Worst Purchases of 2011

These days, when the cost of just about everything seems to increase faster than our annual raises are able to cover, it really stings when we invest time and ever-more-precious money into a product or service that falls short of expectations. These four things I bought in 2011 didn't just fall short; they did a full-on Chevy Chase faceplant into failure. I'm calling them out here to highlight the very specific mistakes these manufacturers and service providers made, and to also recommend some alternatives that worked out for us in the end.

HP Photosmart e-Station C510a

Our requirements for a replacement for our previous HP printer were pretty straightforward:

• We wanted it to have wireless support, so we didn't have to leave a computer powered on 24/7 for other PCs in the house to print on it.
• It needed to scan and make copies.

Of course, it should also print- but we just sort of took it for granted that a printer would do that. Who would ever make a printer that wouldn't print?

The thing is, the HP software required to send print jobs from the various PCs in the home to the printer sucks. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it can't find the printer, and sometimes your print jobs just vanish into the aether. It's quite possible that the directions to a Cub Scout meeting that my wife repeatedly attempted to print landed on the output tray of some hapless HP owner in Namibia. We will never know.

Something that seemed neat at first but turned out to be awful is the printer's touch-screen control panel (irritatingly called the "Zeen"), which is actually a detachable Android tablet. It's a thick, sluggish, artificially crippled Android tablet, but at least you can (slowly) browse the web from the toilet with it. (As long as you don't need Flash.) Problem is, the tablet failed at its primary job of operating the printer. Half the time it didn't realize it was docked on the printer. The rest of the time it openly defied any of my wife's attempts to make it do anything related to printing, scanning, or copying. Oh, and every couple of weeks it randomly lost all of its settings, requiring me to run through the setup wizard in order to make the printer "work."

What we bought instead
The Canon Pixma MX882 Wireless Office All-in-One Inkjet Printer. This thing does everything the HP claims to, without requiring you to reboot your computer or re-run initial setup procedures every time you need to use it. The support software is a little clunky, but it works.

Safe Eyes

My son and daughter are blossoming nerds, and the Internet is a vital and regular part of their lives. Unfortunately the Internet is dangerous for kids anyone with eyes, so we needed a way to give our kids access to the sites and programs they needed while completely blocking out the rest of the web. Safe Eyes seemed to do the trick at first. We set up a whitelist (where you explicitly specify which sites the kids are allowed to access) and I used a network sniffer to determine which sites the kids' online games (Minecraft, Roblox, Toontown Online, and Lego Universe) needed to access.

Wait... why in the hell did I have to set up a network sniffer? How many parents even know what a network sniffer is? Well, funny thing- Safe Eyes only seems to understand traditional browser traffic. It doesn't quite know what to make of the proprietary protocols that games tend to use, so it just quietly blocks them. Problem is, it doesn't record which sites it's blocking when this happens like it would if you attempted to browse to a blocked website in Firefox. And there's no way to whitelist at the application level; in other words, you can't tell Safe Eyes "never block traffic from this program." (You might find a couple of technical articles explaining that this is possible, but those articles are wrong. You can only block applications in Safe Eyes, not allow them.)

Unfortunately, online games are dynamic; they can add new servers and change content providers and file hosts in the background any time you log in. Every couple of weeks one or more of the kids' games would break again, and I'd have to set up the sniffer and figure out which new sites we needed to add to the whitelist.

But there was another problem! Since Safe Eyes doesn't "get" online games, if a kid played a game for more than 15 minutes, Safe Eyes would mistakenly assume that no one was using the Internet and quietly log out, blocking ALL Internet access on that PC. This is not a documented feature, and there is no way to keep Safe Eyes from doing it. (Actually, I wrote a little program that randomly connects to various web sites in the background to trick Safe Eyes into thinking someone was using the Internet. Again, how many other parents would be able to do this, and why should they have to anyway?) It really screws up games, too; my son would just spontaneously lose his connection in the middle of a quest, and have to quit his game, sign back in to Safe Eyes, and log in to the game again, typically losing progress in the process.

Oh, their support sucks too. Email support never wrote back to me the two times I contacted them, their overseas phone rep had zero idea what he was talking about, and there is no forum for customers to help each other.

What we bought instead
NetNanny does everything Safe Eyes does, in addition to allowing you to explicitly whitelist applications. All of the kids' games simply work. It also doesn't time out in the middle of gameplay. I had a problem the first time I installed it on one of the computers (it accidentally blocked all Internet access!), but I cleaned up the system and managed to get it to work right on the second install. Their web site is pretty dodgy (even moreso now, after a recent redesign), but the product mostly works. I'm trying to figure out a problem that seems to prevent my son from running a Minecraft server accessible only on our local network, but that's a low-priority issue. There is (or at least was?) an official support forum, but I'm having trouble getting to it on their new site. I'm watching you, NetNanny. Don't let me down!

