The bright side of a Moon
The new Dell laptops we (the place I work) are buying have biometrics built-in – fingerprint readers. You’ve gotta figure that’s pretty secure, right?
The folks at Mythbusters have successfully beaten fingerprint readers, though, a couple of years ago.
Myth Busters-Finger Print Lock – video powered by Metacafe
Wonder if fingerprint readers have gotten better since then? I don’t know, but my guess is, no. Not in retail off-the-shelf laptops anyway.
Fifth in a series.
Oasis Motel in Gretna, Lousiana
Thanksgiving weekend in 1998, I lived in Austin, Texas, working as a contractor for Apple Computer. It was my first-ever Thanksgiving weekend away from my family. The Wednesday before the long weekend, I sat with a bunch of work friends in the backyard of some bar whose name escapes me and Google. It was a chilly night, in the mid 50s, and drinks were flowing. A bunch of us were trying to figure out how to spend our time off. I had no idea, but my co-workers were concerned about finding me a place to spend with friends and food. I got several offers to come over for turkey and all the trimmings. It was nice to feel so wanted.
But the best offer was when I found out that Chris and John were planning a road trip… to New Orleans.
I had never been to New Orleans, but it had captured my attention more than once in books, songs and movies. The Big Easy! Crescent City! Mardi Gras! Let the good times roll!
I asked them if I could tag along, and they agreed. Splitting costs three ways was cheaper than splitting it two ways. Since John didn’t have a great car, and neither Chris or I had any car at all, we were taking a rental car.
The following morning they picked me up. It’s a 500+ mile road trip, give or take, from Austin to NOLA, or about 8 hours of driving. Luckily, we had a four day weekend, and three drivers to take the wheel. I remember driving through San Antonio, though we did not stop there. To this day I’ve never been. When we passed through Houston, we stopped at a Denny’s for dinner; I remember the oil-covered canal and the huge oil derricks pumping oil and burning off the extra, making the landscape look like a watery Hell.
East Texas was green and swampy, very much unlike West Texas, which is dry desert. And southern Louisiana is, of course, the Bayou, a lush green dense wetlands.
The trip itself was largely uneventful, but once we got to the city proper, it was late and we decided to get a motel first. We drove through New Orleans and over the Ponchartrain Expressway, to the land on the other side of the Mississipi River, into the suburb called Gretna, before getting off the highway. We first came to the Oasis Motel, the improbably-desert-themed resting point for our two night stay.
We were three cheap guys, so we all shared a room. One on each bed and one on the floor, I volunteered for the floor first. Chris and John joked about cockroaches, but I was too punk rock to care. The room was just like every other motel room you’ve ever been in: smelled of stale smoke and sweat, beige in spirit if not in color, mismatched bed clothes and curtains.
Once we dropped off our bags, we drove back across the toll bridge to explore the wonders of Bourbon Street. It was a foggy night, and the streets were home to wandering groups of tourists. I marveled at the fact that we could get our booze in to-go cups and walk out into the street; just another way that New Orleans was different than my hometown.
The architecture was different, as well; tall townhouses with large wooden double doors, and balconies that looked out over the street. Chris explained that those balconies were filled with women showing their breasts for strings of beads during Mardi Gras – another idea that was new to me, but as a lover of breasts, I approved.
It looked crowded to me, but the bartender at the first place we stopped that night made mention that it was dead due to the holiday. That’s right! It was Thanksgiving! I ran into the back to find a pay phone and called home.
My mom and dad could barely hear me over the music and noise of the bar, but I shouted a Happy Thanksgiving to them and happily explained that I was fine even without turkey and stuffing. And then, my family duties discharged, I went back out into the perpetual party that was Bourbon Street. We worked our way down the street, one bar at a time, until we reached the dark end, where Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar and Grill lay. The oldest building in use as a bar in North America, it was purportedly built by the pirate Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre, back in the early days of the Union. Inside it was black as pitch and lit only by incandescent bulbs made to look like candles.
We stayed out almost all night, and Chris and John had a hard time getting me awake the next morning, because the tradition was to have coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde. I wasn’t a coffee drinker, and I was hungover, so I was grumpy until John patiently explained that I was harshing his groove. “This is a tradition. You don’t have to understand it. Just go with it.” Since I preferred much more substantial breakfasts (something with eggs and bacon) selling me on light fluffy dough-y things was a bit difficult, but eventually I got into it. Well, I got into it when the coffee and beignets were there in front of me and ready for devouring.
We wandered the city the rest of the day, and in the evening decided to take a vampire and ghost tour. On the drive back to the motel room, we got lost in the thickest fog I can recall, and made many loops of the freeway system around the city before figuring out how to get back across the river into Gretna. And the following morning we toured a Mardi Gras museum, filled with old floats from many past parades.
