Buzzin' Around

Buzzin’ Around
I was out buzzing around this morning; taking care of this and that and running errands. I figured it was best to make all of my trips in the morning when it is cooler at the beach and the roads are less crowded. Mostly, I needed to go to the ATM to get some pocket money for the next week or so.

I discovered that a road I drive on regularly is being torn up for repaving this week. I hope the road is resurfaced by the end of the week. It is inconvenient to take a longer way around the construction work.

bikini baristas
I was watching the local news yesterday when I happened to catch a feature on independent coffee stores that are now serving coffee made by female baristas who wear bikinis. This obviously caught my attention. Naturally, some people are upset by this.

As for me, I do not believe it will impact me very much. So long as the coffee store passes the local health inspections and receives a grade of “A,” I am satisfied. I don’t think my favorite coffee store chain, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, will adopt this dress policy so it is mostly a point of discussion I guess.

I suppose I would reconsider if my favorite barista Tihana were to go to work at one these coffee stores.

Personally, I think this is only a warm weather idea. I just can’t see young women wanting to work at the drive up window in a bikini top and bottom in the middle of what passes for a cold December here in Southern California.


Carbon dating myself
I can remember when we tended to avoid sending massive files to our friends as email attachments. A large file was defined as something more than 250 kb. Of course, this was back when we were all using Netscape 1.0 as our web browser and 28.8 kb was considered to be a very fast modem speed.

I was reminded of this when my old CFO from when I was a credit union president sent me three files of photos of her daughter’s wedding a year ago. The three files totaled 21 MB and were downloaded quickly.

Isn’t technology grand?

cell phone battery
Technology isn’t so grand when it comes to cell phone batteries. The six month old cell phone battery in my Nokia cell phone died on either Sunday or Monday when it wouldn’t hold a charge.

Since it is a cell phone battery, you just can’t walk to your nearest Ace Hardware store, at the bottom of the hill, and buy a replacement.

Finding a replacement is work, much like going on a safari with a less than skilled guide.

I first went to Best Buy because they sell all of the cell phone plans from all of the major and not so major vendors. I figured since they sell for all of the major carriers they would have lots of batteries.

As it turned out, they don’t carry any batteries. Best Buy expects you to sign up for a new phone and another two year extension on your existing service contract when your original battery dies.

Great for the phone companies but not very good for me.

The Nokia that I have is a simple, simple being a relative term here, cell phone. I can talk on it, send and receive text messages, take a few photos, and send them if I had signed up for that extra cost feature on my phone plan.

Mostly, I talk. I have sent a grand total of 62 messages since I purchased this phone number in 1992 or 1993.

I left Best Buy disappointed and walked across the parking lot to the local AT&T store. It has a really crummy parking situation. AT&T was a disappointment for me; they had no batteries that fit my phone; they referred me to a t-mobile franchised dealer. The dealer carried a replacement battery.

The AT&T representative said that if I wanted a simple phone that I would have to order it from the AT&T online customer care service; more like noncustomer care service to me. This was not what I wanted to hear. I was expecting a response like this though.

DEFYING GRAVITY
I tuned into the new sci-fi program from ABC on Sunday night. I like sci-fi programming in general. I was a regular viewer of the Stargate SG-1 series on the Sci-Fi channel for years and before that, there was always a version of Star Trek available.

I didn’t think much of the program.

It seemed like it borrowed a great deal from the Star Trek spin-off series. The voyage commander plays with a baseball just like Commander Sisko and his son did in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. In one scene, the voyage commander was tossing and catching the baseball while he was on the ship in space where there is no gravity. The ball should not have fallen back into his hands.

Then, there is this mysterious entity that is beginning to plague the voyage at the very start by opening and closing exterior hatch and causing medical problems with the crew. I don’t know if this is an updated version of Q from Star Trek – Next Generation or a new version of HAL.

I gave the show the benefit of the doubt by watching the first two hour episode. If it fails to catch me next week, I think I will bail out and watch something else or maybe write some blog entries.

Lastly, the ship itself looks like it came from 2001. It has that long cylindrical look that I suppose makes some sense. Frankly, I think a more compact vessel would make more sense since it would be easier to get around in for the crew and not have the crew all spread out. In space, there is no friction causing drag to avoid.


Be well and stay happy.