The Electronic Vapor

Quest for Fire, Prologue

2005-04-12T22:58:00.000-04:00

I've been away. I know.

I missed the vapor too.

But I've been searchin'

Searchin, like a kazaa-stolen MP3 Carlos Santana song set on "loop" on my AAA battery gnoshing flash drive MP3 player...'searchin'... I'm always searchin'...

Searching not so much in the metaphysical, or spiritually enlightenining sense. I did all that shit last year. No, I'm more like in the personal-gratificational-consumeresque mode.

It's the kind of search that gnaws at the psyche but not so bad that you lose sleep over --unless it relates to a pending event that directly corresponds to the element of the specific search itself. Like trying to buy a new TV right before the Superbowl. Which I would characterize as like that of one being a kenneled dog in heat, or a horny kenneled male in a houseful of viral infected family members for that matter. E.G. satisfaction ain't likely to happen. Not that I fit either description, but I could...sometimes....

No the searchin' is well, as the title suggests, a Quest. A quest indeed. A personal schlepp for my personal electronic Holy Grail. It is

One that began at the fateful moment when my own Guinevere declared on autumn's eve that our castle's television was no longer adequate. Suddenly inadequate, as it had become reset upon a newly built pedestal of a finitely-spaced built-in cabinetuary.

Guinevere sayeth:
--Thusly, hence forth said object ought to be replaced for lack of adequate fit and size, thereof...

[Thank God it was the 32inch JVC she was thinking...]

--Go spendeth thy bucks on said HDTV, and ye not return until thee hath found something...profound.

This was like, Christmastime. And that statement was truly the greatest gift a spouse could ever give. Even it was in a strange pre-medievel form of English.

Hey, I got greenlighted to go for the big screen TV, an HDTV, (H DEEEE-TV) at that (not that I would have it any other way). A man's DREAM. My dream...aside from some of those fantasies about latex and chocolate sauce...and if they could be in HDTV, well...

nevermind...that.

'cause I got the good to go to get an H DEEE-TV, yo! All it has to be is The One that fits my built-in cabinet (which as it turns out is the antagonist of the story...but that comes later). AS you can tell I was pretty excited about the prospect.

A big problem was that I knew too much about the subject (I mean, consumer electronics is my life after all). But not enough to make a quick judgement about it either 'cause I'm more of PC peripheral sort of guy. As one of those types, I am really comfortable with a computer and the whole internet thing. I even use Firefox to browse when I browsify the webernet.

My plan was to research, find the right box for my needs and buy as much great picture for as good a deal as I could possibly get. [A truly unique plan that no one else would do.] It would also be one that fit my built-in cabinet perfectly. AND I was determined that I would NOT victimize myself with buyer's remorse. And let's face it. A wrong purchase of this magnitude would even make Mother Theresa suicidal.

So being the PC guy that I am, my first move was to search tens upon tens of web sites, and read through thousands of pageviews. Then I consulted many self appointed HDTV gurus (you know, other idiots like me), read many books on the subject (no, I didn't), attended shows, and walked miles of electronic superstore aisles to view the video viewing products in a totally contrived and unnatural habitat.

And for all of that I earned a great deal of frustration and apprehension, as well as a self affirming sense that I might have accomplished nothing, but thank God for that.

But lest that I get ahead of myself, I will stop this page's missive here, and take you to the beginning where the conflict began and the quest was found. I will say only that this post, and the few that follow on this blog pertaining to my quest for an H-DEEE TV, my FIRE, could serve as a cautionary tale if not a useful guide for you too. And if that is true in some way, then I have truly served humanity, or, at least YOU the priveleged few of the electronic vapor community, in a good and wonderful way.

NEXT:

Quest for Fire

The Beginning

CES Reflections in the LCD Glass

2005-01-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

I was fully prepared to work on the plane last Sunday night. I had Ms. "Sales-Out" data snugly tucked in a manilla folder. She chided me for failing to convert her analog pencil scratch attire into the sleek spreadsheet digital entries of my laptop.

Yet I had enough of those beckoning queries from hundreds of booth sirens at the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show, all enticing me to drop my business card into a soon to be spammed oblivion.

Pass.

While my alter ego in the laptop case didn't care, I and my associated team of inter-manufacturer interlopers hustled all week basically from dawn to midnight for five, no six, or was that seven days straight in the sprawling casino campus throughout Las Vegas and its vast inner-city of a convention center.

We met folks at breakfast, then met basically in two story contemporary homes built inside a several airplane hangars worth of space, several times, each day. Most of the time we were invited. Sometimes we just barged in and helped ourselves. Then we met again for dinner. And drinks. And drinks. And drinks.

And drinks.

I wasn't so much tired as mentally discharged.

Fortunately my seat mate on the pre-redeye return flight home was NOT returning from the show.

Edom was returning back to school at Penn, to resume his brain warping exercises in intellectual, abstract business and dysfunctional social development. His stories of first-year-awkward lived campus culture were a welcome respite from the flash-mauve kleig lit visions of Microsoft butterfly suit girls, PVC-vinyl skirted (hmmmm....vinyl...) CE vixens, LCD screen fireplaces, and 100,000 mid-aisle gawking shuffle footed conventioneers in between. All in my path. All obstructing me from my pending meeting, now starting without me. The fuckers.

Thank God for half a life's worth of martial arts training. Nothing like a giant convention to put those skills to use.

Edom said he had an opportunity to make some very good quick cash working a booth for a friend's staffing company --12 hour days on the carpet pretending to work for the company whose URL was stitched on the back of his shirt.

He passed, citing exhaustion from his social studies of the previous semester but regretted not seeing the now largest convention of the Las Vegas calendar. Wise decision Edom. You might win friends and influence people after all.

While the show was indeed the very showcase for all the cool stuff of consumer electronics that American and frankly world consumers have grown to love, it was still a hyperkinetic mishmash of conflicting visions of the future and who thinks will own it.

My view is this....

The Great Japanese, Inc people thought they won this battle of converging the PC with TV by putting their eggs into memory stick, CD-R lasers, mini discs and any additional proprietary technology they could think of. Then, sell their proprietary museum collection at a premium.

This worked until, oh a couple of years or so ago, when the Chinese government allowed capitalism to take root --so long as it was directed to exploit suckers outside of the country, not witin. That worked as non - proprietary technologies for displaying, editing, streaming and porting video still did a great job of it and did it cheaply. Plus, the great busines story of 2004 became that of the entire world's manufacturing economy packing up and moving to China.

Which is great for all of us because all of the sudden super complex and expensive devices that were normally made by Sony et al, were made by strange sounding companies no one was sure who they hell they were but didn't care enought not to buy their goods because they were not quite as complex as Sony's and hell of a lot cheaper.

And their respective products worked for many months after being removed from the package.

And, those same manufacturers also made stuff for the great Japanese Manufacturers. Toshiba. Panasonic. And for the great Korean manufacturers, like Samsung, and LG.

I saw the world's largest TV, a 102inch DLP set by Samsung.

It would look great on the side of my house. Perfect for bringing the whole neighborhood over for outside summer movie barbeque screenings.

And there was the "world's largest plasma TV by LG (formerly known as Lucky Goldstar, a name that sounds just too, well, made for the sake of invoking good luck, ya know?) at a whopping digitally rich 71 inches. Except Sony forgot to give them a headsup and showed up with an 80inch version.

There were MP3 players that worked underwater, and were hung in a very large aquarium to prove it. Now swimmers can FINALLY join the legion of joggers and stationary bike riders who get their musical fix while they exercise.

And video cameras that now cost below a $1,000 that can function fully underwater. My friend Mike in San Fran thought that this revolutionary electronics development would take porn to new depths.

Probably.

I was personally most impressed with the SD flash using MP3 player that was almost as small as box of matches, and could hang from a keychain. But where do you stash the headphones?

Ooops, my bad. I'm such a doofus! --In the cap bro. Ever notice those kids, yeah the type we tail end boomers called the Generation Xers but who are now called something similar but different, always wear some kind of cap on their head, like backwards baseball cap or a wool beanie even in the summer?

It's for stashing the earbuds, man. Keep them up top and just drop them down to jam on need. iPOD RULES! Except apple wasn't at the show. NOOOOOOOOoooooo. They have their OWN show called macWORLD, and its way more special than that big mess at CES.

I digress.

I thought the guy in the far depths of the PC centric South Hall exhibit area that came up with a wifi network for cars was onto something. With his product you can put 802.11b transmitters on your tire valve stems so you ALWAYS know exactly what your tire pressure really IS at any give time. Knowledge now, disaster averted later. Dude. I would tell you who they were but I couldn't find the real name of the firm, some kind of "trading company" and he didn't speak English.

Tired of your notebook? Maybe its not the features that's got you down, but how it looks. X2USA had a continuous running fashion show for notebooks and accessories. Pink, or Lime Alligator skin? They got it. Matching bags too. Hey, email me guys when you got black PVC vinyl and I'll pass it along to the missus for those hot LAN parties we plan to have --just the two of us. Yeah, baby.

But if faux fashion skins are not your thing, you can now get a notebook chassis in stainless, pewter and wood. Inclosa systems has a variety of wood grain textures and finishes to help you match the notebook enclosure to your favorite office, kitchen, or family room decor. Seriously. Wooden notebook clamshells. Travel without a case and you can antique them in no-time. Provided you could carry thing. Geez, they had to weigh 20 lbs. But they sure looked cool though. Put tiles on them and they'll go in the bath.

I know that sometime this year I, or my kids, will own a Robosapien Pet. These fully articulated skeletonized remote controlled electronics dogs, dynosaurs and peopleoids made by the macho sounding mega-corporation WowWee Electroics were ridiculously cool. The dogs could stand on two legs, bark, walk, wag, and whine.

Their two legged dinosaur closed his eyes and purred when you scratched his chin. These things make the Sony Aibo dog look like a birthday party clown balloon toy. If they could fetch me a beer or clean up the real, live dog's poop in the back yard then they'd really be something. Maybe next year's show.

If you haven't felt it yet, you will: There was a ton of HoIP on VoIP -- those "free" long distance anywhere in the world interent phone calls. Free for the call and only $29.99 a month for access to the service. Or less, plus the cost of minutes, or free if you join someone's network and share your personal info for marketing purposes, plus minutes. Amazing how free can cost so much. But in about three months you will see all kinds of phone and headset products for the Voice over Internet Protocol phenomenom. And you heard it here, if not first, well at least you heard it here.

