Voices that annoy me

Anyone on NPR

NPR is pretty much the scariest thing ever. You almost never see it coming. You can know someone (or think you know someone), until you get in their car for the first time. Just after you close the door and the driver starts to back out, it hits you. They’re listening to NPR. You instinctively reach for the door handle, but it’s too late. You’re already on the move, and if you bailed out now, you’d just look weird.

No matter what they’re talking about on the air, it’s immediately something I have zero interest in, because I simply don’t like the way they speak. I’m not going to try to describe it, but I don’t like it.

I once had to take a shuttle from Telluride, Colorado to Grand Junction, because my flight out of Telluride was cancelled. It’s a journey of over three hours. When the driver opened up the door, there was some country music playing. I looked at my mom before I got in and we both kind of rolled our eyes at the music, but hey, it’s Colorado. If you don’t like cowboys, don’t visit. I’m glad we drove off before she could hear what I was really listening to, because no mother should have to see her son be subjected to what I would soon experience. I wasn’t in for three hours of country music. No, that music was the short intro to an NPR segment. A segment which I heard multiple times on my journey to the airport. Ever watch one of those 24 hour news channels and notice that they don’t really have 24 hours of content and instead run a loop of about 20-something minutes? NPR does that too.

And what is it with those musical intros? Often, they’re actually pretty good and unusual, and I incorrectly assume that my driver simply has good taste in music. Pretty cruel trick. And the other thing… how is it that these listeners always turn on their cars at the beginning of a segment, when the music is playing? You would think that such timing would be unlikely, considering the relative length of the intro compared to the spoken content. Is NPR an on-demand service using radio technology I’m not yet aware of? Are these people playing CDs of NPR just to mess with me? I don’t know, but I want it to stop.

The narrator from Desperate Housewives

If you ever want to see me go into a panic, hide my remote, turn my TV’s volume up, and change the channel to ABC when it’s showing an episode of Desperate Housewives.

Once I hear that voice my heart starts racing. I’ll sit up on my couch and take in a huge breath, like one does after waking from a nightmare. This always seems to happen when I’ve dozed off for a bit on a Sunday night, and of course I’ve left the remote somewhere inconvenient like in the kitchen or right in front of the TV itself. All I can think of is getting the TV turned off, muted, or on a different channel as soon as possible. I don’t mean to offend the actress; I just don’t like the sound of her character.

Macy Gray

I didn’t plan on including musicians when I started writing this post, but they popped into my head. I don’t know if she has other songs, but I remember when “I Try” became popular and it would play on the radio when I wasn’t in control. I didn’t like it.

John Mayer

This guy’s pretty popular so I’m sure there are some songs of his that I like, but I recently heard him sing “Free Fallin'” on the radio and it really bugged me. If you’re a big time musician doing a cover of a song, shouldn’t the idea be to make it as good as or better than the original? This guy took a rock song and sang it in a boring “just me and my guitar” way, probably wearing sandals and a hemp necklace.

Telluride, Spring 2009

A few days ago, I got my most recent skiing fix in Telluride, Colorado. In four days of skiing, I got to practice on all conditions: ice, slush, and powder.

I tried to take some videos of skiing this year with my Canon point-and-shoot. Recording was awkward with small camera and while holding poles, so I’ll need to find footage I took a couple of years ago when first got an HD camera. I think what I really need is a helmet cam. It’ll be fun to use on my bike rides, and it will also give me an extra incentive to finally get a ski helmet. Yes, I know, skiing without a helmet these days is like biking without a helmet or smoking. It feels stupid. But when I started skiing it just wasn’t the norm and I’m lazy. It’s on my Christmas list this year.

First up is an attempt to capture what it’s like to go from the top of Revelation Bowl (elevation 12,570 feet) to the base of Lift 7, which is located in the town of Telluride at an elevation of 8,750 feet. While I did make it all the way from the top to the bottom without stopping, my camera did not and split the journey into four different videos, with the middle two each only about a second or so in duration:

I almost fell at 4:06 in the first segment.

Let’s take a break from skiing and head into Mountain Village for some crêpes with chocolate chips:

Courtyard with steam rising from the surface. It's snowing.

