Laura gets tech savvy

I've long wanted to get myself an iPhone, but regularly decided against it because (1) it wasn't available on Verizon (my provider, not wonderful, but I've been happy with it), and (2) the wife and I decided it wasn't affordable. At the beginning of this year when it did finally come to Verizon, I got all excited and was ready to go get one for myself, but reason number (2) kicked in and I hung onto my five year old Razor.

Fast forward to this summer, and our kid is regularly doing things that are "cute" and "funny" and "awesome", and suddenly the interest in always having a camera and video recorder on hand and having the ability to share said items with friends and family increases greatly. Magically reason (2) no longer matters, and it's time to get new phones. I actually went to a Verizon store and waited in line to get phones, but the guy being helped was ... taking along time, and I had to get back to work. My technical self-gratification was further delayed.

Soon therafter I began reading on-line rumors about the release of the iPhone 5, and I made the decision that if I had waited this damn long to get an iPhone, I could wait another two months for September to roll around. Then Tyler dropped Laura's phone in the water. So now Laura has an iPhone, and I still don't. But that's ok, because I'm waiting (patiently!!!!!!) for version 5. Anyway, the point is that now Laura AND my dad are more technically savvy than me what with their fancy phones. My time will come.

Energy versus Trinity

My first job out of grad school was designing highway safety hardware at a place called Energy Absorption Systems. I developed a convertible, portable crash cushion that went into production before I changed jobs, and to date I have never actually seen one in use on the road, although I did once (finally) see several parked in a maintenance lot along the side of the road in Delaware, but never any on the road and in use.

It was designed in response to a product our competitor Traffix was making called the Scorpion. Though elegant and relatively simple in design, it was a total ripoff of another similar Energy product, and it was probably that way because one of the leads at Traffix was a former Energy designer. Anyway, that's not the point of this email. We designed this new crash cushion to be mostly reusable and very durable (rated for 65 mph impacts), and as a result it was a little heavy and expensive. Before I left the company I was excited to see it go into production, but kept hearing that I would likely never see it used in California because of its cost.


For years Caltrans would only ever use portable crash cushions rated for 45 mph impacts basically because the 45 mph devices were far less expensive and throw-away. This always irked me because, come on, let's be honest, how many people "only" drive 45 mph on California freeways? It seemed irresponsible to me to be using a product not rated for realistic highway speeds.

Anyway, money always wins and I got over it, resigning myself to not ever see my hard work in action in my home state. Over the last couple weeks, it got worse! I keep seeing the damn Scorpion out on the roads in construction zones! I'm not positive they are Caltrans devices, but some of them sure look like it. WTF?? Why did that one win out?


There was a sneaky (but altogether not suprising) tendency for some companies to "work" with the government to get regulations (contracts) written with specific requirements that in the end would limit the purchasing authority to choosing from only one product. My guess, and this is TOTALLY SPECULATION, would be that whomever is buying these now was limited by some agreement that said only the Scorpion would fill the need. Great. Oh well, at least my vacuum garbage truck is out there somewhere, maybe, cleaning up freeways.

tech savvy ... parents?

In the last two weeks my parents have managed to out-tech me. Keep in mind I am not on the cutting edge of technology, so out-teching me requires no great effort of any sort. But one day I'm talking to my mom, and I discover that both she and my father have acquired iPad 2s for themselves. Wha-what? Hey that's cool.

Then last night I'm talking to my father, and the conversation goes something like this:
Rick: "I finally got myself a gift for christmas and my birthday."
Andy: "Seems a little late for those. What did you get?"
Rick: "A battery for my truck."
Andy: (underwhelmed, hesitates) "Hey, that's great!"
Rick: "The old one has been in there since 2003, so I figure I got my money's worth."
Andy: (choke) "For as often as it sits around unused, I'd say yes, you got a great value."
Rick: "Then I went to the to the AT&T store. Do you know what they sell there?"
Andy: (feeling like a sneak attack just occurred, hesitates again) "You got an iPhone?"
Rick: "No it's a 4G."
Andy: "Huh? Yeah, of course, an iPhone?"
Rick: "What? Oh, yeah. I'm all set up for email and using it for work."
Andy: "Wow, that's cool. How do you like it?"
Rick: "It took these guys 10 emails going back and forth yesterday just to decice whether they wanted to fly to Larime or Denver. 10 emails. Seems like kind of a waste to me."
Andy: "Maybe your limited computer use over the last ... oh ... 15 years or so has insulated you from the way people communicate these days. Why bother talking to anyone when you can text or email them and never face them?"
Rick: "Yeah but 10 emails?"

