Devious Devices

"I'm looking for a new cell phone," I said to the cell phone kiosk man in Sam's.

He glanced up from punching keys on a computer and suddenly got that 'resigned to the fate of dealing with a middle aged woman who is totally ignorant about computers, cells phones and any other current technology' sort of look.

"What did you have in mind?"

"Well, here's my old Nokia. It's about 6 years old and has served me well, but it's sort of big and the performance is falling off lately. I want all of the same features."

I pointed to a cute white business card sized cell phone on the display.

"Does this one have a video camera?"

He looked to be in his late 20's/early 30's. He was geekish in the way that a lot of young electronic sales personnel tend to look. He was thin and wiry and didn't have a particularly healthful aura about him. In fact he exuded overall dissatisfaction and a slightly stale odor.

"Well, let's see," he said, his voice spiced with sarcasm, "Your phone is about 6 years old and it has video. These are new phones with advanced technology, so my guess would be that they DO have that feature."

He smiled a thin smile. (Wow, is this broad dumb or what...how many more of these people will I have to deal with today.....Sam's is overrun with the retirees and semi retirees on the weekdays. The weekends aren't much better what with the overweight families and screaming kids in tow buying bulk frozen foods. How did I get here anyway?)

I studied him for a second and then said carefully in a well modulated 'I'm old enough to be your mother' tone.

"Are you being a smartass?" I looked at him and raised my considerable eyebrows. Then, with just a tinge of 'angry, but tolerant black woman' in my voice, I said, "Don't you be bein' that way with me."

This approach gave him pause. He didn't say anything, but his jaw kind of worked sideways and his eyes widened a little.

I picked up a different phone acting as if he wasn't a little twerp and that as adults, we could move beyond his petty insolence and do business.

"What about this one? How much is it?"

I had established my alpha position as the customer now and the tone of the exchange became more balanced. In a somewhat more civil manner, he proceeded to quote a price. We then chatted about the phone features and accessories for awhile. I think he was beginning to see that I might be a bit more savvy about the world of cell phones and computers than previously perceived. I had done considerable research on the Internet before entering this electronic jungle.

"You explained that very well," I said in true 'turn the other cheek' fashion. "Thank you."

He smugly smirked, then said in a defensive tone, "Actually, we are pretty professional around here even though our customers don't seem to think so."

I studied him again carefully. "We must have had a bad day today."

He didn't respond to that, but it was beginning to be obvious that yes, he either did have a bad experience earlier in the day or he was a terrible salesperson that probably wasn't going to last out the week or the rest of the day before he got the boot. Other customers would probably have reported his misbehaviour, but I didn't want to be the one to do it. Let someone else. I'm sure it will happen at some point. I bought the phone despite his help.

IT'S A SLIDER!

Two days later, it became apparent that we would have to take the plunge and buy a new digital camera. Here's the one we've had for several years now. It's a Sony Mavica and yes, it uses a 3.5" disk. In fact, when I ordered our last new desktop computer and found that the floppy disk option was no longer standard, I had to order one anyway so we could upload our pictures to the computer. It still works very well. It's only a 3 mega pixel camera. Again, well armed with Internet info, I visited another mega store staffed with young geeks. This guy was a little more respectful although I think these people don't really like it if you know too much, that way they can't give you the ol' sales soft shoe routine. (That reminds me about another prior encounter with a megastore sales geek who chided me about opening up portable DVD players on display. It was 15 minutes past opening time and I wanted my portable DVD player. No one was there to help me, all of the display units were closed, so I opened a couple to look at them. Suddenly, the geek was at my elbow, gently touching my arm and admonishing me. "These are very expensive and you should not be opening them, the sales people are supposed to do that." No kidding. So, why aren't you doing your job, Mr. Blond Curly Headed Geek Person?) Anyway, back to the camera. I knew what I wanted and it took about 5 minutes before I was out the door with our new digital camera.

IT'S A NIKON COOLPIX!

Electronic packaging is a maze of cardboard inserts, plastic shrink wrapped objects, little ziplocks of minute parts, cords, instructions, CD's and basically a whole mish mosh of stuff that you'd better make sure you don't throw away. However, the Coolpix is small, so the accompanying package materials weren't too confusing, although there are still two cords for which I have yet to identify the use.