Finally, I have to comment about the best piece of show-presentory marketing I've seen in a long, long time:

Tired for walking 11 miles of show floor for the day, I cut through the giant Panasonic exhibit on the way to finding a ride outside, and happened upon a small den cut into the side of the exhibit space.

They had set a comfortable easy chair facing a roaring fire, which was set in a fireplace with mantle and surround. I sat down for a moment and relaxed, admiring the 5,000th HD-LCD TV set I'd seen that day. Pictures of gardens and nature scrolled on it in high def, of course.

It was beautiful.

....Ahhh, soylent green.

...Make me into a cracker...

...I don't care....

Beginning to drift, I shifted my gaze to the gas fire and its flickering flames in the glass.

Wait a second. That ain't no fire.

That's a freakin' TV!

They inserted an LCD TV with its bezel perfectly fitted to the surround. A DVD player was playing a continous flame fire loop. Damn, it was nearly perfect.

We're close. So close in fact, to the point where sound and vision on a screen demands almost nothing from our intellect to perceive it as truth, and a beautiful one at that.

But not that close yet. Like the Venitian Hotel when the porn industry made it their new January home, if you look too closely you'll likely be disappointed.

Yet, you feel oddly, happily, entertained anyway, more than you ever did from such a medium.

AS the Suessian Grinch of Revelation sez, its not about ribbons and boxes and toys. It's the...joy. The joy of plugging "it" in, or popping in a 2400mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and then watching the 3 to 102 inch screen brighten to life.

Just suspend what's left of your disbelief, press the on button of your universal remote, believe your eyes, and ignore the damn sirens calling from the manilla folder.

hant: Consumer Electronics are good.

Over and over.

Thanks for the Rememberies

2004-10-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the Rememberies

I’m searching for the perfect future perfect data storage medium. It’s not for me now but for my kids who have to deal with their parents and their fading recollections. It would be for my parents too, so they could re-check their facts and prove me wrong on points of family historical fact (I believe it’s God’s mandate that we children forever must defer to our parents assertion of incorrect fact, as emphasized by the magnitude of their emotional commitment to it).

The search is in service as well to my brother, Michael who turns 40 today, October 1st, 2004. He joins the burgeoning ranks of the “new 30’s” --grateful to NOT have died before getting old, and rightfully can STILL be trusted! Yet nevertheless faces the ever increasing likely prospect of a slow inevitable mental decline to the South Pole of personal recollection and reasoning.

My point (and I’ve released all trademark and copyright protection provisions to the following for the greater purpose of spousal justification):

BUY that HD big screen TV NOW because you WILL forget where you put it later.

[Sure I could buy one for my brother on his birthday, but that’s just a little over the top don’t you think? It’s a bitch to ship for one thing. Too many stamps to stick. Besides, he’s now world famous for being personally mentioned in THE ELECTRONIC VAPOR for chrissake. That should be MORE than enough.]

...And it will matter to the kiddies later, as they try to share with their children their family’s lineage and salient marks of achievement accomplished by the immediately preceding generations. Mostly because those kids will incessantly ask. Mine do. It must part of the genetic memory to innately seek an illumination to the recessive ancestral darkness.

Personally, I think it is important because as much as who we are now we still like to know what was the process and summation is that got us here in the first place. I was a history major after all.

In effect I seek some kind of memory retention mechanism external to my person, but readily available to me, and easily sharable to future users.

I could jump back to the future and read William Gibson’s view on the topic. Johnny Memnonic. Virtual Light (go see Strange Days, starring Ralph Fiennes. Really cool psycho-future thriller set around the turn of the year 2000). Gibson, and Philip K. Dick spent a lot of time on the subject of backward and forward future historical reverse time modeling

RIGHT NOW there are a hell of a lot of mediums to which you can put stuff. I’m thinking data stuff of course. But if you think about it, and I recommend that you don’t, these mediums or media per se, are all pretty much short term oriented. Particularly in the context of millennial based longevity. Things like floppy disks. Tape. Or CDRom. Disk drives. Optical Platters and Magneto Drives. Data cartridges. Flash memory. Stone tablets seem to be the overall winner on that list, huh?

The data on those substrates is quite permanent in the sense that once printed it takes an effort of computing to remove them (except for the Fred Flinstone endorsed models, rev. 0000001 - 000001000~prehistoric. Take them away from their methods of imprintation and they stay as they are for many years. Perhaps as in the case of flash memory, forever. So logic suggests that if you want to record memories and hence preserve one’s own waning capacities, all you have to do is record them on the medium of choice and store in a cool, dark place.

How about on a 5.25 in floppy. Remember those?

The demise of the 3.5in floppy is now forecast for the near future.

Wither Zip Disk.

And what the f-ck happened to SuperDisk, the ZipDisk killer?!!!!! What a doofus I was. I had stacks of those things. 120MB on a drive that my Win95SE machine just hated, but somehow reluctantly recognized at times….

There a photos and daguerreotypes.

Paper. Set under glass. Or painted with oil. Set under glass. Speaking of optics…

CDR lasers are giving way to DVD-/+R lasers. Which are expected to eventually give way to Blu-Ray High Density (sic: High Def) technologies. Hard drives expand in capacity or increase their density frequently

Yet, if the floppy lasted roughly 15 years. What will last 50? More importantly, what devices will be there to read the legacy memory formats in the future?

Despite all of the future proof imperfections of the present particularly set against the Fred Flinstone endorsed model, rev. 0000001 - 000001000~prehistoric, stone tablet writer it never has been easier that NOW to record everything you see and hear in this world. Digital imaging is still less than a decade old as popular consumer item. Get a digital camera now if you don’t have one. Upgrade to Digital Video (DV) or get a camera that can record digital video so you can record the family arguments in real time. Assign someone in the clan as the family archivist and reward them with free flash (might I be impartial and suggest my favorite substrate, SanDisk) for their great contribution to your local slice of humanity.

Their task will be to store and file the moments and movements of your time and share with all during the holidays so that future generations can be effectively embarrassed via public exhibition of their youth. As formats change for storage, the Clan Archivist will convert the archive to the latest format du millenia and keep it current to the replay mechanisms of the time. That way your great, great grandkids will truly, and finally understand the great mystery of WHY their eyes glaze over, their breathing shallows and their fingers impulsively scratch their ears when aggressively quizzed by a member of the opposite sex: "it’s not me! It’s just something we’ve always done for generations! See, there's great grandpa Mike when he's 40 and....".

Thilde's Recording Time

2004-07-19T21:28:00.000-04:00

Author's note: Please note epilogue, below.

For my birthday I got my grandmother, whom I've called since I was able to form words from air, Nana, a present.

Nana is 89 and duly incarcerated at a full time convalascent care facility [sic]a nursing home.

She doesn't like being there too much (although after a few months it isn't nearly so bad as she expected it to be prior to her sentencing) --but she still can't wait to check out to the great beyond.

Her body is failing. She faces a myriad of complicated age related issues not the least of which includes a slowly collapsing spinal column from osteoporosis. This has led to an extremely diminished lung capacity, which tethers her 24/7 to a large bottle oxygen tank.

Hence, she's housed in the "no open flames allowed" wing of the facility.

But as long as she has the 02 flowing she's pretty sharp. Plus she's missing the great age-ism tragedy of our time, alziemer's, thank God. And she knows it. More on that later on a separate post.

But now she wants a project. Something to keep her busy. Despite something like 5 emergency trips to the hospital in 6 months, one almost set of last rights and two "who knows, maybe only a matter of days" from doctors, she's still kicking. As long as the 02 keeps flowing. For now she's given up expecting the "big one". God ain't ready for her juuuuuuuust yet.

Due to arthritis and failing eyes she can't play the multi-octave piano jazz standards she still knows (the ones she used to do when she would sit on gigs at Terry Dempsey's Nightclub in Summit, NJ in the 40's -- doing duets with cats like Percy Post and Mumbles (name not remembered, just "Mumbles", distinguished by his approbation in the royal circles of American Jazz as THE Librabrian for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

She can't do crafts, nor can she "manage and direct" like she did four short years ago when she was 85 years young and president of her local condo association.

She can tell stories.

She can remember, and relate a remarkable life lived, one of many thousands like her that lived through a remarkable span of history. A span of time from the 19teens to the present. A time where everything that you thought of how you could be, get to, see, be seen, be heard, be accepted, be rejected, conceived and received changed not once but several times. Usually in a radical if not violent way....

Although I doubt many of those who survived the bloodiest span of human history we call the 20th lived as the oldest daughter to the Chief of Surgery of the largest and most respected hospital in one the third largest city in America (in its time), that is, Philadelphia.

Or dated the son of the Pew Oil Trust [sic: Standard Oil of Ohio, Sunoco, etc.](didn't like him, he had clammy hands), had a sister make the cover of Life Magazine as Debutante of the Year 1933, Ocean Liners to Europe, fox hunts and hounds, horses falling and rolling on top of you, and boyfriend coaching the German Olympic Hockey Team of 1936 (under the threat of being sent to the ultimate penalty box) --who helped organize the French resistance a few years later and end up being husband number 2, and 4, respectively.

Husband one almost died in training but still made parachute jumps into occupied France four years later, and number three (the real keeper of the bunch, drove gasoline tankers before, during and after(around but not in) the Battle of the Bulge. In other words they didn't have clammy hands. They had to have a hell of firm shake in order to be able to keep up with a woman like Mathilde Van Lenup McKaig Bedford Brady [Bedford].

Her new tool (my gift): a tape recorder. And a simple one at that. You know the kind -- the rectangular thing that has been made since 1967. Big buttons. Simple controls. One speaker. Record/Play, REW, FF, STOP/Eject, PAUSE. Flip the tape over. Manual was thorough, legible, and complete. Not that you needed it.

That's it. Simple. A good piece of consumer electronics hardware that can help make one's life more fun, more interesting, or even at the esteemed age of 89, more purposeful.