Anyway, you get the point, and now my father has a iPhone before I do. Here I've been waiting patiently for Verizon to get the thing, and once they did I waited paitently again to convince myself that I really want to spend a couple hundred dollars to buy into this life changing technology that will fix everything for me. And literally as I am on the verge of pulling the trigger and going with a Verizon iPhone, Laura says "Oh, hey, I can get a discount though work with AT&T.", so I hesitated.

Ok, this blog is falling apart quickly. Anyway, my parents are savvier than me.

Anniersary the 8th

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife of 8 years! I wish I could afford to sweep you off to Hawaii or maybe even Paris, but for now I'll just give you a big hug and kiss and tell you how much I love you.

negatives to digital

I mailed an envelope full of film negatives to Utah yesterday where they will be scanned into digital format, far faster and more effectively than I could ever do. When I receive the data DVD back in about a month, I will have roughly 350 photos from my time at Unitrans all nicely digitized for upload to my flickr account, for sharing, etc. I'm fearful that many of then won't be as crisp as I hope (scanning doesn't make a bad picture better), but this professional service will yield better results than my scanner can produce with the positive images.

Film negatives? What the hell are those?

I'd been thinking about doing this for years, and was finally inspried to do it because (1) the new Unitrans shop manager was asking me for copies of my RT Sunset and Solano Field photos, (2) my father-in-law has previously used and been happy with the place I am using, and (3) they were having a sale.

So someday soon I may have a lot more photo content to share.

related to Hollywood star

I couldn't pass up posting this. Apparently I am related to a famous Hollywood star.
Check out this guy's middle name!

Or it's just a coincidence.

Post Surgery

My hernia surgery went great, mostly because I don't remember a thing, and when I woke up it was all repaired. Main problem was needing to throw up a couple times afterwards because (1) having not eaten in over a day apparently makes you build up a lot of bile, and (2) the narcotics they used to provide general anesthesia have a tendency to make one nauseous. So throwing up was fun.

I was and still am fairly sore, though there are pain free moments, and there are moments involving a lot of pain. I am glad it's over, and I am looking forward to getting all healed up very quickly so that I can get back to picking up my son and tossing him around while we play airplane. Oh, and I want to be able to work in the yard, and row, and go on hikes with Tyler in the backpack, and do all that sort of stuff instead of making Laura do all if it. It's funny just how much I've realized how busy I typically am now that I am not supposed to do any "heavy lifting". In an odd sense, it's kind of a nice break, but the guilt of not being able to do any of it is way worse than any sort of feeling of relief.

back

No, I have not posted in quite some time, not since Thanksgiving of last year, which means that almost five months have passed since I last typed anything into this web site. No particular reason for that, other than I just haven't done it. Haven't been particularly avoiding it; guess I could say "I didn't have time". I think I reached a point where I realized everyone else's blog that I read was either about family adventures or fun times (Tara, Nicole, Laura's grad school friends) or satirical / political / insightful / computer or food related (Paul). That's not to say I don't want to post ... I just feel that maybe my tone was too depressing or downbeat, maybe not the sort of thing you guys ("all" of my readers) were really looking for.

So here's a heads up. I may start posting more often. And the content may be depressing, or strange, or Too Much Information. And if I do start posting again, I may say things like, "hey, I've got an inguinal hernia, and I have to have surgery to repair it on April 28th", which, by the way is true as of yesterday.

Good times! And it means that I have to not lift any "heavy weight" for 4-6 weeks. By the way, my doctor defines "heavy weight" as anything over 15 pounds. My lunchbox weights more than that! My son weights twice that!

Life.