Sony MDR-NC 40 Noise Canceling Headphones

Here's an electronics marketing protip: If a major selling point of your product is part of the thing's name ("NC," "Noise Canceling"), the product should have that feature. Even if it does a crappy job of it, the product should at least try to do what it's named for, yeah? These headphones don't.

I needed a pair of noise cancelers for when I watch my iPod at the gym. All those treadmills make it mighty hard to hear Dexter Morgan mumbling his voiceovers. These headphones are comfortable and they sound all right for consumer-grade 'phones, but the only ambient noise they block is accidental, due to the fact that the pads cover your ears- not because of any fancy circuitry. There's a little module in the middle of the headphone cable (which is a real annoyance for something you're using at the gym) that houses a battery which seems to serve the sole purpose of illuminating a red LED.

Other complaints: The headphones feel flimsy; all of the joints have more wiggle than seems necessary. They are supposed to collapse small enough to fit into this cute leather pouch they come with, but my pair doesn't fold all the way in the center, so I have to forcibly jam the things into the pouch to zip it up.

What I bought instead
The Bose QuietComfort 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones are pricey but they do exactly what you expect them to. When you flip the switch (which is on the right earpiece instead of a stupid dongle on the cable) the sounds of what's going on around you quickly fade into the background. They also feel great and so far have demonstrated pretty good battery life. Note that these headphones don't work at all without the battery, so you'll want to keep some AAAs on hand.

I also own a pair of Audio Technica ATH-ANC7B Active Noise-Cancelling Closed-Back Headphones, which I use at work (long story). They're half the price of the Bose, but honestly just as good-sounding- and they at least work a little bit when the battery runs out (but they sound much better when powered).

HTC Status

The Status is AT&T's version of the HTC Chacha. It appealed to us because we were total smart phone n00bs who'd finally outgrown our ancient flip-phones, but were apprehensive about these new-fangled touch screens. We wanted real physical buttons for texting and dialing, and the Status's Facebook integration was desirable.

Reviews I'd read before selecting the phone mentioned that the 150MB internal storage was pretty small, but I figured that wouldn't be an issue since I knew AT&T included a 2GB SD card with the phone. We could just move stuff off to the SD card as needed or uninstall unnecessary apps to free up space, right? Right???

Well of course, now we know better. AT&T locks the phone down so you can't move or uninstall any of the bundled apps. You basically only have about 40MB total for downloaded apps and personal data. After about 3 weeks of use my phone stopped downloading calendar updates, email, or Facebook statuses. Forcing sync never seemed to do anything. Also, my phone kept telling me I was out of room... but it wouldn't let me do anything about it! A couple weeks after our 30-day exchange window ran out with AT&T I spent a week learning how to root ("jailbreak," unlock) my phone so I could delete some of the things I knew I would never need. That worked at first, but rooting had unexpected consequences: If I turned off the phone and then plugged it in to charge, the phone wouldn't power up again unless I opened it up and removed the battery (which is a non-trivial task on this phone with its smooth, cornerless body). Also, it no longer displayed the battery charging screen when in standby, and the keyboard layout was permanently messed up- I had to use the Symbols screen to type @ signs or question marks. And then the phone started telling me I was out of space again.

Also, the Netflix support sucked; the audio was hopelessly out of sync with the video, even on a WiFi connection. Seriously, fuck this phone.

What we got instead
Since we were no longer eligible for subsidized phones from AT&T, I did serious homework when researching our next phones, because this time we were going to be paying full price. We ended up choosing the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G Android Phone. Aside from the power and volume controls, it doesn't have any physical buttons, but boy do I ever love this phone. It's fast, refined, and it just plain works. Actually dialing the phone is a bit easier on this than on the Status, because the virtual keys are nice and fingertip-sized, whereas the teeny buttons on the status were hard to use in situations where you had to type numbers for automated phone menus. Oh it also has literally 78 times more internal storage than the HTC Status. Our phones are specifically the SGH-I777- they actually look just like the newer Galaxy S II Skyrocket, but lack that phone's faster processor and LTE support.

Here's hoping 2012 treats us better.

Home Is Where the Hot Is

In the late Sixties, my parents moved to Guam, the southernmost of the Mariana Islands, to teach local children in English-speaking schools. They worked under a program that brought educators from the mainland to this tropical United States territory, and remained there for several years- until just a few days after I was born. This summer, my parents kept a long-standing promise to take me back to my birthplace, showing me the island where their young marriage was forged.

The island is remarkably remote, closer to the Philippines and Papua New Guinea than to any part of the United States. Guam’s indigenous people, the Chamorros, thrived on the island for nearly 4,000 years before Magellan discovered the place in the 1500s, at which point their fortunes would change. The Spanish conquered and converted the local population for hundreds of years until losing the island to the United States after the Spanish-American War. The Japanese captured the island mere hours after the raid of Pearl Harbor, committing unspeakable atrocities against the Chamorros. Three years later, the United States bombed the shit out of the island, ultimately winning it back from its Axis foes and making Guam a remote stronghold for both the Air Force and Navy; a military presence deep in the Pacific.