We probably spent about 10 total hours in that motel room over the course of our stay. That fact, and the huge amount of food and alcohol I ate and drank account for my lack of memories of the place, specifically. But that trip sealed my love for that city. I’ve been back once but would love another trip someday.
Maybe even during Mardi Gras.
Last night, after having a great time at nevafeva’s birthday party in NE Portland, I faced the downer of a long bus ride back to Sellwood.
Bear with me for a little Portland geography; surely most everyone who reads my posts already knows this but just in case, let me set the scene. The majority of all bus routes in Portland pass through, or end in, downtown. The first part of my bus journey was on the #6 bus, which basically traveled up and down the north- and south-bound highway of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, before hopping over the Hawthorne Bridge into the downtown bus mall.
Then, to complete my journey from one end of Portland to the other, I had to grab the #33, which hopped back over the Hawthorne Bridge to drive south-bound highway of McLoughlin Boulevard, where I debark and enjoy a half-mile walk to my little apartment building o’ fun.
Two boulevards, two straight shots, each with a juke into the city center. Easy-peasy, right? I should be home in a flash, right?
The first part of the trip went smoothly. I love people watching the folks who ride the bus late on a Saturday. The attractive young girls who are going to a dance club. The middle-aged men who still think they’re young men talking to the young girls. The older lady, drunk out of her mind, just riding around for something to do. Just another bunch of damaged humanity (including me). I felt a kinship with all of them, but sat in my seat and watched.
I debark downtown, and check the schedule on my iPhone. Side note: I found the best iPhone app for anyone in Portland who rides a bus. Last Friday, the website I have been checking for TriMet bus arrival times went away – I got a 404 error. So I poked around Apple’s App Store and found a long list of iPhone programs for transit times. Our local transit agency actually has an API to let others use their schedule information, which explains all the Portland-specific iPhone apps I found. The top rated one was called PDXBus, and it was free, so I downloaded it.
It’s full of features! Bookmarks for most-used stops, it can show multiple stops on one page, it lets me organize and arrange the bookmarks and rename them, it uses Core Location to show me the closest stops to me in case I’m in an area of town I’m not familiar with. It even has a built-in blue flasher that I can use to flag down buses at night.
Last night, though, iPhone told me that I had a 35+ minute wait for the next leg of my trip home. It was cold and I was tired and did not feel like standing in the wind for that long, so I walked 6 blocks to the only open coffee shop I could find, the Starbucks at Pioneer Courthouse Square, which was open until midnight. On my short walk, I was asked directions, as I normally am whenever I walk anywhere. I must look like someone who knows where things are. I accidentally gave incorrect directions (no, seriously, it was accidental). Got a small coffee, had to wait a bit while it was finishing brewing, was offered an Americano instead (no, I’ll wait for the brewed coffee, thanks), texted goodnight to my bestie, Tracy, found out the wifi at Starbucks wasn’t working (which matters much less since I bought an iPhone), and then walked the six blocks back to the bus stop.
And got asked directions once again. His Spanish accent was thick so I had a hard time understanding what he was asking for but we eventually got it sorted out and I pointed him in the right direction.
Got to the stop and the bus was already there, laying over until time to leave. Hopped on, started people watching again while surfing to kill the time. A driver and 15 or so people just wanting to go home, or somewhere else at least, on a Saturday night.
The driver was tall, and white-haired but strong looking, and when it was time to go he pulled out into traffic sharply and crisply. Turned onto Madison to cross the bridge… then just kept going straight.
He should have taken the off-ramp down onto McLoughlin and continued south. He didn’t.
A passenger walked up to the front of the bus to ask him about this mistake, which is always a touchy situation. If the driver is defensive at all, or the passenger is rude at all, it can turn into an argument. This passenger was deferential enough, or the driver was humble enough, to avoid that. “I’ll just have to go around the block to get back on track,” the driver said.
So we continued onto SE Hawthorne, crossed Grand Ave., went one block up and turned right. Now we were parallel to McLoughlin and two blocks away. It’s a little complicated by the fact that the major streets are one-way onlies, but the very next right-hand turn would have gotten the driver right back on track.
He kept going straight.
I kept quiet, but made eye contact with a couple of my fellow passengers. We wanted to see where this was going. We didn’t want to point out that the driver was lost. Well, I did, but I did it on Twitter.
After just a block or two, the driver was screwed, because McLoughlin becomes a raised thoroughfare with no on-ramps. Now, when he got to an intersection and looked right, he could see that he had no way to get back on McLoughlin and back on track. Now, his little GPS unit was beeping at him that he was seriously off course. Now, he (or at least I) could feel the tension of all the passengers wondering where the hell we were and where we were going. A girl who had been talking on her cell phone to a distant friend started narrating the streets we passed, trying to figure out what the score was and how much longer until she reached her destination.
