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.)

My Top Five Top Fives

Application spam is the cancer that is killing Facebook. The Facebook home page is now just a busy, homogeneous stream of effluvia where a posted article such as this one, which takes several hours and at least two satanic ritualistic sacrifices to compose, merits no more real estate than an application-generated spamlet that was created in a few seconds with a few clicks and little more than a passing thought. I am not bitter, though, and Facebook's Twitter envy is far too transparent for me to have any hope of a concise, uncluttered front page again any time soon.

So it is in a spirit of reluctant acceptance that I decided to give that omnipresent Top Five application a spin. I will leave you with the results. Please note that because I fail at Blogger templates, you must click the large-assed thumbnail below in order to view the actual top five lists in all their mirthful wonder.

If Michael Bay Designed Christian Web Sites

Like the cover letter of a resumé, a web site's Flash introduction makes a statement. It establishes the site's owners as domain experts, setting them apart from their competition. Also like cover letters, Flash introductions are typically angrily skipped in favor of actual relevant content. But woe unto thee who skip the intros of the following pages. I will offer links to the sites and the apparent statement that their Flash introductions are intended to communicate to new visitors.

EVANGELICAL CATHEDRAL

Upon visiting this page, you will likely ask, "Is this web site for a church or the Space Army?" Well I do not know the answer to that question, but whatever it is SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.

Apparent statement: Calling all Deathbots (and Christians)!

Click to View Site

K&K MIME

Twin brothers Keith and Karl Edmonds, "silently interpret contemporary Gospel music with dramatic gestures and animated facial expressions, portraying man's resistance of life's evil temptations and His transformation from doubter to believer." Because the best way to spread the Good Word is to, you know, not use any words at all.

Apparent statement: The only thing we hate more than Satan is epileptics!

Click to View Site

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF CHURCHES & MINISTERS (ICCM)

This was the website that led me to the discovery of this whole universe of krazy kristians on the web, and it may well be the most impressive. ICCM isn't really a church at all, but rather a corporation that provides tax-exempt status to small churches who wouldn't otherwise qualify. What's that? You'd like to run a tax-exempt church but you don't even have any ministerial credentials? NO PROBLEM- they will make you a minister! (I shit you not.) Wait, why are you scoffing- you think this shit's not legit? They send you a motherfucking lapel pin, what more do you need?

Apparent statement: We evade the SHIT out of taxes!

Click to View Site

SO WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THIS?

All of the above sites (and many more) are the work of self-described "Visual Historian," Marcus Shepard. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Arts and an unquenchable desire to decorate the SINternet with spasm-inducing Flash animations. Curious what led mister Shepard into a career of creating what is probably best described as "digital meth on crack," I phoned him for a brief interview:

OUTSIDER: So, Marcus, how did you get into the web design business?

SHEPARD: I-I-I first [metallic clang in background] dev-v-v-eloped [screeching cat followed by stampede of footsteps] an interest in w-w-w-w [glass breaking]
w-w-w-w-w [industrial machinery] w-web design in c-c-col-col-c-c-c-college
[clown whistle and circus music] w-w-when...

OUTSIDER: Thanks so much for your time, Marcus, and God bless!

She's Mine... All Mine!!!

Long have I awaited this day. I now possess my own miniature facsimile of Yarna D'Al' Gargan, Jabba the Hut's six-breasted concubine from Return of the Jedi. That's right- the mind that brought you jawas, ewoks, and *shudder* Jar-Jar also conjured up a giant slug's sextuple-teated sex slave. (Hrm, perhaps the "sex" part was my contribution.)

Yarna IRL.

Kenner actually prototyped Yarna way back in the mid-eighties, but it is said that Lucasfilm objected to the idea. The fact that she was one of only two Star Wars figures that were modeled but never released lit a fire in the tidy little hearts of collectors (well, maybe not all collectors); the Yarna Figure became the many-nippled grail of the PVC Star Wars universe. It would be over two decades before Hasbro (current toy licensee of the Star Wars brand) revisited the idea of a Yarna figure for their Legacy Collection line of toys. Hasbro ran a poll asking fans what their most desired Star Wars toys would be, and a Yarna figure topped the list.

And now, with my Collector's Anxiety momentarily sated, Yarna stands on my desk, poised to entertain me with her alien wiles... and daddy like!

Shake 'em babeh. Shake ALL of 'em.

