Self Service.
So I’m out exploring in the Jeep and I’m allowing myself one fast food experience to go with the vegetables and fruit and bottles of water I have with me in the Jeep.
I’m in a McDonalds in western Indiana.
Like many McDonalds, they have installed self service kiosks. If you use the kiosk to process your order you grab your own cup, get a number tent for your table, and they bring the food to you.
That’s the easy part.
As a software developer it is very interesting to see how the general public interacts with the large order screens. The screens appear to be 36×18 in size. The order flow of the software works pretty well, but users are struggling. I observed customers stabbing, sighing, and struggling at or with the touch based interface, seemingly perplexed by questions such as “Cash or Card?” and “What size fries would you like to make a meal or would you just like a sandwich?”.
The software is generally good, with plenty of pictures, brief but complete instructions and a natural left-to-right progression of the workflow. But it seemed the customers that were struggling just didn’t want to take the time to read the prompts. You can’t put everything in a picture or icon, sometimes you just need to stop and read a prompt.
Here’s an interesting new twist in the experience: the counter person put all the trays of food on the same table, even if it was for a different customer. We just sorted it out amongst ourselves.
No one stole a fry from my tray. Believe me, I asked.
Oriented.
If Apple wants the iPad Pro to be taken seriously as a laptop replacement they should probably look at some of the smaller details in iOS. For example, displaying the Apple logo and update progress bar in the proper direction when one has a keyboard attached to the device.
To be fair, I don’t know if the latest iPad Pro corrects this issue, but this has always bothered me on iPads.
Lust.
I’ve lusted after this dancer since I first spotted him in a music video in 1990. His name is Paul Surety and at the time he was a ballet dancer, though here he’s a pop music dance instructor. Today he’s remixing instrumental trance music in Europe.
Bonus points if you can name the (obscure in the US) dance track from 1990 in which appeared with the singer in the music video.
I always thought he looked like a fifth Baldwin brother.
Lift.
Please are sometimes surprised when they find out I don’t like elevators. They say, but you fly small airplanes miles above the ground, yet you’re nervous in elevators? The truth of is, yes, I don’t like elevators. Actually, I don’t mind elevators as much as I don’t like confined spaces. If I can see outside, I’m fine.
We live on the fifth floor of our building. I walk the stairs a lot but I also take the elevator at least once a day. I’d enjoy the experience a little more if it had a window, but I know every nuance of how this elevator works so I don’t sweat it too much.
Now, on two occasions I’ve been riding along with a “belt slipped” or something and the elevator rapidly dropped a couple of feet. The emergency brake snaps on, the panel lights and indicators do a quick reset and the elevator slowly descends to the closest floor. Pressing the open door button will then open the door or you can press the floor you’re going to again and it’ll try to sort things out. I’ve read several maintenance manuals on this particular brand and make of elevator (Kone EcoDisc) and a month or so ago I watched numerous videos of elevator geeks going up and down in broken versions of these elevators. They didn’t panic, so why should I, right?
I just don’t do well in confined spaces if I don’t know my way out. If I can see beyond the space I’m good, even if it’s through a small crack in the door or something.
That’s what I like about airplanes, I can see out all over the place. The only time I’ve ever not enjoyed an airplane flight is when I ended up in a row without a window.
You’ll never find me on an airplane where they substitute the windows with large LED screens to simulate the outside.
By the way, tunnels don’t bother me; I can see my way through and I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I really want to drive through that 20+ mile tunnel in Europe.
In the meanwhile, I’ll keep riding up and down in our Kone Eco-Disc elevator to try to break this concern.
Enjoyment.
I couldn’t help but look around this evening and marvel as to how much I’m enjoying life in Chicago. I’m a very lucky man to live here.
President’s Day.
Today is President’s Day. Or is it Presidents’ Day? Perhaps Presidents Day?
I’m old enough to remember when we had Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday, but I think we had only Washington’s Birthday off. Later in my elementary years we started getting the whole week of Washington’s Birthday off; since that was usually the snowiest week of the winter. Sometimes, but not always.
Whatever we are calling this holiday this year (it varies from state to state), I still don’t feel compelled to buy a mattress, a car, or Turbo Tax. I’ve never understood why mattress companies go right crazy during this week in February. It’s not like anyone is going to want to haul a heavy mattress in and out of their home at this time of year. Is it because we’re working our way through the winter and we should have worn out the mattress by this time? I’m getting old, we don’t bounce the box spring as much.
Today was not a work holiday. Today was a normal day at work and it was fairly intense. I could probably handle it better if we had a new mattress but I still don’t feel the need to buy a new mattress.
I could go on a political tirade at this point of the blog entry but we don’t really have a president to talk about, so there’s no sense on going on a tirade. The country is pretty much on auto-pilot with occasional threats of the complete and utter destruction of democracy as we know it, but as long as La Marmalade can tweet the news channels are happy and the speed limit IQ folks feel vindicated.