I thought ahead and realized that the driver was going to have to zig-zag through inner Southeast and past the TriMet Center garage, along SE 17th, before he could get back to the normal route. And so he did.
Because the boulevard is one long multi-lane highway, even with this long detour, the driver only missed one stop. Still, I felt bad for anyone who was waiting at that stop for a bus home; the next bus to pass there wouldn’t do so for another hour, and that was the final trip of the night. They’d be waiting a long time, and with no word about what had happened. Maybe they (these hypothetical people I’m picturing) saw their bus pass over the bridge – I’ve stood there at that stop and I know that where this bus had gone was in line of sight from there. How frustrating that would be, to see your bus be so wrong, knowing the next one won’t show up for an hour or more…
Such is life when one relies on transit.
Friday morning and I approach the coffee cart in my building’s lobby. The coffee cart girl sees me coming and smiles.
“Good morning,” I say, hopefully brightly but probably, considering the early hour (at least an hour before the normal opening hours for my office), more likely mumbled and blurry.
“Good morning, sunshine!” she replies, her smile wide in her freckled face.
I laugh. “Sunshine? I like that.” I move around to the side where the row of brewed coffee [things] are arrayed. I get a medium cup and start to fill it with half decaf, half macadamia chocolate flavored coffee. “Actually, though, my last name is Moon, which is pretty much the exact opposite of sunshine.”
She’s not facing me; she’s setting out the trays of donuts, wiping down the counter. The cart has just officially opened for the day. She laughs, too. “So, then: goodnight, Moon?”
“Ha, ha! ‘Goodnight, Moon. Goodnight, cow jumping over the moon.'” I recite back at her, and she and I finish speaking the last sentence in unison.
“I loved that book. It was my favorite book when I was a little girl.”
“Mine, too,” I say, still smiling. “For obvious reasons.” I pull out my wallet and lay down some money for my coffee, and pluck a donut, a giant apple fritter, from the tray. “But I really wanted to get my hands on Harold’s purple crayon. Or run away with Max where the wild things were.”
“Ah, but do they have donuts?” she asked.
“Wild things don’t need donuts,” I said. Nor do they need friendly cute redheaded coffee cart girls, I thought as I wished her a good morning and walked away.
My apologies for the downtime on this site this morning. Not sure what happened, but for now I’ve got things temporarily working on another, slower, server.
Things may be broken – links, pictures, and whatnot and suchlike. Feel free to let me know or you can just wait and I’ll get everything working at full capacity (such as it was) eventually.
I tend to forget how much has to be changed/updated to move even a simple blog like this from one place to another.
This is probably a reminder for me to back things up more often, too.
Last night was supposed to be the Thursday Thing with Kevin. But an early morning email from Kevin announced that he was sick; too sick to hang out after work, he not only did not have the energy, he did not want me to catch what he had, too.
I missed him already, but wished him well.
I went through my day and kept busy, but when the end of my work day arrived, I was both glad to be done but in a strange reluctance to go home. Old Barfy, about whom I’ve written before, has taken to storing shopping carts of bottles and other recycled goods in the shared backyard, and a couple of nights ago I discovered that these shopping carts (yes, multiple) have multiplied to the point of being right next to my kitchen and bedroom windows, and my back door. I had left him a note about it this morning, and I anticipated having to talk to him about it after work.
What better reason to not go straight home, then? Yes, I’m generally non-confrontational. I will get around to it, but it might take me a while.
Instead, I transferred from my normal #70 bus to the #19, and went up Woodstock to the Delta Cafe (about which I’ve written before). Kevin and I were planning on going there, and I decided that I would still keep that appointment, even though Kevin had had to bow out to get well.
The thought of the home cookin’ perked me up from my already-good mood. Walking in the front door I could smell the BBQ sauce and fried foods. The hostess sat me down near the window, and gave me a menu.
What to have? I knew I’d start with corn bread. I love corn bread.
After rejecting the idea of ordering something I’ve already tried (I haven’t been going there long enough; I need to try more of the menu) I landed on pork chops. Grilled tender pork loin. With applesauce. For my two sides I tried the mac and cheese and cole slaw.
After I’d placed my order with the tattoo’ed black haired dark-mascara’ed waitress, I texted my order to Tracy, who is always down for some food porn.
And it hit me: every item I ordered was something my mom used to make, and serve, as a meal. Not just each individual thing by itself, but the meal as a whole. Corn bread, pork chop, mac and cheese, cole slaw, applesauce. It was literally just like mom used to make. But mom was long gone, buried up in Willamette National Cemetery.
