I recognize that a charger for a car battery should probably be more robust than the tiny one for my bluetooth headset. However, most personal devices these days are made with similar technology and similar, somewhat low, power requirements. Everything large I buy plugs into the exact same outlets in my house with the exact same electricity. Why can't smaller devices do the same thing?

My first taste of cross-device adaptability was when I realized that my laptop and my portable printer for work both use the exact same AC adapter. Granted they are both HP, but this was a first. As both are battery operated and last quite some time, I now have one less cable to drag around with me and find an outlet for, especially in hotels, which are notorious for their dearth of available plugs. As it is, I often end up unplugging a light or the alarm clock or something to avoid having to charge my phone at the bathroom sink.

I thought we were onto something a couple years ago when Franny and I got our Motorola RAZR phones. I also got a bluetooth headset, and about the same time, got my Creative Zen Micro mp3 player. I was thrilled to see that all these devices charged through a mini-USB port. Knowing that all USB ports are the same and have the same 5V power supply, I stupidly thought that industry had finally agreed on a charger standard. After some experimental research, I found that my Zen charger caused my phone to lock up and be useless. Luckily, removing the battery reset it and it survived, but I learned my lesson. After some more web-based research instead, I learned that although the power circuits on USB cables are identical, the devices apparently send other information back and forth with their respective charges that, at best, can't be understood by other devices, and at worst, cause software errors in those devices. Stuff like, "I'm full now. Enough with the electricity already," but in a different language for each device. I had to wait two more years before industry heard our call.

Enter the Open Mobile Terminal Platform, a mobile industry forum, mainly cellular carriers, but including manufacturers as well. They have decided to adopt the micro-USB (like the mini-USB, but even harder to plug in without looking at it) as the standard charging and data cable for some future generation of cell phones. This means that whatever phone and phone-related device you buy will fit the same generic charger, and that your phone will still cost just as much, but if you want a charger to go with it, you will have to pay extra. Everybody wins. I realize that this is just for cell phones for the time being, but cell phones cross over with PDAs these days, which means that lots of other small personal data devices can't be far behind. I don't know how long we have before seeing this spread as the default way that devices are designed, but I for one can't wait.

Of course iPods and iPhones will probably still be different, but that's just because Apple is special.