While Guam’s people were exploited and exterminated by other nations, its wildlife was ravaged by invasive species, both plant and animal. The only birds you’re likely to see on the island now are sparrows, stowaways from visiting ships long forgotten. The indigenous birds were almost completely wiped out by the brown tree snake, another invader from foreign lands- so new to the island that the local species had no instinctive fear of the serpent. Almost gone as well is the once prolific fanihi, or Mariana fruit bat- formerly a local delicacy, but now a protected species.

Wondering why Man and Nature should have all the fun, the Elements jump in every now and then, thrashing the island with typhoons that destroy homes and cripple businesses, scaring away foreign investors, leaving the modern landscape an almost post-apocalyptic mess of abandoned hotels, storefronts, and unfinished construction sites.

So basically, God has a grudge against Guam. And yet the island survives. The Chamorro people are gradually rediscovering their historical identity after centuries of cultural and genetic dilution. The United States government is slowly opening up more land for civilian use. And the tourism industry still manages to survive, almost exclusively catering to young Japanese and Korean couples wishing to wed on an erstwhile tropical paradise.

Guam is the home I never knew. Join me now, as I endeavor to explore this humid little pile of coral in the sea.

Day 1

We stayed at the posh, modern Westin Resort on Tumon Bay. Like all other hotels in the area, the Westin has a wedding chapel, and it hosted up to six Japanese weddings a day while we were there. I could see three other wedding chapels from my balcony, although two belonged to a resort which has been abandoned for some time and is now only populated by squatters.

In response to an article in the Pacific Daily News about our arrival (long story), Guam’s Governor, Eddie Calvo (R) invited us to his offices for a quick visit. He treated us to lunch at a “Chamorro fusion” restaurant, and also to a visit (a couple of days later) to the Fish Eye Marine Park nearby, where we saw some aquatic wildlife and enjoyed a dinner show.

After lunch with one of the governor’s cabinet members, we visited the Guam National Wildlife Refuge at Ritidian Point, were we saw a cave that once housed Chamorros thousands of years ago. It was eerie to be in the middle of the jungle and not hear anything but wind, the ocean, and the occasional distant car.

Before retiring for the night, we visited the Guam K-mart for supplies. It was huge, and a surprisingly popular tourist attraction.

Day 2

On the next day we met up with the author of the Daily News article for a tour of Pagat Cave and the site of an ancient Chamorro village in the jungle. Mom almost didn’t make it back. Later that night we dined a Kinney’s in Agana, where the food was all right, but the view was amazing. I really cannot emphasize how hot it felt at times during the trip- the short daily rains were pleasant, but as soon as the rain stopped falling, the sun would steam it all away, leaving the air thick with humidity. Not optimal mountain climbing conditions.

Day 3

We met Filamore Palomo Alcon, a fascinating artist, at his establishment, the Guam Gallery of Art.

In the evening we visited the Fish Eye Marine Park observatory, an underwater structure positioned in a so-called “bomb hole” in the ocean, where you can view the local fish in their natural environment. (Note: The bomb hole wasn’t created by a bomb, although many locals seem to believe that. It’s really an underwater sinkhole.)

After admiring the fish, we went across to the restaurant to eat some of them and enjoy a “Polynesian Dinner Show.” Guam is actually part of Micronesia and there’s no evidence that the ancient Chamorros even knew about fire- much less juggled flaming torches- until the Spaniards arrived. But it was still a good show.

Day 4

We took a drive around the island, spending most of the time on the southern and eastern coasts, where the mountainous landscape has kept these areas of the island mostly untouched and unpopulated and beautiful. Mom got to ride a carabao and we ate at a place called Jeff's Pirates Cove, which is definitely the most happening location on that entire side of the island.

Day 5

We explored the Latte Stone Park in downtown Hagatna, Guam. The Chamorros used these stones to support their houses long ago. The park is also the site of some caves that Japanese forces commanded Chamorro and Korean slaves to build during World War II. The caves are vast and completely open to the public, surprisingly enough, but we didn’t have flashlights, so only ventured as far in as sunlight would allow.

Mom and Dad got their Masters degrees in Education at the University of Guam before having me. While exploring the campus we encountered a large pack of “boonie dogs.” In Guam, the word “boonie” refers to anything derelict or abandoned. As well as dogs you can find boonie cats and severely rusted boonie cars scattered all over the island. The word derives from the Tagalog (the language of the Philippines) word, “bundok,” meaning mountain, and implying a place that is far from civilization. You’ve probably already realized it’s where we get the word “boondocks.”