And in spite of my generally good mood that day, and my anticipation of the delicious dinner still yet to be served… I missed my mom.
Forgive a blurry phone cam shot but, daaaamn.
It was so good, with just a hint of sad remembrance. Not that my mom was from the south; she was born and raised in Oregon, though she and dad moved and lived up in Aberdeen, Washington, and outside of Seattle, and in Kalama, before finally coming back to Portland. She visited Mexico a couple of times, and went on road trips with dad back east to visit his family, and down to California a couple of times, and even got her wish to see Hawai’i before cancer took her. But she was an Oregonian in all senses of the word.
She only knew a few recipes, and when she cooked she made lots of use of pre-packaged ingredients, but that was the food I grew up on, and grew fat on, to be honest, so I remember it fondly.
The food at the Delta is higher-end, but the menu could just as well have been the menu when I was a kid. And it took me until last night, my third visit, to realize it.
It’s truly comfort food for me.
Donuts (or doughnuts, if you prefer) are tasty pastries, deep-fried fluffy or cake type, covered in frosting, or not.
The canonical donut is a torus; an inner tube or wheel shape, a ring with a hole in the middle. The round nuggets called “donut holes” are, therefore, the bit of a donut punched out of the middle.
But donuts can be other shapes. Two bits of dough twisted or braided and then fried can also be found on donut trays, in donut cases, or in donut shops around the globe. Sweet rolls, without a hole in the middle at all, are also called donuts. Round puck shapes, filled with custard or fruit jam, are likewise donuts, without any hole. And apple fritters, lumpy and irregularly shaped, are also commonly called “donuts”.
All of which leads me to a question, on I have pondered for nearly as long as I have eaten and loved donuts themselves:
What kind of “nut” is a donut supposed to resemble?
Is it the nut that you’d screw onto a bolt?
Or a nut that you’d pluck from a tree?
Is this a binary choice? Is it one or the other? Or has the lineage of the suffix “-nut” passed beyond the word it was derived from, so that “donut” no longer has a connection to its root word?
In these difficult financial times, I’m looking for any way I can to save money.
Which is why I proposed to my landlord that he could get tax credits from the Feds and the state if he installed solar panels for my apartment building.
It’s a win-win. My landlord could get money back (up to $4500, if I’m reading these web pages correctly) and I’d save money every month on my electric bill.
Plus we’d both be doing more to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and carbon-based fuel sources. OK, him more than me, but, y’know, still. It’s my idea.
I haven’t heard back from him yet. But I’m confident I will. Hear back, I mean. One way or the other.
Is it just me, or does the pun in this video make anyone else laugh hilariously?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qIcujTxA0E&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]
To: info@zipcar.com
From: Brian M.
Date: Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Subject: Suggestion regarding Zipcar’s online reservation system
First, I love Zipcar in general and all the great ways the company takes advantage of the latest technology, whether it’s the keycard access or hybrid cars, or the many ways you use online and internet technology to make things easy for us customers.
That being said, I have a small suggestion for the mobile version of your online reservation system: please change the default time for the start of a reservation to round up, not down.
When I make a reservation on my iPhone at, say, any time between 4:00p and 4:30p, the default starting time that the reservation software assumes is 4:00p – it rounds down. And it’s “costly” in terms of how many page refreshes and clicks I have to make in order to change it to a more useful time.
If I’m on my phone to get a Zipcar, chances are I’m either within walking distance of the car or standing right next to it. OK, maybe in that case it makes sense to default the time to round down, so that I can immediately get in the car and drive off. But if I’m making a reservation anytime between 15 and 30 minutes past the most recent half-hour mark, most of the time I’m willing to wait a bit so that I can get the whole half-hour segment I’m paying for, rather than just a fraction of it.
Honestly, it feels like I’ve been cheated in that case, simply because I didn’t go through the hassle of clicking and changing the start time to a point in the future.
Would it be possible for the software to default to the next half-hour, rather than the previous half-hour? Or can you pro-rate me the time I don’t actually use?
In any case, I still think you guys rock, and I’ve been a customer of Portland Zipcar since two mergers ago (Remember FlexCar? I forgot what the company was called before FlexCar but that’s when I originally joined).
—
Brian Moon
*****
To: Brian M
From: info@zipcar.com
Date: Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 3:54 AM
Subject: Re:Suggestion regarding Zipcar’s online reservation system
Dear Brian,
Thank you for writing. We do welcome your feedback and your suggestions regarding the current reservation systems. We will pass it along. We compile our member’s ideas and decide on them in future planning sessions. Thanks!
Regards,
Lynn
Zipcar Member Services
Does that seem like a brush-off to you, too?