And you know where I got this puppy? The Shack. Sometimes there's just no other better place for the simple stuff. The Paoli, PA store was staffed by elderly gentlemen a ( genuine karmic coincidence) that knew their products. I described the intent of the purchase and they procured the recorder in seconds -- and suggested an external condensor microphone with its own on/off switch. Particularly important was the VOX function on the recorder. If Nana stopped speaking while in record mode, the cassette would simply stop rolling. Perfect. That way she wouldn't be "stressed" by having to remember to push buttons on and off all the time while she collected her thoughts or simply

drifted

off....

Despite the friendly old-folk human factor engineering on the tape recorder it still took me a freakin' hour to get her to work it. And she calls me daily for a refresher about this function or that one.

And she now wants more cassettes.

But she is figuring it out. Kind of ironic too. It was her longested tenured husband (thirty years plus until his passing in 1983) who captured her heart by following her around at her USO shows in 1945. He'd ask for her permission to put his tape recorder on her piano while she played. He'd make bunches of tapes until one day she finally agreed to go on a date so long as it was to a place where she wasn't the entertainment for the room.

Nowawdays we'd think PopPop (husband number three) was a stalker. Back then, he was simply a devoted fan.

Now she's recording history. Thanks to a well made, simple, but thoroughly designed piece of consumer electronics.

Unfortunately, if the Good Lord is ready, He's just gonna have to wait until Nana is finished recording her tapes.

Epilogue: Thilde's agent finally got the terms done. We, Thilde's family and I, are reluctantly pleased, but gracefully, gratefully appreciative to announce that Thilde has agreed to transition over to the great beyoned and take the marquee position on the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. She will no longer be available in this dimension for performances, but please be sure to look her up when you do make your own transition over.

Crossed in Translation

2004-06-16T21:56:00.000-04:00

Recently I saw a tower fan. Actually it was a "Digital Stand Tower Fan". A digital fan. Hmmmmmmmmm. Digital. Being an electronics product nut and unabashedly self proclaimed philosopher of the sport, I had to check it out.

It was way too cool to avoid when it somehow impulsively jumped in front of my vision during a recent foray into the local Cheap-Mart. And I needed a fan exactly fitting the description of a columnar shape to fit unobtrusively into an already crowded room.

A Digital Columnar Tower Fan. Imagine....

...Digital wind breezing through your office. Drifting, propelling, lofting and sifting through your digital thoughts. Digital air, circulating 1's and O's all around the room in a transparent cornucopia of purely randomized data, wooshing through the air, up your nostrils and into your ethereal being.

Aaaah, the digital joy of it...

AND it came with a remote control. Done Deal --especially at $39.99.

There was of course a down side.

Upon opening the package I found pieces. Several. I had to assemble this thing.

Oh crap.

But it wasn't that bad. Sure the screws didn't match the lengths or the descriptions in the manual. But at least they were all there. And that was good to know when I realized that all the ones that I installed first had to come out for the REAL ones that were supposed to go...where a good screw goes.

Like most type-A American born and raised males with an aggressive-passive-aggressive-confusive-convulsive personality I started assembling before reading the "manual". Thankfully the manual was a simple 8 X 11 sheet folded in half which comprised four pages of mostly legible type.

Thankfully the product management group of the respective mfrs' marketing dept reviewed most of the text before putting it into publication.

Most, but not all.

And dammit, frankly, this is where I got annoyed.

The first page of the manual read in an insulting translation of bad English, engendering an equally unfair but hard not to conceive perception of an Asian foreign national desperately trying to effect a literative composition completely derived from 1970 cop show re-runs.

In other words, I know we gave up trying to make good stuff cheap in America a couple of years ago, but do they really have to slap me in the face with it?!!!! A well made chunk of plug-it-in-electronics should not have anything upon it that makes you the consumer compulsively remember when Made in Japan or anywhere else in Asia was synonymous with "will break upon use".

It's gone so far away from that point that it's fearsomely returning I think. There are serious signs of deterioration. And to me, well it's obvious isn't? Our civilization is beginning to crumble.

For example....

From the "Important Instructions" Section. -- the first section you would read in this highly abbreviated composition.

In this section you, the reader, presumed purchaser of said product, and presumed assembler of the blessed thing, is promptly admonished:

READ AND SAVE THESE IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS
[yes, I will keep it right next to my mattress bed tag collection]

When using the fan, the following basic instructions for assembly, operation, maintenance, and precaution should be observed:

1. Read and save these instructions.
[damn, they're really serious about this!]

2. This appliance has a polarized plug (one blade is wider than the other). To reduce the risk of electric shock, this plug is intended to fit in a polarized outlet one way. If the plug does not fit fully in the outlet, reverse the plug. [duh]. If it still does not fit, contact a qualified electrician. [he will appreciate the good laugh at your expense]. Do not attempt to defeat this safety feature. [so, you mean trying to jam it home with a hammer, a mallet or a thick soled rubber boot is just not a good idea, eh?]

3. This unit should be placed on the smooth floor and the power cord can't close to heating appliance. [Geez, what's it made out of, conductive jell-o?!!!]

[SIC: Nurse! Gimme a Level. -Check. Floor Sander. -Check. Foil backed Fiberglas Insulation. -Check. OK, the fan is now secure. Tell the family it's going to be OK.]

4. Please check the consume voltage applied with this unit. This unit consume voltage is 120V AC, 60Hz.
[My consume voltage is (recipe for Get Naked Margueritas): 12 oz. Jose Ceurvo tequila, 1 bottle of Corona, 1 12 oz bottle of 7up, & 1 can of Limeaid, ice, sTIRRed (not "blendered" unless you have a fetish for foam volcanos), and enjoyed under the audio climate of Bob Marley & company....after that it's hey, baby, what's YOUR consume voltage....?]

5. Please don't use such power cord: too long, damaged. Before use, the power cord can't be pushed by force to avoid damage. [you must talk to it gently, making sure that you have introduced it properly to Ms. Socket in such a way that stage fright won't present itself at an inopportune time...]And if the power cord is too long, it is easy to produce fire electric shock and others. [hmmm, that's a tough one. How do it know that it is just "too long"?. I mean, YOU the mfr. gave me the power cord with the unit. Am I to take a major risk and make a leap of faith by presuming that you have not supplied me with a too-long-of-a-power cord-by-mistake by plugging it in (presuming I've figured out what the hell you mean by "consume voltage") ?!!! And if no fire-electric-shock occurs, nor "others" (what are OTHERS?!!! Replicants? Pod People? Massively morphing Doc-Ock Arms-a-wavin digital tower fan power cord snake things? WHAAAAT?], then is it SAFE? IS IT SAFE? WHERE ARE ZE DIAMONDS? IS IT SAFE?!!!!'

6.Before assemble completes, please don't use this unit. [considering step 5, no worries, mate]

7. If don't use it, please cut off the power cord and keep apart the power supply.
[You really want me to cut off the power cord? And how do I get at the power supply? What does it look like? It doesn't say. Will I need my (laughing) qualified electrician to reconnect that power cord? Should I unplug the power cord before I cut it? Darn, the manual doesn't say....Lesseee, where's my box cutter, that should do it...]

8. Please keep your hands dry when connect the power supply.
[no problem, I'll just do it while standing in a tub of water.]

9. Please don't put your fingers, pencil [, or your dick] or other things into the grill when the blades are operating.
[What about my cat? Does he count? I'm sick of that carpet-peeing hardwood floor hairball hacking beast.... this digital tower fan would be perfect for him.]

10. Unplug or disconnect the appliance from the power supply before cleaning.
[there's that damn power supply again. Where is that sucker? IN the base? In the top where those little green and red lights are I bet.]

11. Don't let his unit immerse into water, oil, basically, acidity high temperature condition.
[well that pretty much kills it for me. No fan in tub, shower, deep fryer, heating oil tank or my at-home electrochemical tube-alloy plating operation.]

12. Please note not to cover by window curtain or others to avoid the blades draw them.
[no fan art permitted, ever]

13. This unit don't use in outdoor.
[In Through the Outdoor -- some may argue that this was Led Zepellin's finest album, albeit their last. Personally, I think "Houses of the Holy" was their ne plus ultra. Also, don't use the fan, or your unit, outside.]

14. Please don't use insesticide on this unit, or the resin and paint is easy to be damaged.
[Doing that really never crossed my mind. But now that you mention it, what a great way to spread toxic chemicals (and music!) as quickly as possible around your home. I can't wait to try it, paint and resin be damned!]

15. Please don't use directly in long time when have little baby, patient, old man.
[But perfectly safe in long time for toddlers, the anxious, old women, and of course young virile man like this writer self]

16. Store the fan in a clean dry place when not in use.
[Well that makes very good sense. Thank you Mr. Manual Man!]

17. WARNING: To reduce the risk of fire or electric shock, Do not use this fan with any solid-state speed control device.
[Whaaaaaaaat? OH Wait. I think Mr. Manual Man is referring to YOU: MR. ROBOTO!. This fan don't use with you in room! You risk electic-fire-shock or others! Consult Mike Botta, qualified electrician first Mr. Roboto! Consume voltage can draw you in with fan blades.]

Fortunately for me, I pondered the 17 statements above and chose not to follow them literally. I could have, but the 'ol spidey-sense saved me again. But what about some other poor unsuspecting, naive, type-A American born and raised male with an aggressive-passive-aggressive-confusive-convulsive personality who does? Will he survive the experience.

Somewhere, perhaps deep in the hollows of Appalachia(?) he's reaching for his heavy hunting knife to cut the consume power cord.... And will the defending lawyers be from Asia, the West Coast, New York or Philadelphia?

TraveLOGged

2004-06-02T22:09:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day weekend marks the official "media" recognition of the offical summer driving season.

I did my part by driving my family of 5, self included, from Philly metro to my brother's wedding at the Chautauqua (what a spelling bee question THAT is) Institution in far southwestern New York. It was only a 6 and half hour drive in our recroom on wheels --with my three year old strategically strapped into her jump seat right behind me.

There was NO WAY I was going to effectively refer to the Pocket PC - GPS Combo courtesy of my friends at Ambicom with her dutifully kicking my noggin awake every 5 to 15 miles.

"EXIT AT INTERCH...whomp!!! ANGE 106, POTTERS...whomp!! MILLS whomp!!

But I at least had the foresight to bring along the previous generation's directional technology tool, the atlas. Which my wife was even able to use. She could help me navigate this time.