We then visited Two Lovers Point, perhaps the most famous legendary landmark on the island. It is the site where the mythical lovers jumped off a steep cliff into the waiting sea, to escape their parents. It is a sort of Romeo and Juliet story that involves the unwelcome union of a Spanish and Chamorro family, and to me represents the sad history between those cultures on the island.

While on the island we also found the first school where Mom and Dad taught, as well as the houses where they lived- including my first home. All the buildings are still standing, although the two apartment buildings would likely be condemned today by Mainland standards. The hospital building is apparently new, but operates at the same site, its once beautiful view now permanently marred by four huge unfinished apartment buildings that were abandoned about halfway through construction.

Outtakes

Here's some stuff I couldn't manage to work in elsewhere. The city of Tumon, where we stayed, is an odd mix of high-end, expensive merchants and seedy Asian massage parlors. The tourism economy is so focused on international visitors that some stores don't even have any English on their signs or windows; only Japanese. There are places with names I wish had been in Japanese (a strip club named The G-spot and a billiards hall called Ball Scratchers), and a number of hilarious looking "gun clubs" that seemed to cater to foreign tourists' warped views of American history.

Worst Impressions

“Friggen lightweight,” I sneer silently as the skinny blonde with the loud pants half-assedly plods on the elliptical machine, a hot-pink smartphone pressed to her cheek. Eight minutes later she’s gone, and my geek’s mind involuntarily calculates exactly how few calories she just burned and how infinitesimally little her abbreviated romp on the machine just affected her fitness. My eyes roll, but I’m not surprised. I’m never on the cardio floor for fewer than sixty-five minutes, and everyone who’s there when I first arrive has left by the time I step off the treadmill. Hell, anyone who gets there within half an hour of my starting will have vanished before I’m done. I arrive first and leave last.

Forty minutes later I’ve made a quick trip to the locker room to stow the iPod, refill the water bottle, and retrieve my log book and stopwatch. I make my way over to the dumbbell corner and am startled to find The Blonde standing there, facing the window. My surprise quickly boils to annoyance when I spy a small pile of equipment at her feet, including the dumbbells- my dumbbells- I always use during my routine: The 10-pound polygonals; the ones that don’t roll away when you’re supporting yourself on them. I shoot her with some hollow-point eye bullets before grumbling and begrudgingly yanking the next-heaviest weights from the rack.

While I’m scribbling down my workout plan in the log book, Blondie pulls a 2-foot-high stool from the wall and begins hopping sideways onto the thing, back and forth- with perfect form- over and over again. It doesn’t sound like much, perhaps, but the average person would be lucky to do five of these things (if any) without beginning to flail like an idiot. I harrumph and begin with a set of goblet squats.

A while later I’m doing some mountain climbers and wondering, as my face burns and the blood pressure in my head throbs to a migrane-level crescendo, if this is what it feels like to be trapped in a microwave oven before your skull explodes. I hear a delicate feminine grunt to my left and glance over to see The Blonde doing pushups with her feet suspended from an overhead bar. She’s pushing her full body weight, her face expressionless and calm. It occurs to me that her few minutes on the elliptical had been a warm-up, whereas half the people who come here would consider that the main event. Hell, she probably sleeps on a treadmill, I’m thinking.

A few minutes on and I’m working through my second set, groaning through some increasingly laborious dumbbell rows when behind me I hear a racket not dissimilar to what Ebeneezer Scrooge must have heard when Jacob Marley first shuffled into that dark bedroom. I peek around to spy That Damned Blonde dragging a hundred and fifty pounds behind her on a chain. “Who ARE you?” I ask telepathically.

I’m soon struggling through my second round of T-pushups and my muscles are inching toward failure. “Please let me just finish out this minute,” I beg my shoulders, and they grant me just enough juice to reach the 59-second mark, at which point I crumple to the floor and fumble for the stopwatch. My water bottle empty, my shirt towel-wet with sweat, I replace my weights and collect my things. And for the first time since I’ve been doing this I am the last to enter and the first to leave.

Forgive me, Aryan she-hulk of the Northwest- for I knew not your prowess.

Fast & Fuchsia

The Pinewood Derby is an annual Scouting tradition where Cub Scouts of all ages race wooden cars that their dads built. I asked my son what he thought the theme of his car should be, offering LEGO, Mario, or Sonic the Hedgehog as suggestions. He scrunched his brow, pondering the question seriously before smiling and delivering his verdict: "Kirby!"

Uh oh, I thought. "Kirby, huh? So... what color should the car be?" But I already knew the answer. He didn't even have to think about it before responding: "Pink!"

My boy wanted a pink car. A pink car that we were going to have to race in front of dozens of other boys and dads. I sighed and nodded, steeling myself in the conviction that I would build my son the most bad-ass pink pinewood derby car possible, given my complete lack of knowledge in the areas of woodworking, painting, and aerodynamics. Behold:

Front view. Kirby drives while a terrified Mario rides shotgun.

