Save the Earth! Free the Internet!

We are in Santa Fe at the moment and yesterday we wanted to sit and read and have coffee and we only found a Starbucks. We asked for brewed coffee, a tall. (This is small for those not schooled in this Starbucks BS.) We asked for a real cup since we planned to sit in the place and consume it. This seemed to completely baffle the Starbucks employee. She showed us a rather large ceramic cup and said she did have these but they held more than the tall (which is small remember).

"Do you just want me to put the amount of a tall in it?" she asked.

"Um, yes."

I didn't look and see if she used a disposable cup to 'measure' the amount. I couldn't have taken it if she did.

I guess Starbucks doesn't want to wash dishes. They want you to take those awful cups with the cardboard rings. And a plastic lid. Even to sit in the place and have your coffee. They are good citizens of the world, though. They have signs about how fair trade their coffee buying is and they sell this water from a company that purports to donate a nickel for each bottle to a charity that provides clean water to the third world.

Today I'm typing this in the Ecco Espresso and Gelato bar. The coffee automatically came in a ceramic cup when I said I was dining in. The sizes are 'Small, Medium and Large.' The wireless Internet is free. I'm using the Internet here because my fancy pantsy hotel purports to have wired Internet for $9.95 a day but it doesn't work in my room. I always check if there is Internet before picking a hotel. But sometimes they lie. We stayed last night in a less well-situated chain for about a third of the price. Free wireless. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. I like my high thread count sheets and fancy shampoos and soaps as well as the next person. I like a great location. But get the Internet together guys. I don't want to spend my vacation on customer support!

Bad Connection

That's what my Dad's cell phone looks like. [Although maybe there is no picture there. Suddenly for my blogs the pictures don't show up.] Anyway, my Dad's cell phone. He never uses it. But we share minutes and he has it if he really needs it. And happens to be carrying it. So it goes. (Not to get all Kurt Vonnegut on you.)

Anyway, a few weeks ago I started noticing on my phone (which I talked about here) that I was getting missed calls from, I think, an 866 number. I didn't think anything about it. No messages were left.

Then one day I happened to be paying attention to my phone when it vibrated and I answered it and it was this 866 number (I think, something like that) and it was someone with a hard-to-understand accent trying to hard sell me a new phone. And a new plan, of course. Not only was the person hard to understand because of an accent but the connection was bad. And, usually, my connection is crystal clear. In any case, I told them I didn't want a new phone or plan.

But the calls kept coming. Different accents. Always a scratchy connection even though my other calls remain crystal clear. Finally I got one with a hard-to-understand accent and this real pushy attitude. "The new phone we are GOING to give you has a NEW plan." Still a poor connection exacerbating the accent.

"I haven't agreed to a new phone or plan. I'm happy with my phone except for you people calling on it and bugging me about a new phone or plan."

"We can put that in our records," she said. I think anyway.

"Yes, please do."

Isn't it funny that these are the only calls that sound like they are coming from Mars via India? And they are from my cell phone company trying to sell me something.

Daylight Savings Time

Time is such an elusive concept anyway. The way we synchronize ourselves to make appointments and label things on a 'time line.' To then make whole hours disappear and reappear in the daylight savings dance seems insane to me.

If people want more daylight after school or work, then why not start earlier? After the politicians vote DST in and you Spring forward what's the difference? And will we really save energy? I mean don't we get home from work in August in Austin and crank down the air conditioner and turn on the computer and the TV, etc?

I just slept a little later this morning and then readjusted to Daylight Stupid Time. My atomic clock and my cable boxes knew the correct time. We are working our way around the other clocks. The one shown in the picture had the right time when I got to it. Whether it was reset by FFP or we never bothered last October, I can't say. We learned to adjust the new car's clock on the way to the movies. I'll have to relearn how to do mine when I next drive somewhere. FFP set his watch but I haven't set any of mine. My phone got the word from the phone company. My computers figured it out, too. (Both running XP.) But FFP's (running Win 2K Pro and completely up-to-date with fixes) didn't.

One unintended consequence of all this is the fun possibility of saying something happened at 2:30AM Central Daylight Time on March 11, 2007. Worse when the November time for the change rolls around doesn't 1:30AM occur twice? At least then one is daylight time and one standard. Sounds like fodder for a mystery novel or at least a botched CIA investigation.

At Least it Doesn't Have Rotary Dial

In the Journal of Unintended Consequences, Category: Unplanned Unobsolesence, I offer the evidence of my old Sanyo SCP-4000.

On the left is my worn out phone in its leather case. On the right, the picture the Sprint company shows alongside my online info.

I'm not sure when I got this phone. At first it was my 911 phone mostly. But when my mother was in the hospital, almost five years ago, I used it extensively to keep friends and relatives apprised. I collected a lot of phone numbers in the thing and started keeping it on all the time (always on vibrate), attached to my belt and plugging it into its charger every night.

I came to rely on the cell phone after that and carted this one on trips and recorded phone numbers of a lot of friends, family, restaurants and hotels.

Naturally I know how to use it. And I rely on it to remember the numbers I can't. I keep it on vibrate and keep keyguard on (this overrides when I answer a call and then goes back on). It holds a good charge with the original battery and the almost but not quite every night charge it gets.

Of course, my phone doesn't take photos or videos. I don't have a way to get the numbers off of it and into the computer. It can surf the WEB somehow but I never really used that. (Imaigine that little monochrome screen!)

I have dropped this phone a thousand times. There are permanent flaws on my screen and wear on the buttons. And yet it keeps doing its job and doing it well. I thought one day I'd renegotiate my contract and get a new phone. Then I renegotiated to share minutes with my dad (who really rarely uses his) but heard myself saying to the guy how happy I was with the phones, that I'd just keep the phones.

Most things give up or the newer models start to tempt me with 'must have' features. But this little Sanyo phone just keeps going.

I'm sure I've doomed it to a death soon by writing this. But whatever happened to Planned Obsolescence?