As tough as that ride was, I was truly grateful I wasn't taking the bus. The bus with wings that is. I mean, really, aren't airlines anymore just the next generation's Greyhound service???

"Gee grandpa, you mean you got on those planes and just went, and like they got stuck all over the country all the time? How did you cope?"

Take my friend Mike S. who may take the bus for his next trip from Harrisburg to Bentonville, Arkansas.

He experienced one of most all time epic trips to Hades and barely back during the post modern era that I had to ask him to let me share it with you, the esteemed readers of the Vapor, for your wonder and amazement.

As the pretext of the title and the pretentious subhead indicates, the slant here is towards the role of personal technological products in our lives.

Riddle me this Batman: What if anything could Mike have used that would, or could have extracted him from his portal to perdition? (escapist prescription drugs don't count!)

****************************************************************

Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 7:51 PM
Subject: FW: The flight from HELL
I'm sure each of us have either lived through or heard of horror stories when it comes to air travel. Delays. Cancellations. Tight quarters. Poor service.

Well, there are horror stories. And then there's what I just went through Friday. This is a rather long passage, but it's a pretty good read if you've got the patience to get through it.

[sic: Pseudo-Editor's Note: YO! Get some patience! It's worth it. Trust me. This is good!]

Little background - this week I traveled to Arkansas (Tues/Wed) and Texas (Wed-Fri) to conduct some trainings for work. There were some slight delays flying from Harrisburg to Chicago on the way down to Arkansas, and this meant I had to do a virtual OJ through the airport before I realized my connecting flight was delayed. Then that flight from Chicago to Arkansas - supposedly delayed 20 minutes - sat on the runway for 90 minutes. We were supposed to arrive into Arkansas around 4:30, and it was near 6:30, which sucked because our first batch of trainings was to start at 7 across town. So that's Arkansas.

The flight from Arkansas to Dallas the next day was virtually uneventful. Heck that might even have been on time for all I can remember. After a couple days in various ports of call within Texas (disgusting Dallas, depressing Waco and decent Austin) it was time to go home Friday afternoon. My training on Friday was completed earlier than expected, and I ultimately arrived at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport around 12:20 pm for a 3 pm flight to Chicago en route back to Harrisburg. (Side note: on the way to the airport, we passed Texas Stadium, where the stinkin' Cowboys play. Initially I felt queasy seeing that god-forsaken place, but to see how dilapidated and antiquated that place looks made me feel good to know that Philly has two superior sports venues.)

Since I arrived at the airport early, I tried to see if I can get routed onto an earlier flight that would allow me to get into Harrisburg earlier than the 10:40 PM arrival time I was looking at. If the times stayed as is, I'd have to wait 3 hours for my first flight, then have another 2½ hour layover in Chicago. Well what should have signaled the story of the day I was about to have, I was not able to get earlier connections.

More background - I don't travel very well. I rarely eat or drink anything on days I fly for, well, obvious reasons. Feeling brave - and not having anything to eat all day - I had a piece of pizza around 1. Little did I know that would turn out to be the last food I would get for over 24 hours.

For two hours I sat at the gate that was imprinted on my ticket. It was pretty packed, so I didn't see the main table, which means I didn't see that the gate had changed. Luckily I caught this about 15 minutes before boarding - or what I thought was to be boarding.

I suddenly heard murmurings that all the flights into and out of Chicago had been delayed earlier in the day due to bad storms. Why the guy who couldn't find me an earlier flight didn't tell me this is a big mystery. And then, just as we were about to supposedly board for our flight, a guy said that our flight had been delayed an hour. OK, I thought. No big deal. I had a long layover in Chicago, so it didn't really matter where I spent that extra hour. It'd be less time to wait for my connection I thought. Plus I saw George Gervin and shook his hand, so it was cool.

Instead of boarding at 2:30, we ultimately boarded around 3:20. Around 3:30 we began to taxi towards the runway when the captain came on with an announcement:

"Folks, due to the rough weather in Chicago, all the flights that were delayed earlier going into and out of Chicago have priority over the later flights. We're going to have to find a remote spot on the runway until we're given clearance to take off."

4 pm comes. Then 5 pm. We're still sitting. Meanwhile my stomach is doing triple lutzes just because that's what it usually does when I travel. Plus I had a window seat in a 3-seat row. Plus the dude next to me was doing stuff on a laptop, and the chick next to him on the aisle was sleeping. To have to go to the bathroom at this stage would be virtually impossible. And then came another announcement from the captain:

"Folks I got some bad news. Because of the delay, I now have to refile for a takeoff time. I don't have any information as to when that will be."

Then around 5:30 pm he gets on and says we finally did get a takeoff time - in ONE HOUR AND TWENTY MINUTES. More groans from the cabin.

By this time, while we're sitting, the weather in Chicago was beautiful. But there we sat. And sat. And sat. It was close to 7 pm when, yes, we finally did take off and head to Chicago. Mind you, this is FOUR HOURS after the original takeoff time.

Now keep in mind that my connecting flight in Chicago was at 7:43 pm. This was a 1 hr, 45 minute flight. I was hoping that all the delays would have forced my connecting flight to be delayed too. I actually felt confident that even if we got to Chicago around 9 I'd still catch my flight because that too would have been delayed.

So we're heading to Chicago. I'm drifting in and out of sleep, or maybe I was just hallucinating that I was sleeping. We're about 20 minutes away from landing, and we begin our initial descent. And then, an announcement from the captain:

"Folks, you probably won't believe this, but while we were sitting in Dallas the weather was great in Chicago, but now there are severe thunderstorms. I've been asked to circle until the storms pass." We're freakin' 20 minutes away from landing. However, off in the distance you could see sensational bolts of white lightning filling the sky.

So, we circled. It's now 9:30. And we're circling. And then, we get yet another announcement:

"Folks, because of the delays and circling and not knowing how long the storms will last, we're now looking at a fuel situation. I've been asked to divert to St. Louis to refuel and then we can see about resuming the flight to Chicago. We should get you there in 20-30 minutes."

At 10:30 (an hour later) we finally pull into St. Louis. Any confidence I had in catching the flight to Harrisburg just went out the window. There were quite a few angry people on board. Once we deplaned and went inside the gate, we discovered that NOTHING was open. No food shops. Nothing. We get another announcement from some female agent there:

"Folks we're close to refueling the plane. Once this is completed we'll reboard and resume service to Chicago. Our anticipated takeoff time is now 11:30."

Well, at least it was something. My thought was what the hell was I gonna do in Chicago overnight since I'm sure there's nothing going to Harrisburg that late. Anyways, 11:30 comes and goes and we're all standing inside the gate with our thumbs up our ass. Now we find out that because of all the delays and stuff, the flight crew was on the clock too long. In order to takeoff, we need to get another crew. (I'm not making this stuff up. Honest.)

[Sic: Pseudo-Editor's comment: Go the hyperlink at "cope" above. Or here.]

People were able to get back on the plane and wait if they wanted, so I went back on and rested. Then some chick came back on, grabbed all her bags, and told the people who were on the plane that they just announced the flight to Chicago was now cancelled and to get off the plane. Turns out that there were other flights en route to Chicago that were diverted into St. Louis because O'Hare had officially shut down because of the weather. So it was another flight that was cancelled. However, as luck would have it, around 12:30 we got the word that our flight was indeed cancelled. I've never seen so many people scurrying on cell phones. We were told that because it was cancelled, we'd have to rebook as if on a fresh new flight. Just lovely. I was given an 800 # to call to do this, and after waiting 20 minutes on the phone, I found out that the 800# was for booking HOTELS in St. Louis - not another flight.

So I finally got the right # to call. I waited on hold for another 20 minutes until some Achnad answers. There are no direct flights to Harrisburg. First bit of news that sucked. Then I was told that there's a flight going to Chicago around 6 pm Saturday that would get me to Harrisburg around 11 pm. Yeah, just what I wanted to do - spend a whole friggin' day in the airport. After demanding a morning re-route, I was given plans to fly out on a different airline at 7 am that would ultimately get me to Harrisburg through Detroit around noon. That was acceptable. But the guy taking the reservation wasn't able to get a hold of that airline to confirm the booking. He told me to call back in about an hour.

So I called back. I got this very helpful chippie who, after having me on hold for about 45 minutes finally was able to confirm my re-route. All I needed to do was go to the other airline and get my ticket. Hallelujah. Still, I faced spending a night in the airport. Ever try to sleep in one of those airport waiting chairs? Yeah. I got maybe 30 minutes of sleep.

Around 4 am I was awoken by voices. I was resting up near the ticketing counter. When I looked up, I saw a long line of people waiting in the American Airline line (my original carrier). Since I was told that I needed to go to the new airline, I looked and thankfully saw that NO ONE was in line at Northwest. Around 4:45 or 5 am the first NW agent arrived. He asked for my e-ticket. I told him I did this via phone and didn't have any ticket. He looked me up and found I was indeed booked on the 7 am flight to Detroit and then to Harrisburg. However, he said that because it's a re-route from a different airline I would need to get those tickets through American.

Picture your favorite amusement park ride line on a Saturday afternoon. Now quadruple that, and that's what I had to get through. Thankfully something happened with another flight that thinned out the line a bit, but now it's near 6 am and I still don't have my tickets. Finally I get to the counter, and the lady gives me the transfer tickets. I go back to Northwest. There I find out the dumb broad at American only did the St. Louis to Detroit connection. She didn't do the Detroit to Harrisburg, and NW couldn't book the flight without it. By this time, the line was exponentially longer than before. I walked in front of the line and right to the counter and went to that same chick to fix it. She passed me off on someone else, and she got me the ticket. As I'm walking away, I notice she did the same exact damn thing. She's about to take the next person in line when I said she didn't give me the Detroit to Harrisburg connection. "Oh, I didn't know that," she said. Putz.

Finally I got both things I needed. Now the guy at NW had already booked the first leg of the trip. When I brought the paperwork back, he noticed that the American chick had REDONE the St. Louis to Detroit leg but also did the Detroit to Harrisburg. He himself went over to the American counter and fixed it. Now it's about 6:30 am, and my flight is in another terminal and about to board. It was at this time that I finally got my boarding tickets.

