Babar is staying above me; I hear him stomping around. I was going to ask the front desk if they allowed animals in the rooms, but I’m not sure they’d get the joke. In most cases, heavy stompers don’t realize that they’re stomping, but what can I do about it? Going upstairs and confronting Babar would not be a good idea as I could get trampled.
Oakland Airport vs SFO
When I was booking my flight to attend WWDC, I could fly into either SFO or Oakland. I’m been flying into Oakland for a long time anytime I’ve come into San Francisco. Back in 1995, the first time I came to Macworld San Francisco, I flew into SFO because I didn’t know better; I then took a bus into town. Pretty much after that when I came into San Francisco myself (I came a number of times for work and we always took cabs in), I flew into Oakland because BART went to Oakland Airport via the AirBART shuttle and Southwest stopped flying into Oakland. My last trip to San Francisco, I got annoyed with Oakland because I didn’t have the exact fare for AirBART (now $3) and had to scramble to get change and the 15-20 bus trip to transfer to BART was a pain.
So, for this trip, I decided to try SFO because Southwest started flying there again and a BART station was built at the airport a number of years ago, connected via a tram. I must say that it was much smoother flying into SFO as I got off the plane, walked to the tram, took it to the BART station and made it right into San Francisco. In addition, it is slightly cheaper. I’m now a convert to SFO!
Misinformed Runner
In today’s local paper, a reader wrote that he was disappointed that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon was 26.5 miles and not the standard 26.2 miles according to his Forerunner 305. The letter annoyed me as the author is a bit clueless about marathons. I’ve thought about writing letters to the editor all the time, but finally pulled the trigger.
I read the letter from Joe Chavez about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and was very annoyed that the author thought he knew more about the marathon than the organizers. If he had done any research, he would have known that a marathon is measured as the absolute shortest distance along the course; this means taking all of the inside corners and not zig zagging on the course, like many runners have to do in order to pass slower runners. In addition, while the Forerunner 305 is an excellent training device, it is not 100% accurate. I ran the marathon in 2006 and 2007 and my Forerunner 305 also registered 26.5 miles; I know that I had to zig zag to avoid runners and definitely didn’t take all the inside corners.
Joe should have done a little more research before accusing the organizers of stretching out the marathon.
Scott Gruby
San Diego
I’m not sure if they’ll publish it, but it felt good to write it. If the author was around, I’d slap him upside the head.
Very cute, UPS
A few weeks ago, I opened our front door to check the mail and discovered a package under the door mat.
In case you’re wondering, a 10 pound box doesn’t fit under a door mat very well.
High cost food isn’t worth it
Last night, my wife and I went out to dinner at a nice restaurant. My sister had given me a gift card for my birthday, so we decided to use it. It was one of those restaurants where each entrée was over $25. Before we went, I kind of had a feeling I wouldn’t be impressed as I’m usually underwhelmed when we spend a lot of money on meals; the quality is only OK and the portions leave me very hungry. This place was no exception; to top it off, I had to fork over a nice chunk of change on top of the gift card to cover the meal.
Why do restaurants think they can charge so much and deliver so little value? There is one nice restaurant we go to where the portions aren’t that big, but the food is excellent. Maybe I just expect a good value for my meals.
Librarians of the future (or is it now current?)
Sometime between 1995 and 1998 (I can’t remember when), I went with my parents to a public meeting about a new main library. At that time, I thought it was a waste to have a huge main library as a majority of the city lives nowhere near downtown. While there are now more people living in downtown, the focus, in my opinion, should be to improve the branch libraries that will benefit many more people. All these years later, I still believe the same thing; spending millions of dollars on something that most people won’t use is a waste. How about increasing the hours that the branch libraries are open instead of a main library? Oh and the new main library still isn’t built; projected completion is 2011.
In any case, that’s not what this entry is about. Way back then, I told my parents that I thought the librarians of the future would be professional web surfers. While anyone can search for information, a professional is needed to:
- Use appropriate keywords to quickly find relevant information.
- Ascertain which results are from reputable sources (someone’s post on a forum is unlikely to be considered as an appropriate source for facts).
- Distill the potentially large number of search results into a usable form.
In some cases traditional librarians are still needed, such as the case for children’s librarians, but research librarians seem like they should deal with completely electronics resources as that is the most efficient way to find information (if you know where to look).
Poorly designed book
I read to our son every night and recently, my wife pulled out a book called Five Shiny Stars. One day she told me it played music (there was a tag on the front of the book indicating it did), but I never heard it. So lately I’ve thought it was broken, so I banged the book against my head and magically it started playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. Last night as I was putting Aiden to bed and reading the book, the son started playing when I turned to the last page (like it is supposed to do) without me banging my head against it. What was different about last night? It was still light outside when we put him to sleep and the sun was sneaking past the curtains. I looked closer at the book and show that there was a photo cell which triggers the song to start. This has to be the stupidest way to trigger music on a book that talks about going to sleep! Normally people read books about going to sleep when it is dark. I would have expected there to be a pressure type trigger to turn on the song.
Working multiple jobs
Whenever I hear that someone has to work multiple jobs in order to get by, my heart goes out to him (or her). These people work hard and nothing I do could ever compare to it. Sometimes I say that I work multiple jobs as I work on a number of different projects at once. While my mind works all the time (I’m currently working on 3-4 different projects right now), I have no idea what it would be like to physically work multiple jobs; I have enough trouble working 8 hours a day. I’m completely exhausted at the end of a day. I’d like to think that there is a better way for people to earn enough to live, unfortunately for many people that are unskilled or don’t have skills that are in high demand, there is no other way.
My power to offend and being a Mac snob
My comments in this blog seem to offend some. For better or for worse, I speak what is on my mind. It sometimes gets me in trouble, but most of the time helps me get stuff off my mind. I will admit that I’m a Mac snob and want applications to have a Mac user interface; I don’t want some cross platform UI (if the app works well and the engine or behinds the scenes stuff is cross platform, that’s fine).I received email about a recent post where I basically said that the app’s UI was crap. I couldn’t get past the UI to actually use the app, so it could be a fine app, but the UI was just awful. For me, pretty much anything done in REALBasic that isn’t tuned to the Mac is not a Mac app. Should the author be offended? Sure, he has the right to be offended if he wants. I stand by what I said about the UI; I like using a Mac and if I wanted to use Windows, I’d accept half baked user interfaces and put up with what is shoved in my face. Mac apps are just more elegant and have more polish.
Paying for being stupid
The recent measles outbreak here in San Diego could easily have been prevented if the parents of the original infected child had vaccinated that child. However, the parents exercised their right to not vaccinate. Some parents believe that the mercury in vaccines leads to autism; the problem with this theory is that vaccines haven’t had mercury (thimerosal) in them for years. At the same rate, autism rates have gone up, so it would lead any reasonable person to conclude that the vaccines (at least mercury in them) has nothing to do with autism.
While the parents exercised their right, their negligence (in my opinion) caused others to become infected (infants under 1 year can’t be vaccinated for measles). I think that these people should pay for the medical costs of all those infected and should pay everyone for being inconvenienced. My wife has had to change plans because our son can’t be vaccinated (he’s 9 month old). These parents’ choice has caused people all over San Diego to worry about something that I hadn’t heard of in years.
Please vaccinate your children as your decision should not put my child at risk. If you choose not to vaccinate your children, please never come out of your house.