Sunday February 15, 2004

*Gulp*  Got a new phone today.  It was so hard to let go.  Actually, I still haven’t.  So now I’m carrying two phones in my pocket, since I’m not all that sure which one will ring if someone calls me.  I’m tempted to call myself from another phone line just to see what happens, but I’m not supposed to use the new one until it’s charged for 10 hours, but you also never know when the old one is going to get disconnected, so it’s better to just hold on to both, so if someone calls me and the old phone still works, I’ll pick it up there, but if it doesn’t work anymore, then maybe I’ll pick it up on the new phone, though I haven’t charged it yet, so I’m not supposed to do that, and the salesman made it sound like it was a really big deal to really let the thing charge up fully that first time.  Sigh… I honestly I don’t know what I’m going to do if the phone rings tonight.  It’s weird how certain situations really cause some serious mental paralysis in me.  Sigh…

I still remember going to the AT&T store that Februrary of 2002.  Mommy went with me.  Nobody but dad had ever had a cell phone before.  My first cell phone!  I was soooo intent on getting the Nokia 8260.  Everybody else seemed to have it.  For some reason, the salesman kept showing me the Panasonic Allure TX310.  “No…” I said with a grimace.  “It is so… tall and… not… sleek! I like how the Nokia is small (and therefore, cool).”  He told me that the Panasonic was only $25 with a one-year contract.  The Nokia was $99.  “I know, but… well, obviously the Nokia must be better!”  I was getting rather annoyed at his attempt to play matchmaker between me and the Panasonic when I clearly wanted to take the Nokia home.  Even my mom, seeing our interaction, avoided all attempts to reason with me.  He told me it was only a one year plan, and that if I didn’t like it, I could always get a new one then.  “But I don’t want to have a phone that I don’t want for a year!  I already know which one I want!”  The Panasonic didn’t even have any games!  Yet somehow… somehow… I really don’t remember how, which leads me to believe he played some Jedi mind trick on me, I ended up going home with the Panasonic Allure TX310.  What happened?!?

However, it’s been two years now, and I can say that the Panasonic has served me well.  Sure, it’s grown senile now and can’t store the same amount of charge as the days of its youth, but it’s been by my side like a faithful friend through thick and thin.  Oh, the memories…  the cheap faux-leather case that the store gave me for free that I had to modify with scissors because they forgot to cut a hole for the charger to plug into the phone, the cool way that the phone could clip to the inside of my pants pocket instead of requiring a belt, the Consumer Reports that revealed that I had one of the phones with the highest amount of radiation nationwide, the way my hip actually ached from the additional weight of the phone for the first few weeks (or was that a psychosomatic reaction to knowing it had the highest amounts of radiation?), daily alarms at 7:00 AM (I swear there were days it just *conveniently* didn’t ring) and 4:45 PM (to remind me that I should think about going home at some point), the Kogepan phone ornament that broke off so many times I gave up trying to put him back on, the many times it has alleviated my terrible fear of get-lost-a-phobia, the calls I’d get at 12:30 in the morning during my first year in management, when I told employees to call me if they EVER had questions, the many, many dropped calls that occur every time I’m driving down Embarcadero, the voice-recorder feature I never once used, the five backlight colors, the antenna that finally broke off and fell somewhere under my chair at AMC Theatres when I went to watch The Two Towers, the ghetto copper wire coil that my dad fashioned into a makeshift antennae to make up for the one that broke off and was lost forever, the trusty mechanical pencil that always accompanies the phone (and only because the phone’s height it such that it can accommodate my pencil; the Nokia 8260 would’ve never worked), the many times I’ve gone on trips and forget the blasted phone charger back home, the ominous “beep beep” of the low-battery warning tone that gradually became the phone’s favorite utterance, the battery that just grew weaker and weaker until there were days when my phone greeting to just about anybody was, “Hi.  Hey, can you call me at this other number?..”

Well, I’ve developed a certain pride in having a phone that I’ve quite literally  never once in my two years encountered someone else having.  Somehow, because it’s different, with it’s candy bar figure and mechanical pencil and beltless clip and ghetto homemade antenna, it’s been a pleasure to own and use.  It’s been such an integral part of my life.  I suspect I would feel pretty lost without a cell phone now.  This was a first cell phone to remember.  So it will be in loving and bittersweet memory that my Panasonic Allure TX310 will be retired, to take no more calls, to beep no more in low-battery agony, to irradiate my hip no more.  Goodbye, friend.  Goodbye.