Ahhhh. What a nice little camera. I put in the batteries, I turn it on. I start reading the quick set up instructions. I set it up. The CD goes into the drive - OK. It starts automatically..................not. I eject it and try again, two more times. Nothing. Big sigh and go to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee for the long haul. Read the instructions again. Says something about turning off the virus software temporarily because it could block the installation of this software. I can't figure out how to do that. I check the McAfee security center - no obvious instructions there. I check the Microsoft security center. Same thing. I try various other places on my computer and then go online for awhile to look for clues. At this point, I am not happy and I'm sure my blood pressure was redlining. I take a deep breath. OK. Read those instructions one more time. What's this word? Yellow. Yellow CD. There's a yellow CD? Where? Oh, there you are, you nasty thing - right in the back of the same CD sleeve. Well then, what is the CD that I've been trying to use? Ahhhhh. The Chinese language CD, that explains a lot.

Very Important Lesson: Always, I say ALWAYS, read the instructions CAREFULLY.

DEVIL'S TOWER COMING UP.....I said in my last post that I would talk about vacation planning and budgeting. I'll do that while we are on vacation next week. We are going to Wyoming to Devil's Tower and then to Glendo, a big lake/reservoir thing that is supposed to be very nice. We have never been to either one, so it should be interesting. My next post will be while we are in the KOA somewhere up north. (I remember when I said I'd never stay in a KOA and I'm pretty sure I did make fun of people that did stay there......:-)

Gotta start prepping some foods and packing the camper now. Although this post date is Tuesday, 8/28, it's now Thursday. Bye

This photograph was taken by Wyoming Aero Photo LLC

Yes, I've read recommendations on postings and I KNOW my postings are too long. I'll work on that.

Farm Stories. Bike Ride.

Over the past few years, I have illustrated about 30 stories written by a professor from one of the universities here in Colorado. I am completing one last cover page illustration for him. He is in the process of working with a publisher to get his book of stories published. He writes about growing up on the farm and the stories are very down-to-earth, simple, humorous and sometimes quite touching. Each story has an average of 4-5 small black pen illustrations interspersed in the text. The first drawings, completed probably 10 years ago are slightly different in style than the ones I've most recently completed. We had a break of about 5 years when I moved from one area to the another and he continued to write but I was not illustrating anything for him at that time. He contacted me about 2 years ago and we finished our collaboration. Here are a couple of the illustrations.
It was lots of fun to read the stories and to come up with the ideas for illustrating them. I would run my ideas by him, he would maybe come up with suggestions of his own and then I would get started. It became a part of my life for quite awhile and I confess that I will sort of miss it.

BIKE RIDE

It's 8:10a and I just got back from a lovely, invigorating bike ride. The camera is sitting on a rail post for this shot. I'm in the shadow of a big redstone topped hill. This area is very beautiful and a popular spot for bike riding. My particular route takes about 45 minutes and I get plenty of exercise. Merle and I rode here on Sunday. We are planning to use both cars for our next ride, parking one at each end of a longer route we are planning. Any exercise has to be done in the early morning or evening around 7 p.m. to avoid the very hot temperatures we have been enduring in this part of Colorado. We have mountain bikes and from what we see around us, this type of bike riding should probably be done on road bicycles. They have thinner and bigger around tires making it easier pedal plus, I guess you go faster. However, I think we will stick with our mountain bikes for now since we do not go real long distances.

Elderly People Crossing. Exchanging Homes

This is my favorite street sign ever. It was on a street in a quaint town in England. We were there on a home exchange trip.

This morning I had an email from a lady in Ireland. It's someone I met online through Homelink, a home exchange website. We've had one home exchange in England and a couple of other attempts to arrange home exchanges, one in Ireland and another in France, but so far haven't been able to finalize either one. However, the one is Ireland may be a possibility another year. My Ireland contact will be visiting here in the U.S. sometime within the next couple of months and I'm helping her sort of put her trip together.