Yep, that’s steam rising from the ground in the middle of a snowstorm. I think they got tired of shoveling in Mountain Village. The solution? Heat the entire walkway.

You probably noticed a lack of snow in some areas in that first video series. Fortunately, the second part of the trip was full of fresh powder. Here are a couple of videos of some relaxing glides through the good stuff:


And here are some stills:

snow covered tree

snow-covered trees

Snow-covered trees.

clouds

Above the clouds.

empty mountain

It’s lonely at the top.

ski run with a lot of trees

Through the trees.

On Wednesday, I woke up to find this sight outside of our window:

whiteout

See those trees? There’s a mountain behind them, but you can’t see it through the fog. If I couldn’t see a mountain that’s right in front of me, I didn’t think the chances of a pilot seeing the runway would be very good either. The weather does change quickly in the mountains, so I opened up the WeatherBug app on my iPhone to see what we were dealing with. I was relieved to see that while there was a patch of snow on the radar, the pushpin representing my location was right on the edge of it. By the time I got to the airport a few hours later, the worst of the clouds had blown past, and my flight took off without any major delay or cancellation.

Again, I’m going to talk a bit about the airport. There are plenty of airports where the runway ends shortly before a large body of water, but there’s just something a little more exciting about it ending right before a cliff. I attempted to take a video of what it’s like to take off from America’s highest commercial airport, but since I was busy trying to conceal what I was doing, I was unable to properly angle the camera to catch the ground disappearing beneath. You can find better videos on YouTube (search for things like [telluride takeoff]), but here’s what I ended up with just in case you wanted to take a look:

This is a better video (not shot by me):

And in case you missed it last time, here’s a pretty good shot of our landing back in December:

This time around, my family (not I) had the rare privilege of landing in the uphill direction (Telluride’s runway isn’t level), something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. It sounds like fun. A couple of fun anecdotes from small airports (which I love):

At TEX, the TSA officer asked, “You do realize that we confiscate all laptops since this is a vacation destination?” Yeah, I heard him use the same joke on the people ahead of me, but hey, it’s the TSA.

At HHI, if nobody is staffing the parking gate, they open it up and have a box where you pay via the honor system.

I’ll end with the last picture on my memory card, of something I wrote about back in November. Ladies and gentlemen, Chicago’s favorite Las Vegas Italian Restaurant:

Chicago's favorite Las Vegas Italian Restaurant

At work and at play

I recently went on vacation in Telluride, Colorado. Vacations are one of the few times I’m surrounded by non-Googlers, and I was asked several times by my parents’ friends what my day at work is like.

Well, while not totally representative of an average day, here’s what I did on my last day of work before my vacation:

  1. Worked with Albert to figure out how to take portraits of team members, because our manager thought it would be fun.
  2. Did some work for the Webmaster Central YouTube Channel
  3. Went over to Charlie’s (a Google café) for some potstickers and David’s bacon fried rice.
  4. Sampled food from a variety of vendors hoping to get our votes to stock their products in our microkitchens.
  5. Spent the afternoon racing members of my team at Gokart Racer.

Kung Pow on Hulu!

I just found out that Nelson has never seen Kung Pow: Enter The Fist. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the film, Steve Oedekerk, the writer, director, and main actor re-dubs scenes from a 1970s kung-fu film and even inserts himself into the action. Fortunately, I checked on Hulu and it’s there for your immediate viewing pleasure! It’s not quite as good as watching the DVD, which has awesome special features like letting you listen to the non-dubbed audio (even the English stuff has different content before dubbing), but it’s a start. Enjoy:

I suck at meeting people

The first thing I do when I meet someone is forget his or her name. This happens right away, and I have to spend the rest of the conversation doing my best to avoid structuring my sentences in a way that would reveal my forgetfulness. I think this happens because by default, I assume that I will not see this person again, and therefore do not need to learn his or her name. But all too often, I’ll be introduced to someone by a mutual friend at what I think is a fleeting moment like a coincidental meeting at a restaurant or other social setting. After the introduction, just when I’m assuming this stranger and I are about to part ways, I learn that since we’re all friends now and we all know each other’s names, we’re going to hang out together for the rest of the night, and quite possibly for the rest of our lives.