After that, the performance from NW was astounding. Both flights were on time. Both were less crowded flights, so I had plenty of room. I was very impressed by the Detroit airport. Very nice. We even arrived into Harrisburg early. By time time I got home, it was near 1 pm. A nice well-deserved 5-hour nap followed.

So, in essence, it took a full 24 hours to fly from Dallas to Harrisburg. And, surprisingly, my stomach never acted up to the point of embarrassment.

What a week!
****************************************************

Alright smart guy. Or smart person. What would you have done in the middle of that? Crawl up in a ball and make N sounds with your tongue for a few hours? I know I would have.

I know because I DID on the 7.5 hour return leg from my wedding to the [Kamp]Chautaugua Institution the Monday of Memorial Day Weekend. Of course I was driving at the time....WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!

Epilog: sure we thought about copping out for the in car DVD player to entertain the kids but hey, we (the wife and I) NEVER had THAT kind of luxury as kids for those long drives of our sepia singed pictographe of our perfect childhoods so why should ours? WE learned to get along and entertain our mutual back seat companion.

We smacked and taunted them when we were stunningly bored.

Just like my kids did.

Coming up: 2 - 2.5 hour trip to the shore in August.

Next purchase: A Portable DVD Player the next time its on rebate, dammit.

Hell, I'm a technology guy afterall. Ipso facto ergo sum, so are my kids.

...nnnnN, NNNNN, NN!, NNNGGGHaaaa, NNNNN, NNNNNNN, NNNNNNN, Nah, nah, nah, nn, nnnn, nnnnnaaa, nnnggggggggg, ahhh...nnnnnnnnnn....

Cope

AAAAHHHHHH.

Duty Jury JURYVAC

2004-05-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

Duty Jury, Part III & Conclusion

Being pressed into service ought to compel one to contemplate the service at hand, at least prior to doing it. My obligation for Jury Duty did. And in so doing my mind ranged far and wide about the law and the whole drama of the courtroom thing.

That's natural I suppose. I watched TV, willingly, throughout most of my life and can't help but be influenced by it in some way.

Most of the TV shows we watched prior to the advent of the now dominant species, the reality show, were about in some form or another, the Law.

Thanks to TV Law, for the longest time I thought the juror's purpose was to assign a thumb up or down to the presentation of the facts as weighed against the law, as described, by the opposing parties.

I even thought this despite going to and actually graduating from a Major PRE-LAW institute & foundry with the classic PRE-LAW double degree combo in History and Poli Sci....

But as I got closer to the purpose in Juror's waiting room, it struck me that it was also, or as much as, about assigning the truth. Not whether or not, say the defendant, was telling the truth -- one may never hear the defendant speak in a trial, but whether or not the presenters were telling the truth, or at least as being as truthful against their knowledge of their respective positions in the case. That is: the relative truth --as decided by a panel of one's peers -- one's fellow citizens (who happen to prove the exercise of their citizenship by actually voting, a good thing in my opinion).

In the year 2065 George Jetson gets pulled over, or something. He contests the arresting officer's decision and goes to court. He is offered a jury trial. It is scheduled. Right there and then. It begins, I mean, right there and then. Instantly a jury is provided.

That jury happens to be a 12 analog-dialed computing machine labeled "JURYVAC". The idea of having a whole jury be in the form of a computing machine is quite normal to George.

This is a natural component of the Jetsonian future http://www.cybercomm.nl/~ivo/ as robots are servant-family members, like Rosie the robot maid, co-workers like George's work shirking office mate R.U.D.I (in the painful employ of Spacely Sprockets), and a vast un-named robot culture participating in various forms of employ throughout that perpetually hovering 2065 human culture in the sky (sic: as envisioned by the tomorrowland writers in the employ of Hanna-Barbara studios somewhere in. or next to, Neverland, [Southern] California).

Thus, in 2065 the Hanna-Barbara writers envisioned that your peers would be... robots, of course.

JURYVAC being a borrowed play on the perceived arbiter of computing power of the early 1960s: UNIVAC. To wit, JURYVAC therefore was one powerful computing machine, despite the analog dials.

2004 and JURYVAC kind of appears like a pretty ridiculous and appropriately humorous cartoon notion. But I think we're a lot closer to JURYVAC than we think.

For example, there's a company in Israel http://www.nemesysco.com/

that has develped voice stress detection technologies to screen potentially dangerous people going in out of high security areas -- like airports. Their products use 8,000 algorithms to assess over 128 aspects of sound. Thankfully the inventors have developed a Home version that you can use for business,

http://www.ex-sense.com/homeversion.html,

and for LOVE --http://www.love-detector.com/
-- which comes in both a PC and a Pocket PC version so you can test his/her interest in you for LOVE while you're on the GO!

There's also the VERY OFFICIAL looking National Institute for Truth Verification (hey! sort of like this Blog -- but just not as funny, ha, ha, ha)
http://www.cvsa1.com/

which notes that voice stress analyzers (theirs?!!) are being used now by law enforcement, somewhere, officially. Really.

Combine that technology with some really good visual detetction technologies

-- starting with biometric facial recognition
(http://www.identix.com/)

that is given some really good mathematical correlations to relational based emotional neurolinguisting programming
( http://www.nlpinfo.com/)

and body proxemics
(http://members.aol.com/katydidit/bodylang.htm).

Which sounds really wacky until you turn on late night ESPN and watch the neverending 2003 World Series of Poker re-runs.

[SIDE NOTE DIGRESSION: Yo! It's not the CARDS! It's all about the TELLS, man! Why didn't my Dad tell me about that?!!!!

http://www.playwinningpoker.com/articles/03/10.html

F-ck! I''ve been losing my ass in "buddy" poker games because the card crew recognized my hot hand TELL just as easily as the ladies at the bar spotted my obvious loser-lack-of-getting-any TELLl! Considering my success back then (decades ago, like two) they must have been more like BARKS]

Combine recognition technologies, which use some form of artificial intelligence,
as well as a slew of other fact checking

(http://www.samizdata.net/blog/glossary_archives/001970.html) and story sorting technologies, and well, JURYVAC doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

Whatever JURYVAC is or will be, it will need to be powerful, fo shore -- enter "fact checking" into Google and you get 2,390,000 replies -- in about .79 seconds. A lot of facts to assess in a very short period of time.

But JURYVAC ought to be up to the task. Even as techno-geek pundits think we're about to hit the end of the Gordon Moore exponential computing power growth curve, we've still got a lot of computer processing power at our disposal. And a lot more to come, I'm sure.

And in the end, JURYVAC's conclusion was as foregone as the premise that you should always plead in the presence as per the advice of a (your!) lawyer. It's not about the facts --it's about understanding and working the system. Which I think is relatively fair, so long as you understand that's the way it is going into the deal in the first place (willingly or other wise).

JURYVAC found George guilty, of course. Almost as fast as a Google search, I recall.

As for the rest of us in May of 2004, we never got as far as JURYVAC. Apparently MOST cases never go to trial. I never got as far as an interview with a defense attorney for suitability. Two days of sitting around as merely a pawn for someone else's game of escalation, risk, and..poker tells.

I bet with JURYVAC waiting on deck very, very few cases would ever go to trial.

Someone would really have to tell the whole truth and nothing but. If not now, soon. The technology is waiting right around the corner like a cop with a radar gun on the turnpike.

Duty Jury Jones

2004-05-19T17:24:00.000-04:00

!! Part 2.
When I know I have to go to catch a flight I KNOW I am going to go through a security checkpoint involving metal detectors.

I REALLY didn't think of that when I left home for Jury Duty the first day.

BUT shore 'nuff, they were there. The rectangular frame covered in the familiar fake wood grain veneer, the amber LEDs, the balky conveyor and the line of people scrambling to figure out what metal they had on their person that had to go into bag on the conveyor. Aaah. The evocation of the glamorous life of air travel, right here at the county courthouse!

It was just like being at the USAIR concourse entry at Philly International except that I didn't have to completely disrobe in order to get through.

I thought I was slick by parking my can of Raid and Alien-defending tin-foil-hat material in my carry-on bag but the bag-metal detector caught those (HAH! - but they missed my oversized nail clippers! I win!).

Metal detectors in the Courthouse. Of course. That makes a lot of sense. While the really bad guys are wearing the metal to keep them around, even they have friends sometimes.

Dis-allowing the potential entry of assist-to-resist tools makes perfect sense. Where else should these things go? Think of the sick-o's that used weapons to settle their grievances in post offices and workplaces. Think of the gangs in schools using the teaching grounds as a field of territorial imperative. Lots of places.

Their placement make perfect sense and ought to become more ubiquitous as our concerns for containing the ability to bring implements of personal destruction becomes more and more heightened during the post 9-11 era. That is, until weapons of personal destruction technologies convert fully over to plastic. Which is happening pretty quickly actually.

Still, minus my Raid and anti-Alien foil I still had my cell phone, which was permitted. A cameraphone was not, however. No pictures allowed. No cameras. Only pictures allowed were those that you could draw. I later learned that this was due to the overweening influence weilded by the Courtroom Sketch Artists of America PAC on the Pennslytucky legislature. I could have brought a laptop into the Jury waiting room, but NOT into the courtroom. I would have to leave it in the waiting room if I was called to Court.

Despite the fact that I was in a building protected by metal detectors manned by slightly overweight middle aged men wearing uniforms and guns, as well as other men and women in uniform milling randomly around the facility, also wearing guns, I just didn't think my laptop would be completely safe from theft.

So emailing to pass the time was out. So was blogging, believe it or not. Can you believe it? They had NO Internet, no WiFi access, nothing at ALL there. Not that it mattered because I left my internet access tools at home per the reasons above. Still, I was shocked and dismayed but figured that there was 50 other people in the same situation. We'd all tough it out together.

The waiting room is at the very bottom of the Courthouse in the subbasement two flights down from ground level. Lighting was semi optional. Dim, but nice in a greenish sort of way. We all signed in and got a red sticker to wear, ID-ing us as a Juror. I got a number. I was Juror Number 18.

I filled out a form that asked the questions of fitness anonymously. This made the premise of bringing in a can of Raid and an anti-Alien tin foil hat as a not so subtle means to indicate my inappropriateness for potential, impartial judgement towards a fellow human, moot.

One very pleasant mid-sized women in her mid fifties was our gracious emcee. She was the Jury Duty Emcee. She told us what was going on, where we could sit, when we could pee, take a break from doing ... nothing ....