Rear view. Oh lawd, iz dat sum Sonic the Hedgehog?

After buying all the necessary tools and deciding on an automotive design, I traced the official Cub Scouts of America car template on our official Cub Scouts of America block of wood (seriously), and began to saw. Miraculously, after about half an hour of back-wrist-and-shoulder-punishing work I had a piece of wood that more or less approximated the template design, with only a small number of giant, disfiguring gashes. Using the largest-grain sandpaper I could find in the garage (I think they actually just stuck some fly paper in a bed of pebbles) I was able to scrub away many of the saw-related imperfections. This took a much longer time than the sawing did, but while my son was nowhere to be found during the entire process (ah, the sweet siren song of the Xbox), my craft-crazy 4-year-old daughter was at my side for the whole ordeal, in rapt attention at every step. She even expressed an interest in having her own car, so I gave her a car-shaped piece of wood I had cut away from my pinewood block. She then grabbed some sandpaper and worked alongside me.

Her car. She sanded, painted, and detailed it herself, and then glitter-glued some button wheels on with Mom's help.

Later that night, I applied five coats of pink, and let it dry overnight. I spent the next two nights designing custom decals for the car. I wanted to put Kirby, Mario and Sonic in the car, and add some sporty detailing. Charlotte suggested we also number the car, to make it look more official. I chose the number 64, in honor of Nintendo systems past. The decal work was fun but slow, as I have only recently begun teaching myself how to use Photoshop for more than just putting misspelled captions on photographs of cats.

I collected a few existing pictures of each character to use as source material for my own designs. After drawing the windshield and rear window of the car, I placed the source photos "behind" the window borders and used them to build my paths; the basic shapes that make up each character. Next I filled in and outlined the paths, as needed. Each character took about 2 hours to illustrate. Mario was the most difficult, but also turned out the best. (Although I was proud of the little "blushes" on Kirby's cheeks... took me a while to figure out how to do that.)

The following picture shows some different stages in the development of Mario and Kirby. I used a couple dozen Photoshop "layers" to compose this image, in a process similar to how animators compose frames in hand-drawn cartoons.

After completing and printing out the decals, I cut them out and glued them to the car. I also "sealed" the car by putting a couple coats of "ModPodge" on it. This actually resulted in some minor streaking and warping of some of the decals, but this thankfully isn't noticeable when viewed from a distance. I had to coat it with something to make sure the decals stayed on.

On the final night, I affixed the axles and wheels. Aligning the wheels turned out to be the most difficult part of the project- and could have been done better by someone who knew what the hell he was doing- but at least the car seems to roll in a straight line. More or less.

Soon we will turn the car over to the Scouts for inspection and weigh-in, to ensure it meets Cub Scout regulations, then later this week we will race it. The Kirby car will almost certainly not be the fastest one on the track this weekend, but in my boy's eyes, at least, it will be the coolest.

Walnut Hills Class of 1989: Where Are They Now?

After making some interesting discoveries while flipping through the 1989 Class Directory that was distributed at my 20-year high school reunion, I wanted to visualize the WHHS Diaspora; to actually see where everyone ended up. I used the information provided in the directory to pinpoint last-known residence of each alum who provided contact information (380 in all). The result is an interactive map where you can see who is located in each city. Important: The map does not show people's actual addresses and is not linked with any contact information; it just associates a name with a city.

Click the picture of the map below to go to the actual interactive map. (Note: It might take 30 seconds or so before all the placemarkers load up.) The placemarkers are colored according to how many students from our class are located in a given city:

• Red - 1 student
• Yellow - 2-5 students
• Green - 6-10 students
• Blue - 11 or more students

In fact, there's only one city with more than 10 former classmates, and that is, of course, Cincinnati, with an impressive 161 folks still taking up residence there. The next most populated city is Brooklyn, with 8 of our classmates. I also posted a worksheet of the raw data I used. It's basically the same as from the directory, with some minor corrections.

To move the map, click and drag it. To zoom in and out, use your mousewheel. Click a placemarker to see who lives there.

San Francisco Travel Diary

I always tend to find any given business trip to be a Barton Fink-esque experience. Whenever I'm away from home, weirdness just seems to envelop me. Here are some notes from my most recent business trip to San Francisco, where I demonstrated some new features I've added to our Intel® My WiFi Technology product.

• When the clerk at the car rental place asks if I need directions to the hotel, I proudly respond that I don't, because I've brought my very own GPS. She acts impressed, so prepared and worldly am I. In the car I tell the GPS to guide me to the hotel, whose address I had uploaded into the unit the previous night. (So. Goddam. Prepared.) I confidently follow the calming, feminine electronic voice into the bowels of San Francisco. After about 20 minutes, just as the GPS announces, "You have reached your destination!" a pod of meth addicts shuffles zombie-like across the street in front of my car. I look around and notice that nearly every car parked along either side of the road is occupied by a solitary, menacing driver in a hoodie or a fitted cap, staring silently into nothingness. I also determine that my hotel, the 38-story San Francisco Westin, is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I could have used those directions after all.