I go through life with plenty of these one-way connections, where every time I see the other person and they greet me by name, I feel like a jerk, and can never remember who they are. This happens a lot with my sisters’ and parents’ friends. Some people try to avoid this by using a trick where immediately after the introduction, they will repeat the person’s name (by saying, “Hello, [name],” which helps them to remember. For me, I’m so used to not addressing people by name that this technique would just sound too forced.

Similarly, there are those times when I and the other person are mutually aware of the other’s existence, but we’ve never introduced ourselves. Perhaps one of us wasn’t present for the initial round of introductions to a larger group, or maybe we just assumed that we were people who bump into each other from time to time, but not often enough to require any extensive knowledge about the other person. Unfortunately, it often turns out that we see each other more than either of us expected, but by the time we learn this, it’s not only awkward that we don’t know each other, it’s too awkward to introduce ourselves at this point. This happens to me all the time. In fact, just this morning, I finally learned the name of someone who sits very close to me every day, and has been doing so for over half a year. It was a little awkward, but at least I got a blog post out of it.

25 things about me

  1. I haven’t been tagged for this on Facebook; in fact, as of this writing I haven’t seen it mentioned there at all. If I were to participate in it, I would not feel comfortable tagging 25 people.
  2. Data is my favorite character on Star Trek.
  3. According to an online test, I have an ITSJ personality. I had trouble answering many of the questions.
  4. I’m extremely uncomfortable when people show their emotions, especially in non-private settings like at work or in public. Even fake crying freaks me out.
  5. I don’t like to say stock phrases like “you can do it!” or “everything will be okay” if I think it sounds obligatory or don’t believe it.
  6. I don’t trust people.
  7. In college and at work, I’ve always felt like an idiot who managed to sneak into a room full of geniuses.
  8. I didn’t drink until I turned 21.
  9. Every time I see a palm tree, I feel like I’m on vacation.
  10. I’ve never worn a tuxedo.
  11. I often fly across the country without reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie. Did the same thing in school with Amtrak.
  12. Until I was in college, I thought my friends and I had invented the pool game known as “dibble.”
  13. If I’m driving alone, I don’t mind getting lost at all.
  14. I don’t like situations that involve tipping and/or splitting a bill. It’s too complicated and inconsistent. In both cases, I often end up overpaying to play it safe and avoid math.
  15. When I was pretty young, I fell face-first on a shovel which cut my nose. I had a visible scar for many years.
  16. I’ve never broken any of my bones, but I did hurt my thumb skiing once and it hurt for several years.
  17. I was born on New Year’s Eve.
  18. David Letterman read my letter on the air in 2002. I didn’t tell anyone that it was going to be on (although I found out about it earlier that day), and my aunt screamed when she saw it that night.
  19. I’ve sung and danced on the Disney Channel.
  20. I don’t like to sing or dance in public.
  21. When I was about nine or ten years old, my uncle’s dock collapsed after a big storm. I was the only one who made it to dry land without getting wet, and stood there watching my family wondering why they didn’t do the same thing. If my uncle is telling the story, I walked on water.
  22. I got a C in a course called “Internet.”
  23. I’ve never been good at, a fan of, or knowledgeable about sports. They made me play 1st base once for a single play in my tee-ball career. I can’t remember if it came from the batter or someone on my team, but the ball hit me in the head, my hat fell off, and I didn’t get the out. At the end of my career, they upgraded us to “coach pitch” for a game. After I missed the ball several times, they brought out the tee for me. From what I remember, we have video of it and you can hear spectators saying, “poor kid.”
  24. On The Office, I identify with Jim, but think I’m really more like Dwight and Michael. I think Mike Leotta is Jim.
  25. I considered making a list of 25 Things Not About Me that was all lies, but made this one instead. You can guess if any of the items are lies.