Home exchanging is a great way to save money when traveling anywhere. We've even received inquiries from people here in the U.S.. Just receiving an inquiry, however, doesn't guarantee that an exchange is imminent. When you set-up the search inquiry in Homelink, you specify dates of a potential exchange, preferred locations, adults with or without children, smoking or non-smoking, do we exchange cars, etc.. However, there are still things that have to be compatible. You have to be able to afford the airfare to get to the location and some of the more remote locations are difficult and expensive to even get there. Also, you may find out after emailing back and forth, that someone is allergic to animal fur and the owners have or had a cat or dog. Or, after "getting to know each other better", you may find that you are just not comfortable with the idea of these people in your home. All of the listings generally provide photographs of the outside of the home and others, like ours, provide other photographs of the inside. This gives the potential "exchangee" a good idea of what to expect if the exchange is arranged. Most of the people we have encountered are retired since we specify 2 adults only. However, many exchanges include children and teenagers.

WALES THE BEAUTIFULEST

Working Europeans seem to have a lot more vacation than Americans and of course retirees have even more time to travel, so most exchanges almost always involve a minimum of two weeks. However, most retirees want a month or more in order to make it worthwhile. We can only afford to do 2 weeks and so that limits us somewhat. However, we have found those willing to stay in our home for that period of time and then they travel to another exchange in the U.S. or just visit various sights here, staying in paid lodging.

One of the really cools things about a home exchange is that you live like the "natives", more or less. Grocery shopping was one of the most interesting things. The foods are fewer and there are similar brands, but the labels were slightly different. The dessert (or pudding as the English say) aisle was huge. We couldn't resist buying something special almost every time we shopped. The liquor aisle was also amply furnished with everything you could possibly want to drink.

We were on this trip just after 9/11 and it was very touching to see this sign posted on the doors of one of the fire stations in town. Traveling right after 9/11 was a whole new travel experience. The security was amazingly tight. It was a strange feeling to fly through Toronto enroute to England and see some airport personnel there with turbans on their heads. There were quite a few turbaned individuals in the airport lounge and some on the flight with us. It made me realize how easy it would be to assume that people of a certain nationality could be unfairly labeled. Every carry on bag was searched thoroughly, so I guess that considering the extra precautions, it was probably one of the safest times to fly ever

And finally, here's one last sign that I must share with you. Close up parking for that mother-to-be.

Cheerio old chaps!

A New Gadget and Boulder, Colorado USA

Here is my latest gadget. I went to Boulder yesterday and had lunch with a friend. Afterwards, we went to Into the Wind, a store that has lots of kites and windsocks, but so many other interesting and fun items, like this great phone that you plug into your cell phone. How weird is this? It works very well and is obviously a sort of gag item, but I'm enjoying it. It will be interesting to see the looks I get when I'm driving down the road talking on my cell "phone"..... (Don't worry, I use an earphone with my cell phone in the car - I won't use this phone.)

Today, there are workmen in the house. The flooring in 3 rooms is being replaced and a new window put into one wall of the garage. I'm sort of used to this by now because since April of this year we have had the following things done to our house.

H New roof (flat roof, $$$$$)

H Asphalt on long, hilly driveway and parking pad

H Air conditioning installed in bedroom wall

H Wood flooring installed in bedroom

H 3 decks demolished completely, re-built and replaced with composite decking plus wiring for lighting and outlets

H Pergola built on largest deck

H Garage walls & ceiling insulated, sheet rocked and painted

H Miscellaneous other repair items too numerous to mention

But, we are winding down on the remodeling/repairs and only have a few more things to get done before it will be finished for now. Down the road, I need a completely new kitchen and flooring in the kitchen/dining room areas, but that's part of another budget in the next couple of years. Our house was built in the early 1970's and hasn't had any updating since that time. It was overdue.

On to more interesting topics.

In Boulder, Judy, a friend and I ate lunch at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. It is quite fantastic inside, a real work of art. The website tells about how the decor was assembled. We sat by a big raised pond with fish in it. I had a Mediterranean Salad and Judy had the Grilled Salmon Salad, both very good. Our only complaints might be that it was not very cool in the restaurant, although it was certainly not excessively uncomfortable and our iced tea had practically no ice in it. But, we requested some more and it was graciously provided.

Boulder is a very interesting town. Merle and I have always enjoyed staying there upon occasion, eating there and shopping there at many of the unusual stores. Boulder is a sort of rich old hippie town meaning that a lot of "used to be hippies" started businesses and ended up populating Boulder. According to Wikipedia, Boulder median family income is $70,257 which is $20,000 higher than the U.S. average. Housing is expensive with the median single family home in the 2nd quarter of 2006 selling for $548,000. All of this money and all of the expensive homes that need to be furnished mean that Boulder has shops that cater to those folks. One of our favorite stores is the Peppercorn - check it out.