Dear Nintendo

Dear Nintendo,

I congratulate you on the amazing and continued success of the Wii and DS. You've really changed the way that people think about video games and introduced some true innovations in an industry increasingly notorious for risk avoidance. I also want to apologize for writing the DS off as a "gimmick" and for making fun of the Wii's name. (Although I think you missed an opportunity when you chose to name the Wii's built-in Nintendo Entertainment System emulator "Virtual Console" instead of "WiiNES.")

I was curious, though, Nintendo- do you ever sort of get the feeling that you're successful despite yourself? Allow me to clarify:

Why don't your first-party games have voice?

Even though you adopted DVD-ROM as the storage medium for Wii games, all in-game dialogue in Nintendo-produced titles is printed on-screen, rather than spoken. Now, I like to read as much as the next person, but since your games are designed for standard definition television sets, you can only fit about three words per line on the screen. Also, you apparently think players like to watch every single character individually rendered on-screen as we're trying to read... as if a little Mario is packed inside each Wii, dilligently typing out every word. A typical gameplay session with a first-party Wii game usually goes something like this:

[Press Start]
[Watch cutscene]
[Wait for page 1 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 2 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 3 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 4 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 5 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 6 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 7 of text to render and press A to continue]
Three seconds of gameplay! Wewt!
[Wait for page 1 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 2 of text to render and press A to continue]
[Wait for page 3 of text to render and press A to continue]
[repeat.]

Did you know that this actually isn't fun? Well, that's not completely accurate. It is fun, but perhaps less so than undergoing unanaesthetised dental work. Don't you guys do focus groups or anything? Do people who playtest your games understand that they're intended for entertainment, or do they think you're designing thumb-torture simulators?

Why do all your first-party games have General MIDI soundtracks?

I remember being really blown away the first time I ever saw a home video game that used the power of MIDI to generate its soundtrack, but the novelty wore off sometime in 1988. Is this just a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?"

Did you know that it is now possible to actually record music digitally and then play it back inside a video game? Take a look at, say, every video game produced by anyone other than Nintendo in the past 17 years for an example. I thought that maybe you were just cramming too many standard-def, low-poly graphics onto your game discs to accomodate digital music, but I looked at a bunch of your titles under good lighting and it's obvious you're nowhere near filling your discs to capacity, so what gives?

Why does the Wii Shop Channel suck so bad?

The first time I ever bought a Virtual Console title through the Wii Shop Channel, I thought, "Gee, entering all my credit card and address information with the Wiimote really sucks ass. At least I'll only have to do this once. Right? RIGHT???" But no- every single time you purchase anything from the Wii Shop, every Wii user must fumble through the process of providing complete credentials and payment info with probably the least appropriate text-entry device ever. Dude, Steven Hawking has an easier time entering text than the average Wii user.

And yes, I know that there are now keyboards you can plug in to the Wii- wait... I bet you call them "Wiiboards," don't you? But even websites remember customer information, and websites can work from any computer. You only access Wii Shop from your own Wii- there's no excuse for you to not remember who your users are, is there?

Why isn't the new Animal Crossing game any different from the first one?

Ususally the idea behind a game sequel is, "Ditch the things that didn't work, keep the things that did, but make them better." Oddly, the idea behind Animal Crossing: City Folk appears to be, "Put the original Animal Crossing disc in a new box." Seriously, after seven years of development you can't evolve the gameplay or graphics at all, other than make the player character look like less of a serial-killing clown?

This franchise is in dire need of a reboot. Let's just pretend City Folk never happened and release a true "Animal Crossing 2." As you're obviously starved for ideas, let me recommend how to bring this game up-to-date: The new game will be an open-ended stealth action FPS sandbox thriller with occasional first-person parkour segments. You're an undercover vice detective and the guitar-playing dog K.K. Slider is your in-game companion (controlled by AI in single-player or your friend in co-op mode). Together you go into deep cover in Tom Nook's megastore chain, investigating his textile sweatshops and alleged prostitution and drug trafficking operations. This should serve as a good jumping point; contact me if you need more detail.

Oh yeah, and what the FUCK is up with bringing back Resetti? It's not bad enough it takes 10 minutes just to load a goddamn game of Animal Crossing (even if you DO save before turning off your system) but you have to continue torturing players once the game finally loads? Just for this, I am officially putting you on notice: If I ever see Reggie Fils-Aimé in person I am totally gonna punch him in the piinis.