Love and Las Vegas

On Saturday, I flew to Vegas to check out Love, the Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil production at the Mirage. Some highlights:

Virgin America
Because of limited direct flights between SFO and PHL and my use of red-eyes to avoid using vacation days, I’m generally limited to flying US Airways. It’s not a bad airline, but it certainly isn’t spectacular and they’ve only downgraded service in the 20+ years that I’ve been flying on them. It’s rare for me to go an entire month without getting on an airplane, so fortunately I have enough miles that I’m often upgraded to first class.

I’m well-aware of the better airlines like JetBlue and Virgin, but Virgin America literally only operates out of seven airports (nine in a few months), and the closest to my house that JetBlue can get me with a direct flight is JFK. So, I was thrilled when I found out that I could get to Vegas on Virgin America for only $200 round-trip. I actually bought the ticket in-between deals, and if I had been quicker or procrastinated, would have been able to fly for half of that. Based on the hotel and airline prices, Vegas must really be doing everything they can to attract people.

Ok, wow, two paragraphs of introduction just to say that I enjoyed my flights on Virgin. They had free satellite TV, comfortable seats, and complimentary soft drinks and juice. (US Airways will even charge you for water.) On the way back, I even upgraded to first class for an extra fifty bucks for a flight of less than two hours. Running on very little sleep, it was totally worth it even for the 20 minutes I sat there before we took off. I put my seat into the “relax” mode and was asleep within seconds. If they ever add flights to Philly, I’m going to start collecting points as soon as I can.

Love
Love isn’t my favorite Vegas show, but it was still fun and I had a good time. If you’ve never seen Cirque du Soleil before, then you’ll probably love it. If you have seen another on of their shows, especially a Vegas production, then keep these two things in mind before seeing Love:

1) It’s not as focused on acrobatics as the other shows, and instead focuses more on dancing and movement. I think it may appeal to the girls a little more. There are still a few impressive stunts.

2) As far as I could tell, the music is all prerecorded. Probably better than having them impersonate The Beatles, and they do some fun stuff with surround sound, but it does mean a lack of the traditional live Cirque music.

About halfway through the show, I was feeling pretty disappointed, but then taught myself those two things. Once I accepted that it was just a different show and threw out my old expectations, I had a great time and retroactively enjoyed the first half. Yes, this is how my mind really works. Next time, I want to see O. I’ve already seen Mystère, , and one of their touring shows when it came to Philadelphia. Mystère is the first show I saw and remains my favorite.  is a close second.

The Strip
As usual, I enjoyed walking the Strip, even though there was a constant light rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or even a raincoat, but it was mild enough that my jacket kept me comfortable. Charlene and I checked out the Bellagio, Wynn, Encore, Palazzo, Venetian, Treasure Island, Mirage, Harrah’s, and Caesar’s Palace. We didn’t head all the way to the MGM Grand side of things, but I think we’ve both been to the hotels down that way before, so it was no big loss. CityCenter is still under construction and is huge. I look forward to checking it out someday.

I took pictures of a few of the lobbies which can be seen in this album, and I also took a couple of videos with my PowerShot which you can watch below. The Fountains of Bellagio is my favorite attraction, and I recorded it just after sunset. See how the sky changes color?

High roller

Earlier today, I was scouring the Internet for cheap deals on Vegas hotel rooms so I could hop in and see a show. I even considered just arriving in the evening and leaving in the early morning so I wouldn’t even have to pay for a hotel room.

But tonight, when I got back to my apartment, I remembered that back in October, during a spontaneous trip to see Blue Man Group, I got pretty lucky in the casino and was able to put a lot of cash through the system in one fun night. After a couple of hours of fun, I left with about $100 more than I walked in with. And the whole time I recorded each play on my Player’s Card.

I logged into my account to see if I could get some sort of discount for being a member. I saw a bunch of offer codes, but didn’t understand what they meant. So, I called the Bellagio because they have a cool fountain, and asked if I could get any promotional deals on an upcoming Saturday. The representative asked for my account number.

Bellagio: “So you want to stay on that Saturday?”
Me: “Sure.”
Bellagio: “Just the one night? You can stay for three.”
Me: “Oh, umm, I’ll call you back.”

Now I’m not going to worry about booking the cheapest flight.

I’ll have to make the most of this experience. Unless I get really lucky again, I don’t think I’ll be able  to impress them enough to get invited back.