I look forward to when we have a reason to celebrate Presidents’ Day again.
Rules.
It makes me crazy when folks departing the train use the door on the left. As one can see in this photo, it is clearly marked “Emergency exit only”. To the right of this Emergency Exit, you can see the revolving gate to allow for normal exit from the ‘L’ platform.
I have never witnessed anyone enduring an emergency of any sort when exiting through this door. The only emergency was one perceived by the person engaging in the passage through this reserved door, and that emergency was either laziness or haste.
Just go through the revolving gate!
It takes a great deal of energy for me to not confront folks on trivial matters such as this. It irks me more than it should. Not to pick on the train, but when folks are listening to music without headphones, I’m also bothered by this. The rules are simple. Do not listen to media devices without headphones, so as not to disturb other passengers on the train.
Keeping with the train theme, stand right, walk left on the escalator. Not difficult. This theme also applies to airports with moving walkways.
Trivial matters like this bother me more than they should. It’s as grating on my nerve as a quartz clock that clicks an irregular beat, or a fluorescent light that hums loudly. Before LED light bulbs became all the rage I would hear the incessant squeal of CFLs or Compact Fluorescent Lights. They disrupt my focus. Years ago I convinced all my office mates that the fluorescent lights in our new work area were way too bright so we removed around 75% of the bulbs. The removal of the high pitched hum or the incessant buzz did wonders for my sanity.
It takes so much of my energy to ignore and tune out the noise. It’s no wonder I fall asleep in less than three minutes at any given time or place.
The world is way too disorganized.
Cursing.
My father rarely cursed. My father was generally a man of few words, but when he did share verbal expressions of emotion he rarely swore. The closest things he would say that would come close to cursing was “Jumpin’ Mice” or “If it’s going to be a pain in the nuts…”, which the latter is probably more crass the cursing.
I followed his lead for the first two decades or so of my life and rarely swore. I can actually remember the first time I swore. It was 8th period gym class in 7th grade. I had dropped the watch from my grandfather’s estate between two lockers in the locker room and I was really bothered by it. When the teacher asked why I had put the watch in this precarious location I simply said to him, “I fucked up”. That was the first time I had swore to anyone other than myself and he instantly knew that I was really bothered by losing the watch left to me by my grandfather.
We successfully retrieved the watch.
It wasn’t until my radio days that I started a tendency of swearing like a sailor. It was the most effective way of communicating with the owners of the radio station because they were yelling and screaming most of the time. I can still remember my father’s wince when he asked why I wanted to leave that particular job and I replied, “because the owner is an asshole”. But the fact of the matter is, my language adapted to the situation because circumstances dictated that the only language they would take to heart was when someone yelled and swore at them. Then again I did witness the husband and wife team throwing a knife across the room during an argument, so swearing was probably the least of my problems at the time.
Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”. In a sane society, or at least in a society that doesn’t consider pajamas as an outfit to wear on an airliner, Ms. Obama’s declaration would be absolutely valid. But we live in a time and place where we are deeply, horribly divided. Truth, the validity of facts, and the elimination of a general moral compass has rapidly distorted our values. We are living in “the low”. To take the high road merely means to tell the truth now, and when bad actors no longer care about the truth, they’re sure not going to understand anything unless you lean hard on your intent, and that means dropping f-bombs to get people’s attention.
Look, I’m not a fan of talking like a sailor. I still have a microsecond of shock when David Rose drops a “fuck” on “Schitt’s Creek” or Patsy and Eddy drop all sorts of profanity of “Absolutely Fabulous”. But this is where society has taken us, and this is how our language is transforming to keep up with society.
A recent tweet passed by on my timeline criticizing the use of profanity on “The Circus” on Showtime. As host John Heilemann responded:
You've got to be fucking kidding. https://t.co/RiqG4OIco0
— John Heilemann (@jheil) February 17, 2019
My response? A super condensed version of what I’ve written in this blog post.
https://twitter.com/thatjpwing/status/1097219087137210370?s=21
I’m not going to walk into a church and start a “blue set” behind the mic at the pulpit. I’m not going to walk into a fancy restaurant and start swearing like a sailor nor am I going to begin a profanity laced litany in a room full of ladies (I still have an ounce of chivalry that I show once in a while).
But when it’s time to call the President of the United States a fucktard, I’m going to call him a fucktard.
Total Geek.
So I remember this song from when it first hit the clubs in 1986. I was out of high school, becoming comfortable with my sexuality, and really loving the whole dance club scene (that I could find at the time).
Seeing this video for the first time in a very long time, the geek in my can’t help but marvel at the amount of computing power that was necessary to generate the graphics in this music video. I’m pretty certain there was a Commodore Amiga involved.
Here’s Tia with “Boy Toy” from 1986.