It also has a large university, Colorado University. Over the past few years, CU has been the focus of some controversy. It's has been labeled a "party school", the football coach quit amid a tawdry sex scandal involving recruiting and Ward Churchill, a defrocked professor of dubious Indian ancestry, has gained national and worldwide notoriety for comments he made during a speech about 9/11 that many people found to be offensive. Plus, the university president resigned - all within the last 5 years.

Here are some other places we like in Boulder, although they are just a handful of the many cool places to visit:

Chautauqua Auditorium for small concerts and shows.

The Boulder Cafe on Pearl & 12th on the Pearl Street Mall (shown to the right, no website but good food)

Rocky Mounts for bicycle racks.
Red Lion Inn for early bird specials.

Twenty Ninth Street - a great new retail district
Chautauqua Park for hiking trails

Hotel Boulerado for a special evening and overnight.
Design Within Reach - a misnomer, as most of us cannot afford anything in there. We did buy the light shade shown to the right, though. I wish IKEA would open a store in Boulder or somewhere around here. That would be wonderful!

Think I'll go see how things are progressing here at the old homestead. See ya' later. Here's a parting gift.

Robots, Rayguns and Rockets

We have always enjoyed science fiction movies and paraphernalia. We have a grouping of small shelves in our livingroom with tin space toys on them. Gort (the robot shown from "The Day the Earth Stood Still) is on one of the shelves along with some other robots I picked up from various Internet stores. A Robby the Robot that walks and sparks is part of the collection. If you've got a spare $50,000 laying around you can buy a real Robby the Robot here at Hammacher Schlemmer. I just ordered the raygun and the rocket above from Tin Man Toys. Our home decor could be described as eclectic modern. The eclectic part has to do with the combination of steel, atomic style lampshades, glass table tops, sleek line sofas (yet very comfortable), swivel chairs and things like our tin toys and my Uglydolls.

I guess it is safe to say that this movie is Merle's favorite science fiction movie and I have to admit, it is very cool and well done. I like black and white movies and the old "very special" effects are fun to see. I'm particularly fond of pie pan flying saucers. The acting is also quite good. I looked up some information on the actor who was Gort, the robot. Here is what I found on the IMDB site

Joseph Lockard Martin Jr. (1916 - 1959). Height: 7'7". One of the tallest actors ever, he held various odd jobs before his debut on the silver screen. He worked for Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Ardens Dairy (in California,) as a Cowboy for Public Relations and at Knotts Berry Farm, (in California) also as a Cowboy. It was while he was working as a doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood that his height was noticed and because of it he was chosen for the role of Gort. He also hosted a children's TV show in the Los Angeles area in the 50s called 'The Gentle Giant'. He was not a very strong man for his size. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

Watch the complete movie for free on Google Videos here. I have a Google account and you may have to set up one up to view it, but when I clicked on it, the movie started immediately without a glitch.

When you type this word into Google search, there are some very interesting results. This site, "Dr. Grordbort's Infallible Aether Oscillators and Other Marvelous Contraptions", has some fantastic rayguns that you can order and have, if you can afford them. Sadly, I cannot. My price range is slightly lower, in the $10 - $30 range. Check out these pictures of homemade rayguns - quite awesome. Wikipedia has a whole slew of links having to do with rayguns including how the military is supposedly creating or already has created raygun like technology. More about the development of real rayguns can be found here at the Wired Blog Network. I'm actually not a gun person at all, but the rayguns I enjoy are not actually "real" and they are artsy, so I really like them.

Speaking of rockets, here is the latest on the Space Shuttle Endeavor from NASA's website. The name "Shuttle" just doesn't have the same coolness as the name "Spaceship" - a Ship that sails into Space. Shuttle sounds like something in a factory that moves product from one place to another.
Spaceships are typically introduced in science fiction movies and stories. Underground Online lists their choices for the top 11 spaceships from the movies.


Lastly, I have discovered that my blogs have not been up to par in relationship to spacing and some other set up factors. I think I finally figured out everything and corrected it. Subsequent blogs should be in good order. I also just discovered how to link words and titles, so now that part will also be better looking.

Toodle-doo Til Later!