After a couple of hours she called our numbers one by one, but not in numerical order. She had us sit in specific seats in specific rows. NOW things were getting exciting. We were being rowed. Someone had categorized us. Some unknown, remote power had reviewed our forms and made decisions about each person's fitness and suitability for judging their fellow citizen.

There in our newly assigned seats we waited.

For another hour. Finally the Jury Duty Emcee announced that the Jurors could move about the floor but if called we were to go back to our places.

She didn't say "you" in the plural vernacular, or "Everyone", she called us "Jurors". As if we were a species. Not a "sub" species mind you, she was very polite. I can't emphasize that enough. But we weren't regular folks anymore. Not in that space anyway. We were "Jurors". Yet, she announced our limited release JUST in time, because I was damn close to committing a crime of my own.

The room was quiet in a hushed sort of way. There was limited movement and quiet conversations. A muted respect for the judicial environment and our responsibility permeated the space. Of course, the dim lighting helped this aspect along, not to mention the lack of any visual stimulation other than the 1970's era Government notices regarding equal rights and protections, some creepily bad landscape paintings (all done in greens, purples, blacks and white accents -- perhaps painted by a mentally insane criminal defendant showing his appreciation to a previous jury for their happy decision to incarcerate him), and a vast magazine collection of editions as recent as December 2003.

Except.... one women that brought in her portable DVD Player. She was tall, big boned but lean, short blonde hair and tan. Late forties early fifties. Sort of a biker chick, who thinks dressing up is wearing her cleanest blue jeans and a clean white tee top. Jury Duty. Hmmm, what to wear? Hell, I'll wear what I always wear to church....

FAR from me to judge someone by their attire so I didn't.

I viewed her with disdain because she couldn't get her DVD Player to work right. Being an electronics guy THAT's my right. BECAUSE...

She'd load the disk, plug in the ear phones, and settle into her own personal video displayed DVD world. Except the audio still played out of the on-board speaker.

The whole room could hear the slightly muffled sounds of her Ellen DeGeneres Live on DVD!, DVD. 7 people around her would turn in their chairs, not say anything, and just STARE. She'd catch on after five minutes or so, say "oh, Sh-T!, Sorry", mess with the thing and start over. With the sound still coming out.

I brought some marketing books to read and some paperwork to complete. Forget that. All I could hear was Marlin's sidekick, Dory, telling jokes I couldn't hear, and if I did, weren't that funny. Maybe if I was a lesbian Ellen would be a lot more funny. Maybe if I was a lesbian I'd feel a lot more funny....

But...

I digress.

I couldn't read in that space and I decided that I just didn't want to be THE asshole to tell her turn the damn thing OFF: "

ALICE! Turn that off OR I'll... BANG, ZOOM to the...

...or to show her how to make it work properly. I wish I did, but I just couldn't. Cowed by crowd behaviour. Made me think about Abu Ghraib. Ugly thing, crowd behavior.

But I know true torture. Half toned Ellen DeGeneres jokes played over and over. Now that would really send the Amnesty International folks screaming. But AI hadn't alerted to the Chester Co. courthouse, and this was more like a fellow prisoner inflicted than pain than the other way around. A better "advisory" candidate would have been the guy in the back row wearing black khakis, a black Remember The POWs T-shirt, black Chuck Taylors and a black Vietnam era Army UNIT Reference No. baseball cap. He glowered at everyone when he walked in, but ended up sleeping in his chair the whole time. He must have heard a lot worse than Ellen DeGeneres in the jungle. I bet he found a way to bring the can of Raid and anti-Alien tin foil into the building. Deadly, but useless if you're going to sleep through it all when it's really needed.

We got some breaks, allowing us to stray as far as but not up the stairwell. My cell phone showed NO BARS.

My Nokia couldn't pickup the signal. Yet, why is there always someone that, when you can't, they can? I gazed in glassy eyed tortured longing at the guy who was conducting his entire sales life over his motarola flip phone -- whatever that latest model was he had. I wanted it.

This was just brutal. I admit it. I'm just too wound up and weird to allow myself to enjoy forced down time during work time. But it wasn't like I was on vacation or anything. It was like I was on "non" time. Even for the service of my county, my state, my country, somehow this whole Jury Duty obligation ought to permit me to be somewhat productive and active as I am in the...tne non basement Jury Duty waiting room world. None of us had even been selected for any trial proceedings yet. What media poison could we consume that would taint our near future judgement?!!

And who wanted to be here at all, no matter how much we recognized the need? Frankly no one. The Jury Duty pamphlet said that Jury Duty is an obligation that all free and democratic societies must bear. It has been the underpinnings of democracy since the Magna Carta, and an essential aspect of American Democratic Jurisprudence, as written into the U.S. Constitution since the late 18th century.

OK, so it's important. But it's old too. Old and important. That's nice, but can't we do better now?

Then it struck me.

JURYVAC.

This whole thing of waiting around, doing nothing, just to be at the beck and call of top-gun lawyers and overmatched criminal defenders, while getting paid at a rate of $9.00 A DAY (me, not THEM) seemed horribly obsolete. Especially in this era where so much remarkable personal and business technology is available to us.

Heck, we got CyberCourt Now! And an honorable list of CyberJudges. Why not CyberJurors?!

It is time this ultra modern society lived up to the promise posed by the Jetson's.

Yup, the Jetson's. George, his wife Jane, daughter Judy, his boy Elroy, Astro, Rosie the Maid and JURYVAC.

I believe JURYVAC would take a big strain off of our culture, and likely improve the fairness of our court system. What is Juryvac?

Juryvac, next.

Duty Jury

2004-05-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

!!! PART 1.
Last week I won the lottery.

I received a letter a few weeks ago that said, According to a computer, I was randomly selected from a vast pool of potential selectees.

In this circumstance the vast pool of selectees was the entire voting population of Chester County, Pennsyltucky...I mean Pennsylvania. Hmmm. Pennsyltucky.

This by the way, was the second time in 5 months that I was "randomly" selected. Lighting struck twice in the exact same spot. The powerball came up again. I the lucky one was granted the privelege to do my unique civic duty for the democratic republic.

I was to be on Jury Duty.
[cue in the Perry Mason music. -- man, if there ever was a better musical tone to indicate the ominous power of the judicial system than that, someone we'll have to let me know, because DUM, de DUMM DUMM is IT!!!]. Judges, bailiffs, lawyers, defendants, "All rise", raise your right hand and solemnly swear that you will not harbor any prejudice and render a fair and worthy verdict, so help you almighty GOD! YEAH!

I have to admit I was bummed.

It was the second time I had to clear out my entire schedule. Two days of being "on call". AND if you were selected then you had to sit for the duration of the trial, a 3 - 5 day, 10 at the worst, obligation. Jeezus! TEN Days! As a commissioned sales-marketing-consultant type I'd be toast if I'd have to give up that much work time. Lost revenue, contacts, contracts, customers, clients, they'd all GO AWAY.

To somebody ELSE dammit..."Sorry, we loved your work but, well we couldn't call you to do the things that we could normally do ourselves sometimes. Now that we had to, well, we did, and found that it wasn't so bad, and well, we DON't really need your "expertise" anymore...good on you to do your civic duty though....

I had to get out of it.

I wrote a letter saying I had obligations.

They wrote a letter back.

It said, Sorry, but your wonderfully written request was very eloquent and moving, but the answer is

"NO"

please do call the night before to see if your panel number is called....

It was 18. It was called. I had to go.

I let my business world know that I was likely going to be unavailable and unaccessible. I got a lot of great emails offering how I could avoid an extended duty tour.

Some came straight from the Corporpal Klinger School of Unsavory Duty Avoidance, while others came directly from the Shirkers Institute of Unstable Mental Thought and Wacky Characters, the best of which I am compelled to display here, to wit:

a) tell them you are in favor of the death penalty

b) you are sympathatic in the privacy rights of , but not a card carrying member, to NAMBLA (ha ha ha)

c) You have relatives still getting hate mail after being involved with Sen McCarthy hearings

Oh, and showing up with a tin foil hat and a can of RAID to ward off "certain alien life forms" is always a help

...you'll get out ASAP!

Yeah, I was truly armed with some really great ideas and tactics to make JD a short ordeal indeed.

Right.

I went, and in so going, it turned out to be a good experience.

Perhaps A GREAT experience. And fodder for thought about personal technology in the judicial system.

More on that next.

Flash Ubiquity

2004-05-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

At the end of the last post I "promised" to post frequently or at least "more" frequently about my thoughts about my flash memory currency conspiracy theory.

Where is flash showing up now and where I would like to see it be? Where are all the places a flash memory card could --and should be used.

So, as I got my self to be thinking about this whole flash memory thing, I suppose one could refer to it is as the flash memory ubiquity theory, I said "self, what do you think?"

And he said (yes, my alter ego is still another guy), "who cares?"

So,

that was that.

I don't give up so easily though. Why didn't I care???

It wasn't that cool anymore. I mean, it's now on watches! Soon you'll have flash memory in your glasses and the ear stems will double as USB 2.0 dongles. [hmmmmm. I kind of like that product idea...hurry note to self to send cocktail napkin doodle to our family Intellectual Patent lawyer...]

You got it for cameras, mp3 audio, car audio, cell phones, pc data, personal data storage, TVs, video cameras, laptops, watches, eyeglasses (not out yet but soon, my lawyer is still waiting for the provisional patent to be released)and soon for coffee makers, fridges, children born after 2006 (thank you William Gibson), and future generations of Aibo the furless robotic dog.

See I think that once you hit ubiquity you get to boring. And I saw ubiquity with the idea and I got bored with it. So I didn't write. My bad.

Plus,

ubiquity + availability = commodity.

And since commodities bear speculation and exchange in value, they are like a form of representative transferable and exchangeable wealth. Like a currency.

Flash memory is currency for personal technology.

See, and you were wondering where the hell I was going with this flash currency thing and all we've gone is full circle from my last post. My bad.

Flash Currency

2004-05-04T15:24:00.000-04:00

I subscribe to some investor advice emails and newsgroups. Partly because I'm as greedy as the next idiot and want a shot at making a few cheap books too, and partly because they provide a tea leaves of sort to read the economy by.