Hello, Nokia 3560.  I bought you today for $46.54 by renewing a one-year contract with AT&T under the Stanford plan.  Hmm… color screen, polyphonic tones, games…  Okay, let’s see what you’re made of.

Friday February 13, 2004

Random recollection: I got to ride a four-seater single-propeller plane (a Cessna?) on a nice sunny day during the summer of 2000.  My friend Dan was logging hours to get his commercial pilot’s license, and he had invited me along.  Up in the cockpit (wow, I get to sit in the cockpit!), I expected to just sit tight and enjoy the ride.  We took off from the Palo Alto airstrip, and Dan gave a running commentary to me about what he was doing.  After a short time in the sky, we landed at the airstrip that you see along the side of Hwy 101 North just past Redwood City.  Cool.   Then Dan turned to me and said with a smile, “Okay, you’re going to take off this time.  Ready?”  At first I laughed at the joke.  And then… as he looked at me expectantly, I realized he was being serious.  “Uh… okay…”   *Gulp*  My mind started racing, trying to make sense of this ridiculous situation.  I had never flown a plane before.  Planes are very very expensive and wrecking it would be very very bad.  I had never had a single lesson in flying or aerodynamics.  I had never even been in a cockput before!!  What was Dan thinking?!?  But somehow, I decided to do it anyway.  I clutched the copilot’s “steering wheel” (hey, I had no idea what it was called) with some tentativeness, stared out at the runway, and listened to Dan’s instructions like I’ve never listened before.  This time it kind of mattered. 

Takeoff was shockingly easy (and, hehe, accident-free).  “Wow, that was easier than learning to ride a bike!”  However, flying in a straight line while a mile above the cold, hard ground was more difficult to coordinate than I thought.  (Hey, I was nervous.)  Flying over the Santa Cruz coast and watching the ants (oops, they were people) below was cool.  Alas, Dan didn’t have me land the plane (which is much harder than takeoff to get right and, you know, not die).  The whole experience was AWESOME.  If it wasn’t so amazingly expensive to get a pilot’s license (not to mention get hold of a plane), I’d consider taking it up.  Much more exciting than flying a remote-controlled plane…  =P

So, I never really got an answer that day as to why takeoff had been so easy to perform even with a no-experience chump like me, but eventually I found out.  To oversimplify, it’s primarily because I barely did anything and I just let the plane do its thing.  I’ve heard it said that when a pilot taxis down the runway, gradually increasing the throttle until the aircraft is hurtling down the straight path with terrific speed, one of his primary tasks at the moment is actually to keep the nose of the plane *down*, to keep the front wheel on the ground, until the plane achieves the optimal speed.  It is then at this point, at what some call the Point of Total Commitment, that the plane seems to just liftoff on its own, without requiring the exertion or urging of the pilot.  For it is at this point, this Point of Total Commitment, that it is easier for the plane to liftoff and fly than to stay on the ground.

Point of Total Commitment… I can’t find that term online anywhere with regard to flying, but I did keep pulling these verses up:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”  Matt 13: 44-45

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  Matt 19:21

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.'”  Matt 22:36-39

 

Thursday February 12, 2004

Google does it again.  Funky things from today:

1) I was randomly testing out Google Webquotes feature from http://labs.google.com and I found my friend’s websites by typing in my own name and seeing what pages it pulled up.  I also managed to find listed in Google my super-duper-secret-for-my-eyes-only web listing of movies I intend to watch at some point.  I have no links to that page, so I have no idea how Google found it!  Kinda creepy.

2) Did you know you can search Google by *voice*?!   650-318-0165.  At the prompt, “Say your Search Keywords,” say your query to the system.   And then, bam!  Google results!  0_o  I think it’s funny that on the web page, it warns you that “the system is trained for normal, connected speech.  It works best if you don’t insert extra pauses between words, don’t put any unnatural stress or emphasis on what you are saying, etc.”  (i.e. “I speak English!  Don’t treat me like an idiot!”)  Google, you are like a real person!  How can you be so smart?  Sigh… Okay, so I called and called and nobody/computer/answering machine ever picked up, but it was worth a shot.

3) You can look up definitions to words in Google by typing “define: vascular” in the search box.  Well, only if you want to know what “vascular” means.  and what other random keywords/functions are there from the search box?

4) Suspect that Google isn’t living up to its motto, “Don’t be evil”?  Check at http://www.google-watch.org/

5) Whoa.  All the Google news I ever wanted…  http://google.blogspace.com/ 

By the way, you all realize that everything you blog is probably archived by Google and that someone can probably pull it up 20 years from now, right?  Yeesh.  =8

Can’t talk.  Googling.