• I locate the hotel several miles away (apparently it's the other 50 Third Street in town). The only on-site parking the hotel offers is $50-a-day valet, so I find an underground parking garage nearby and walk my luggage around the block to the hotel lobby. On the way I am approached by at least three panhandlers who make direct eye contact and demand, simply, "Yo, gimme some money." I am aghast at their poor marketing skills. Not one of them attempts to weave a sympathy-building tale, and there's not a whimsical or heartbreaking hand-scrawled cardboard sign in sight. Well, except for the guy with the big sign that says, "MY WIFE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED!!!" but I'm not sure what's going on there.


• I check into the hotel and find my room to be unbearably hot. The thermostat indicates the current room temperature to be 72 degrees, but the fact that I'm drenched in sweat wearing nothing but a t-shirt and boxers would contraindicate that assertion. I angrily stab the down-arrow button until it reaches a target temperature of 62 degrees. Doing so makes no difference at all, and I consider my theory that hotel thermostats are really just placebos to be confirmed.


• After unpacking I retire to the bathroom for a scalding hot shower. The tub fills with water even though the plug is up. The next day, when I desire a bath, I discover that the Westin has furnished my bathroom with a tub that in fact defies physics. It leaks when it's supposed to fill and fills when it's supposed to drain. I find that removing the plug from the drain completely allows me to finish my bath at my own pace.


• Gary and Roald have lunch at a restaurant across the street from the conference center one day. While they are dining, a panhandler comes in off the street and interrupts people at every table in the restaurant, asking for money. Roald, who lives in the city, explains that business owners are virtually helpless to prevent this sort of thing. I'm sure that's really great for business.


• The bathrooms at the conference center are disgusting. Every toilet seat is drenched with urine, and not a single toilet I encounter has been flushed before my arrival. Every person attending this conference is either an engineer or a physicist who has mastered the electron but apparently cannot operate either a penis or a commode.


• As I'm walking back toward the hotel after a day at the conference center, a nicely-dressed man bolts past me at a frenzied pace. At first I think it's because he's trying to catch the bus, but he just runs past the bus and then disappears around a corner. I stop at a 7-Eleven to purchase my dinner of snack chips and sports drink. Just as the cashier hands me the receipt, the nicely-dressed man I'd seen before materializes to my left, screaming, "WATER! WATER!" The vietnamese cashier recoils in terror, squealing, "WHAT YOU WANT? WHAT YOU WANT?" until Nicely-Dressed Man dashes back out of the store and vanishes into the night.


• The first couple nights at the hotel, I wonder why so many military jets keep wooshing over the place. The room shakes a little whenever they do it, and it seems to happen every few minutes. It makes me worry that there's some kind of national security issue going on that the public doesn't know about yet. On the third day I discover that the only thing between my room and the elevators is a linen closet, and I realize that it wasn't military jets at all I'd been hearing all this time. Somehow this revelation makes the constant rumbling and wooshing more annoying by a factor of about 10.


• One morning, while setting the room service tray out in the hallway, the door to my room accidentally locks behind me. I am embarrassed when I take the 32-story trip down to the lobby to request another key. I am more embarrassed when I take the 32-story ride back up only to discover that my wallet- and thus my key- has been in my pocket the entire time.


• One night on my way back to the hotel from the conference, a hooded man bearing more than a passing resemblence to George Clinton glares at me and shouts, "LAPTOP!!!" I am not impressed with his deductive powers- it's pretty much a given that a guy shuffling around San Francisco with an Intel shirt and a backpack is concealing a laptop somewhere on his person. My hooded friend actually has no idea how right he is, however, for at that moment, my backpack is stuffed with not one but three laptops and their respective power supplies and accessories. In fact I am so top-heavy at the moment that if he had just tapped my chest with his pinky I'd have toppled onto my back, unable to right myself, much like a flipped turtle.


• The conference is at once exciting and demoralizing. Almost without exception evey person I speak to about our WiFi technology is impressed and excited by what we've done, and wants to know when it will be available to consumers. The thing is, the technology actually debuted on the market nine months ago and is installed on tens of millions of computers. Nobody knows it's there, and nobody understands what it does until I demonstrate it to them. I discuss my observations with our Marketing team, and their experiences corroborate my own. The Marketing guys also believe they know why no one knows this feature exists: "Shitty marketing."


• This conference has taught me three things: 1. Our product is cooler than I thought it was, even if no one knows it exists. 2. I'm pretty good with strangers in this kind of setting; 1-on-1, conversation with a purpose. 3. My body was simply not designed to stand for hours at a time. Even after the first day my feet and calves ache from overuse. Over the course of the week I am consoled to find that all of my peers are having the same problems. Each night we limp home like a band of retirees escaping from the assisted living center.