When all or the same writers take parallel contrasting positions it would suggest that the experts don't know, are crazy, or are simply messing with our heads because they can. But at least its a different opinion than my own, and since they've gone to great lengths to pose themselves as experts (by providing a continuous flow of wise bits that indicate they know at least something that I don't) I feel compelled to give them credit for something....

But it is true that the US dollar, the fundamental currency of the consumer economy as I know it, is way down against the other currencies around the world. It hasn't affected me much personally I think. Gas is more expensive, but I think that's as much due to the Arabs animus to all things Western, particularly American, combined with their overwhelming desire to take their shots at making a few (zillion) cheap bucks too (so they can consume as much as they can of things Western, and American -- particularly Hollywood Westerns....).

It got me thinking about currency and capital. In the parlance of the consumer technology business. What is the currency of electronics?

Is it media? Like writeable CD(R) and now DVDs? Which was formerly the domain of floppy disks then zip disks and drives?

Is it LCDs? Those displays that are placed on items from cell phones to large screen TVs?

Is it CPUs (processors) and Memory (RAM, etc.), the components and guts of the machines that make the modern era of the late 80's and beyond so different from all eras prior? Used to be. But not anymore I believe.

I think its Flash Memory.

Flash Memory is valuable. And its value tends to last, at least in some form. Like a currency. Maybe like a small third world country's currency -- or, perhaps better than....

Where a CPU is pretty much obsolete the month you put it to work when you start your brand new DELL or Mac -- like your father's Oldsmobile rolling out of the dealer's lot for the first time, Flash is always still-good in its pre-set capacity.

The capacity or its ability to provide value in terms of its spec never diminishes. A 16MB flash memory item can always store up to 16MB of memory. And it doesn't depend on a given rev of OS to make it work -- like a CPU. Nor does it need a drive that has to be supported by a given rev of OS, relatively speaking. The moment all mfrs. stops supporting the 3.5 in floppy drive, they will become useless in a highly predictable timeline.

The only thing that gates flash from a future perfect lifespan is the form factor of the device interface. So long as your host device works, say a digital camera that takes SmartMedia and has a standard USB dongle - interface, your 16MB SmartMedia card will always work. And for as long as the USB device is supported in some form by some peripheral mfr. With millions out there its long term future looks good. If not the original interface then you can at least count on someone providing an "adapter". Millions and zillions of adapters.

The cool thing about flash is that it is tradeable. You could swap someone a 64 MB CF card for 64 MB SM card if that's what you both wanted, and neither would feel like they got ripped off.

The card's present retail value may be different but effectively the value of the capacity exchanged is the same. So both (can) win. What diminishes the value of flash is simply the extent of production of new and higher capacities that makes what was expensive, cheap --because the assigned value simply has moved somewhere else. So while financial value is diminshed or diminishing vs the moment, it is predictable and referencable against the new, easily determined value standard.

And now flash slots are showing up everywhere. They're already in Digital Cameras of course, MP3 players -- the boomboxes of the current generations, computer displays, keyboards, big screen TVs (well, they had room for it, so, why not?!!), now cell phones and very soon car audio systems. Soon we'll see them in coffee makers, refrigerators and UPS systems --well, because there's room for them, so, why not? [sic: refer to "Positions of Power" Blog].

Where else can they go? Where else will flash memory go? I think the rest of this week I will try to find as many possible places as possible for them to fit. And why.

Why? Because there's room for the text in this blog. So, why not?

The Positions of Power

2004-04-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

This past weekend folks in southeastern Pennsyltucky enjoyed the first real wave of bona-fide thunderstorms post the fossil fuel challenged winter of '04. They served to remind me of the last cataclysmic event we experienced in the Northeast US, Hurricane Isabel.

Many thousands lived without power for 2 days, some like me went for 3 and many more went for more like 5 or 6. Or longer. Talk about the end of the world.

Once you get to that point you're talking about revisiting the dark ages. You know, pre 1900 America when George Westinghouse and Tom Edison were still duking it out over the operating system choice of their time. AC or DC. George out marketed and maneuvered Tom and the rest is our alternating electrical lifestyle as we know it. Power goes on, power goes off. Often not by our own chosing.

Despite lasting memories, extended duration blackouts are really the exception. A power outage of an hour or few is pretty common throughout the US. All year long but worse of course during the seaonal change months of late spring and early autumn. Any self respecting PC user knows to use some sort of surge protection and backup power.

You could use a generator, but that typically won't turn on until you go outside and pull the cord to the thing. If you are pulling the cord indoors it may be for the last time if its exhausting those lovely fumes inside. Plus generators are really expensive. If you are a hard core electronics enthusiast then ponying up a $1,000 or more for pre-amp is no big deal, right? It's what you NEED. Then fine, go the extra mile and get a massive back up generator. You need it. But, if you are more budget minded, or have blown the budget due to your recent entertainment-computing electronics acquisition, OR you live in an apartment, then there's not much you can do about widespread backup generation in your domicile. Or is there....?

Realistically, most well advised PC uses, for example, will have an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to protect and back up their computer systems so they can be shut down in an outage the way Windows demands. Most will...I think.

For example, take my mother in law. PLEASE, take my mother in law. [rimshot, Rodney].

She has a PC, a cable modem, telecommutes at home from her Fortune 100 firm in the city, has learned how to Google, muddle through Windows and even rasterizes with a satellite provided access code in order to discreetly tunnel safely and securely into the enterprise VPN. She even uses some of those words when she talks about how she is now state of the art because she works from home and dials into her home office.

Yet, for all of this Apollo lunar launch level processing and communication power, she is safely backed up by a 6 tap surge strip.

She just didn't know any better.

Of course I enlightened her to what she ought to do. And I am sure she still uses that surge strip.

Too bad because the UPS is a wonderful invention of the modern consumer electronics era. They work because they're pretty simple in their function; they keep your system running for a while when it's dark everywhere else, and they don't cost a whole heck of a lot for what they provide. You can get a really good, powerful UPS (think 1100 VOLT - AMPS -- Haarrgh!!! Sounds powerful don't it?!!!)
from very respected manufacturers for around $120.00.

So back to the rest of the us. You're using an UPS. Is it enough UPS? Nothing worse than having an underpowered UPS. It doesn't give you any time to shut down your system, while stressing the (lead acid) batteries frpm everyday system power draws and micro brownouts to the point where they lose their ability to take and retain a charge over the long term --causing the UPS to shut down even faster. Believe it or not, it's likely that the manual to the thing discusses that topic. At least mine did, and I read the manual right after I had problems with my UPS holding a charge after several months of use. My bad.

Still, that's not my real concern. Here's the real key issue -- the heart of darkness I am trying to illuminate in the storm to come. Are you backing up enough electronic products in your home?

How about your TV and Home Theater? Your coffee maker? Your alarm clock radio?

Have a home with a sump pump? How about that? Ever notice how flooding rains and power outages tend to go together? Get a REALLY BIG UPS for the sump. I used a server level UPS (about 1500VA) during Isabel, and my basement was nice and dry. Of course the fact that little water actually came in in the first place had little to do with it.

Back to the home theater set up. A frivolous indulgence you say?! Oh yeah, did you ever have the power go out in the last half of the Super Bowl? Then go on ONLY when you see the winner (NOT the team that was winning earlier) congratulating themselves after one of the most remarkable comebacks of the century?

I have. If I had an UPS on my TV, I and my guests would have seen what happened while the rest of the neighborhood was in the dark. I could have been esteemed for my remarkable foresight and planning, as well as for my electronics savoir faire. Then my life would have turned out different after that...but, I digress, and perhaps you can learn from my cautionary tale. A TV likes a lot of power to get the tube a glowin, so do your math and back it up with a good chunk of charged lead!

How about your coffee maker?
Especially your automatic drip coffee maker. Lose power and you lose the clock setting there chumpy. You'll wake up to no Java-ready-to-go and if the power stays out, none will come. Sure, you could do that cowboy coffee thing that Kevin Costner did for the unsuspecting Sioux Indians in Dances With Wolves but you'll be just as grossed out by the taste as they were. And that's assuming that you don't need electricity to start your stove (I switched to gas right after that damn Isabel-storm). And if there is a widespread outage in your area it's not like your 7-11, Piggly-Wiggly (Sheetz, Turkey Hill or WaWA around these parts) is going to have any brew either.

The key is to make sure you size your UPS to support the current draw. All of the websites of the larger, respected UPS manufacturers (google it just like that) will have the formula for you, or you can call their tech service depts. They will be ecstatic to hear that their UPS will not just be for your father's PC any more.

Once you've selected your coffee maker UPS and brought it home, hide it. That's hard to do because these things are basically large chunks of lead wrapped in either white or black plastic. In the kitchen you'll have to park it ON the counter and disguise it as....a big box in either white or black plastic.

OR place it underneath the counter where your coffee maker is located. To do this just cut out a section of counter against the wall near the coffee maker and the outlet you intend to tap into. Make sure the counter cut-out is large enough to accomodate the thick cord coming up from the UPS and its three prong plug (make sure the outlet supports a three prong plug, if not, tough; or get an electrician to change it), AND the cord for the coffeemaker to fit down into the hole to plug into the UPS.

Patch the hole with that new kind of duct tape that is in designer colors to match your counter (if your counter is battleship gray then you're really in luck), and then further hide it with the coffee maker's placement over it. If your counter is made out of stone, like a nice granite or marble, you can go to your favorite home implements depot for some nice masonary drills, chisels, bits and hammers. Or use extension cords after drilling through the side boards and then up and over. Lastly, whatever you do, DON'T tell your spouse, what you are up to because they won't understand. At least NOT until that outage hits and they despair for a lack of a good cup of joe. DISCLAIMER, BTW, I take no responsibility for your actions, including but not limited to following any of the aforementioned and subsequent suggestions. BUT, if you do, my guess is that you are really a brilliant person.

What other places should you back up with an UPS? Well there's a lot. For example, ever notice how 9 months later after a big blackout comes (no pun intended, oh, OK, I intended it) babies. It's not the dark that gets the mood going, its the candles. Romantic, they are. But dangerous. Very dangerous. Plug your lava lamps and other mood enhancing electronic devices into an UPS and you've got the ambience without the agita of having your home burn down.