• There are no chairs on the showroom floor, nor is there any appropriate seating anywhere else in the city-block-sized conference hall. There are some weird cushiony cubes on the 3rd level, but they are unstable and offer no back support. I am overjoyed when I discover some benches on Level 2, but I quickly learn why no one is sitting on them. They are constructed of brushed aluminum, and built in just such a way that if you attempt to relax in them you slowly slide out of the bench and, ultimately onto the floor. The benches were intentionally designed to keep you from sitting on them. This reminds me of the terrible cookies my grandmother always bought to fill her cookie jar. When my dad and his siblings asked Mama why she always got such wretched cookies, she responded matter-of-factly, "Well, if I got good ones you'd eat them." The Moscone Center in San Francisco has shitty benches because if they had good ones you'd sit on them.


• There is a booth at the showcase demonstrating a technology for computer-assisted driving. They have a demo where you can sit in a carseat and drive a simulator with a realistic steering wheel. I spend a lot of time at this booth, and I bring several of my peers along with me for repeated test runs. The folks running the booth believe we're there because we're interested in forming a technical partnership with their company, but really we're only at the booth because the simulator's the closest thing to comfortable seating in the entire convention center.


• On my repeated treks between the hotel and the conference hall I observe dozens of people avoiding eye contact with the panhandlers and ignoring their demands for spare change. I believe it's rude to ignore people, so whenever someone accosts me for donations, I look him directly in the eye, shake my head sympathetically, and reply, "No." I do this about three times, and after each encounter I hear the men I've turned down emit low, bestial growls; ticking time-bombs of rage. Apparently it's more acceptable to simply be ignored than being unequivacally, flatly rejected. Like the rest of San Francisco, I decide to pretend that these guys are simply not there.


• It's my second-to-last day in the city and I'm walking back to my hotel for a break between showcases. While I'm halfway across 4th street, a gray-haired woman walking beside me in the crosswalk turns toward me and screams, "You want to make fun of me?" and pulls up her green sweater to reveal her naked, deflated bosoms. She only flashes me for about two seconds, but it is long enough for me to notice that her breasts resemble half-full sacks of oatmeal. I don't, in fact, want to make fun of her- truth be told, I hadn't even noticed she was there until she began screaming at me. But since she asks, I reply, "Nice mudflaps, grandma," although I am smart enough not to utter these words aloud. The strangest thing about this unprovoked display of rage and sweater meats is that, unlike the raving street maniacs crowding the streets of San Francisco who LOOK like they'd do this sort of thing, this woman appears completely "normal." She looks like somebody's grandma. I've seen somebody's grandma's breasts.


• My final day in the city is uneventful, as is the plane ride home, but things become awkward once we land in Portland. I have lost some weight over the past two months and the pair of boxers I'm wearing at the moment are probably a couple of sizes too large. As I head toward Baggage Claim I can feel the boxers slinking down my cheeks and dipping into my pantlegs, finally draping over the inner crotch of my jeans. While the sensation of my sausage swinging freely in my jeans is not altogether unpleasant, it is novel and I feel naked. I don't have a chance to address the matter until the airport shuttle deposits me back in the Economy lot. I sneak between a couple of SUVs and discover that my boxers have disappeared so deep into my pantlegs that I have to unbuckle and unzip my pants just to retrieve them. I hope there are no security cameras aimed in my direction as I make things right, and then resolve to retire this particular pair when I get back home.

Independence Night

The Fourth of July is unique among USA holidays in that it does not stem from ancient pagan tradition, has limited commercial appeal, and the only requirements for participation are that you be American, drunk, and eager to blow things up. We celebrated the occasion this year by traveling to the far reaches of our driveway and lighting firecrackers in the street with our friends, Cindy and James.

Charlotte and James had both gotten giant party packs of fireworks, which were probably as good as you could get, considering the lame selection of recreational explosives legally available in Oregon. If you've ever wondered whether states that outlaw the purchase of large fireworks for Independence Day are somehow less patriotic than states who allow it, well the answer is yes- they absolutely are.

The pack that we got included two boxes labeled, "Rising Flag," and featured an image of the American flag waving majestically amid a colorful swirl of smoke. It looked like a damned patriotic way to start off the evening.

"Firew Orks."

Charlotte broke open one of the boxes, positioned a Rising Flag firecracker out on the pavement, and lit the fuse. Once the fuse burned all the way down to the center, two miniature flares on either side of the device ignited and whistled, producing a twisty coil of gray smoke. After a few seconds the flares died down and the thing smoldered quietly for a moment before unceremoniously burping out a miniature American flag which, within less than a minute, was entirely consumed by flames.