Let's face it. You need an UPS in every room of your home. The possibilities are endless. The next time you and your neighbors gloomily stare into another stone age blackout, turn on the lamp closest to their windows. You know, the lamp that's connected to its own UPS. You'll make them think that the power comany forgot them while you got yours. They'll be freaked out, while you'll laugh about it for years to come.

Cell Phones Don't Swim

2004-04-22T17:40:00.000-04:00

Do I control my electronics devices or do they control me? Or really, the manufacturers of those electronics devices -- do they force me to bend to their will in so many ways by their inherent user interface dicta of non interopability or non conformity? From cross intra category variations in specification standards, to human factors variations over form like factors (like those buttons on the various cell phones and MP3 players) to display screens and to services and protocols for communications?

Of course they do. I got over THAT a long time ago once I chose to go Windows instead of Mac.

But how about using the device itself. How important is it in your life anyway? Is our day made or broken, sic: our careers made or broken by either the superior or lacking performance of that critical electronic product that is so much a part of our everyday working / living life?

That answers is only yours, and how much you attribute your own value to your contribution to the planet into the respective device in question. As for me, well, I've found it can be a lot. May you never have to take the test, but if you do, how will you fare? For example....

Yesterday. At a customer location. Deals are pending with answers due from technical and strategic sources scattered over thousands of miles away. We connect either by email or cell phone. Since they're travelling and not using a blackberry, we're communicating via cell. No big deal. I'm in an area where the signal is good. I use Verizon. I like Verizon because they've figured out how to do something my other carrier could not: keep my call connected. Mostly everywhere. Mostly. I can hear me now.

Now, is it me or does the phone always and only ring when you're in the middle of a meal, on ANOTHER call already, or in the bathroom. I hate to answer in any of these environments and usually don't. Voice mail works. But this one call, I had to take so I did. Hanging up and putting the phone back on the beltclip is usually a no brainer thing. This time I put no brain into the task at all and I suffered the result. The phone fell off the clip and into the

toilet.

Post use. Pre-flush.

F-CK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...my first reaction.

My second was -- f-ck it, IT's GONE! I'M NOT GETTING IT. NO!
--CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

NO. I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!!!!!

But it started flashing. A call was coming in!!!!! Do I answer? Ugh, too gross. But I NEED to know what the call was about. From whom? Was it the price I needed NOW?!!!

F-ck it. It's GONE. I said out loud. I can live without THAT call. I poised to flush in this Sienfeld - Costanza moment and got a Kramer like revalation. What if it clogged the pipe on the down-low? It COULD you know. Then my customer's facilities people would have to come and unclog it. Then they'd find the phone and then trigger an internal investigation as to who owned the offending clogging device.

I imagined a voice mail on my office line: "hello, uh, Mr. Spastichands, we have retrieved what we believe is your cell phone from one of our toilets today. Would you like to pick it up or should we mail it to you in a bio-hazard pouch? The cost of the plumbing repair will be $150.00. Oh, and you have four messages..."

Ever since SARS turned human crowd contact and behavior on its ear, eyes, nose and throat last year I kept a small bottle of Purell, the waterless hand sanitizer with a nice aloe scent, in my laptop bag. Never used it, really. Had it just in case someone had evident SAR / Ebola / Anthrax symptoms to which I could sanitize any contaminated self surface on a moments notice. Then I would use it. Or, I could clean my cell phone with it.

After briefly running it under water I shook it like an angry toddler, and quickly disassambled it on an open desk. Those around me move their chairs away instinctively. The cell-thing was soaked. It blinked intermittently and made a clicking and popping noise from the voice coil. Death throes to be sure. It wouldn't turn off unless I removed the battery.

I slathered the thing in the Purell. ALL surfaces, including my own up to my elbows. Once done I let it sit for a few minutes to allow the powerful cleaning agents in Purell to do their anti-bacterial and anti-viral thing. Then, before my eyes it became clean. Cleaner than it's EVER been in its entire short life as a living cell phone. It even smelt nice. Really, it did.
But would it work?

Nope.

I went to the Nokia site to see if they had any recommendations on to recover a dunked, pre-flushed phone. No luck.

Fortunately a sympathetic ad hoc committe of nearby business associates formed and we hit it with compressed air, swabs, tissues, and more compressed air. If we could have found UV light, we might have tried that. But I did nix the suggestion to put the thing into a microwave. Somehow that just didn't seem to be a prudent idea for a device full of RF electronics and such.

A few long hours later all it would do was click and pop, and flash, even less so. It was a long drive on the 100 mile long turnpike drive home without a single call in or out. I needed to call. I needed to receive calls. I was...unproductive without it. I needed it. I was, truthfully, depressed.

My wireless provider store was still open. Zoom Wireless, near Philly. Great guys. They were very sympathetic. They even looked at it like a bunch of ER surgeons hoping to breath life back into a drowning victim. --We've got a pulse, sir, but he went just too long without air....

They gave me a free loaner to tide me over until I could file my cell phone insurance claim for a new one. Before I left one of the cell surgeons suggested I place it into a stream of warm air -- like the back of refridgerator. If I could get back there. How about a hair dryer? Too hot he thought. Maybe he was onto something, though. What do I have to lose?

I turned the oven to its lowest setting, 170degees F. Stripped of all parts, ESPECIALLY the battery (again a small spate of common sense rose in my mind and suggested that I NOT bake the battery, EVER) and put the poor naked, lifeless cell corpse on the oven rack, hoping that a nice hot sauna sans steam would somehow bake out the moisture and remove any possible shorts that were obviously occurring and ruining its highly challenged cellular nervous system.
****************
Recipe for Dry roasted Nokia a la Toilette:
1. Dip whole phone in toilet. Pre use or post use it doens't matter. Do not swirl. Do not flush.
2. Remove promptly.
3. Dry off.
4. Sanitize if necessary for reasons of careful cell food handling.
5. Set oven to lowest setting above 100 degrees.
6. Remove outer shell, and battery (inedible and tasteless).
7. Bake for 10 minutes or until hot to touch. But NOT too hot. You must be able to remove with hands
8. Allow to cool slowly on a dry counter. Stone is best.
9. Re-assemble.
10. Test power on to taste.

And damn if the thing didn't light up. Full LCD, buttons functioned mostly. Some stuck. So...
11. If not fully operable, strip outer shell again and battery, and allow to slowly bake for XX minutes in the lowering heat.
12. Retry step 10.
****************************************
It works.

It dials out. It takes a charge. No blinks, no bling bling, no clicks or pops. I have to return the loaner and reactivate reception on the ID to see if receives but I have reason to believe that it will. Why?

Because I have faith that my phone trusts me. Afterall, at great personal peril I saved it from a horrible demise. It knows. At least it better.

I still have cell phone insurance just in case....

In the meantime, I think I will change the shell. Time for a different color. Or should I just get a back up? Just in case....

Too Much Memory on My Time X

2004-04-21T11:58:00.000-04:00

I was at my customer location today. A manufacturer was showing off their newest innovation -- a watch with flash memory built into it. Wear your watch AND your PowerPoint presentation -- all on the same wrist!

One version had a chrome - silver bezel, a nice white face and a metal link band. Sort of a rolexy - seiko look. On the side of the bezel there's a port for a USB (2.0, of course!) interface, protected with a very handsome plastic plug.

They also have a black sport watch version that has a built in USB (2.0, of course!) dongle that tucks into the wrist band. Perfect for freaking out the airport security staff whenever you have that need to hold up the security line and miss that unimportant flight.

I'm not sure how much they cost. I guess the more memory (flash) the more they cost. Although those prices seem to move like the heart monitor chart of a fading octogenerian, I guess once you built it into the watch the memory value is less important than having it in the watch in the first place right?

But here's the real question: Other than the pure technophillics among us, or the memory capacity challenged ( I just can't fit another JumpDrive - Cruiser on my keychain, sooooo I bought this watch with memory in it too!), who in the normal non tech world is really going to buy these? --Do I chuck my Pulsar-Seiko-Rolex-Baum&Mercier-TAG Heuer, etc. and go with the memory watch for today's client meeting? Or just wear two watches? And if so, hmmmm, one per wrist? Or, like a shady, sidewalk merchant, as many as I want from wrist to elbow?

Choices. What do you think? I could be way off and about to miss the next really cool thing. Since cool is fun, I just don't want that to happen.

The perfect PDA

2004-04-16T22:06:00.000-04:00

Truth be told I carry both a day timer AND a pocketPC. One foot in the paleolithic and the other in the...byzantine (?) era. I love electronics. I really do. I just don't trust them like I should. Not completely. Every time I get really infatuated with a new device it just seems to, well, not satsify me.

But not like in a "I need more, more, more kind of way" but in a "you promised you would but you just don't or didn't do what you said you would, on the box that you arrived in" Very well. All the time. My pocketPC's battery is always crapping out after a few hours of use. That's not a lot is it? What's the point if I have to schlep around with a charger all of the time? Or a box full of double A's? Is there someting better coming and I just don't know yet? Should I wait? Will we ever find the Holy Grail? And whose face is it, REALLY on the shroud of Turin?

When you zipper in a slim form factor PDA into the day timer case it really does make a nice weapon,
especially when it has a dead battery.
Makes you care less about it.

2004-04-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

Two guys in the corporate client's breakroom are going at it with a pair of handlhelds, palms I believe. They're firing messages back and forth via their new bluetooth SD cards (geez they actually found a supplier that has wrestled the drivers from the mothership and got them to work?!!! --even that's another story) not saying a word but clearly emotionally involved with their exchanges.

All of the sudden their fun ends. Distressed, distraught even, one croaks, -f-ck! my battery's dead. I think I lost all my contacts....damn! [serves him right for trying to have fun on a "business tool"]

I couldn't help myself. I had to help.

-See this, waving my black vest pocket size zippered wallet at him. -I can always read the text, it syncs and auto text-writes with a pen or a pencil, and the battery NEVER runs out. EVER. Entries are practically unlimited and I can leave it on indefinitely.

-REalllly? both almost reply in unison. An edge of skepticism in their voice. -So, what's this wonder-device that's too good to be true?

-It's my freakin' Day Timer!

Man were they bummed.

-Yeah but you can't play games on it! hollared the one with the still working device as I left...

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hell, I got a cell for phone that.