As the last ash of the miniature Old Glory blew away, Charlotte wondered aloud whether a firecracker that burned the American Flag was appropriate for the 4th of July. We quickly moved on to less blasphemous fireworks, such as the regrettably named Golden Shower.

As the celebration continued, I pondered whether the Rising Flag that Charlotte lit had worked as designed. Perhaps it was just an unholy fluke? The next day I decided to find out. I retrieved the rest of the (unspent) Rising Flag firecrackers from the trash bin and lit them, one after another. While I was unable to find another that set the flag alight, in nearly every case, the flag ended up badly singed, and sometimes even dropped to the ground. Was this by design?

The Stars 'n' Bars. Extra crispy.

I inspected the things more closely and thought I'd found a clue when I noticed that on each of the firecrackers, the word "Flag" was actually printed on a little sticker that appeared to cover some different text underneath. I peeled off one of the stickers only to discover that the label had been placed to cover a typo.

Unless, of course, "Flrg" is something meaningful in one of this product's target markets.

Like everything else in the USA, the fireworks were manufactured in China, and it was when I was collecting the ashen debris in disappointment that I noticed some Chinese text printed on the bottom of the box in which they'd been packaged. With a sort of muted hopefulness, I entered the text into Google Translate, at which time the true function of the Rising Flag firecrackers was revealed. It said:

"Produces, desecrates American flag; goes peepee in your Coke."

Somewhere, deep in the freshly-empty warehouse of a Chinese fireworks factory, a little man is rubbing his hands together and snickering, "Just as pranned..."

Bots on Icing

Forgive my profound sadness as I mourn the end of Cake Season 2009 for our family. I won't enjoy the sweet perfection of another cake until my daughter's birthday in December. My figure-conscious mother's August birthday doesn't count, because she only celebrates the occasion with a decadent (for her) treat of two pecans and a spoonful of whole milk. At least today's cake, in honor of my son's sixth year on this Earth, was as delicious as it was beautiful. It is a small miracle that this cake turned out so well, however- we just didn't realize it until the cake was actually sitting on our kitchen counter.

If you've ever browsed a catalog of cakes at a bakery, what you likely saw were ads for various "cake kits," which bakers use to produce themed cakes featuring all manner of licensed properties, from Barbie to Winnie the Pooh. The kits basically consist of a handful of accessories and a photograph of the finished cake. It is up to your bakery to provide all the edible portions of the cake in that photo. Well, this year, our son wanted a Transformers cake, and he knew such a cake existed because he and I had once spotted the below design at the bakery of the grocery store up the street.


Given that there have been two blockbuster films based on Transformers in recent years, and they've released new toys alongside the films, one would assume there would be a variety of Transformers cakes to choose from, but until just recently there was only the one kit. The kit's contents? One toy, one cardboard backdrop. Period. Now, the flames do look pretty badass, but it's otherwise kind of a chintzy design when compared to the unmitigated awesomeness of the Pirate Ship 3D Super Sized Cake. (Guess what I be havin' for my next birthday, maytee...) I could be selling the Transformers kit short, I guess; after all the purple stool that kids experience the next day might be a delighter that proves this cake to be more of a grower than a shower. There's just one problem, though- no one seems to know how to replicate those goddamn flames.

Every once in a while I pop over to the Cake Wrecks blog to facepalm at the complete ineptitude of cake decorators around the world, and there just happened to be a recent article there on Transformers cakes. There was the picture of the kit I had seen before... and then there were the jaw-droppingly bad attempts by various bakeries to replicate the cake in the photo. Below is just one example (see the article for more).

I wonder if the decorator was a Cure fan?

It was late on Friday night, and I knew that my wife would be picking up OUR Transformers cake that Saturday afternoon. I slept uneasily that night, wondering what horrors awaited us the next day. When Charlotte arrived from the bakery the next evening with our son's cake I was not only relieved, but quite impressed by the results:


Notice it looks absolutely nothing like the official kit. When I told Charlotte about the Cake Wrecks post I'd seen, she mentioned that when she was placing the order for the cake earlier in the week, they told her that while they knew a Transformers kit existed, they refused to make that cake because it fell below their standards. They actually went to Fred Meyer and bought some real Transformers toys for Henry's cake and created a desert landscape with icing dunes, plastic palm trees, jellybean boulders, and cookie-crumb debris. It was a chocolate cake with white butter cream frosting, and chocolate butter cream filling between the two layers. They also decorated the front edge of the cake with a number of exotic symbols, including the Autobots logo. It was a post-apoCAKElyptic desert dessert! (Sorry, that last sentence was really out of character. You have my permission to punch me in the balls the next time you see me.)

Whether they refused to make the kit cake because the flames were too hard or the kit was really too crummy we may never know, but these folks have done nothing but stellar work for us before, and Henry absolutely loved what he got. (This was at Bales Thriftway on Cornell and Saltzman, for you Portlanders, by the way.)