Revenge of the Nerd

I think this notion needs to be made into a new Sesame Street song for kids. 

“A Stall Doesnt Mean You’re Dying,

As long as you have altitude, you can keep on flying!” 

Imagine if Cookie Monster sang it – I smile just thinking about it.

I bring this up because in my most recent flight lesson, my instructor told me that we were going to practice slow flight and how to recover from stalls.  All I could think about was “kiss your ass goodbye” but that was the FUD generated by all the years of equating stalls with engine failures.  “Look, there is Billy Joe Walsh on the thirteenth lap – oh NO!  His engine has stalled, he is out of the race”.

Of course, in flight, stalls mean something completely different.  I knew this but I still couldn't get over the crushing fear that when the stall warning horn came on, my ass was grass.  In flight, it simply means that Bernoulli is showing you he’s still the man and the airflow is out of whack over the wing.  Generally this means you are headed DOWN, which is precisely what has to happen in order to get the airflow back into calibration and for you to keep on keeping on.  Still, when your instructor tells you that she might throw a “power-off stall” at you when you’re near Mt. Si, I guarantee you will freak.  Case in point:

Stall Warning blaring in my ear.  She tells me to keep pulling up which is precisely the thing you DON’T want to do, but she was taunting me.  Pulling up, eventually the nose just falls towards the earth at which point she cheerily informs me to gun the engine, pull up the flaps and enjoy my flight.  “See, that was a power off stall!”  To which I replied, “yes, I know, which is why I just shit my pants.”    Power off stall?!  Could that SOUND more terrifying?  See, it’s not really a ‘power-off stall’ which to me sounds like YOU HAVE NO POWER, but a ‘low-power stall’ which I guess is too long to say and would ruin the joy of instructors everywhere who get to use this phrase to watch students go into a terror-induced coma.  Everything in aeronautics is precise – you’d think they’d get this terminology right.

Ah well.  Dear reader – remember: A Stall is Not a Stall, it’s just a momentary lost of upward thrust.  Unless you’re in a ‘78 Monte Carlo, in which case you are really are toast.

Got back on Delta, and what did I see?  The guy in front of me accidentally set the seatback entertainment unit to “Spanish” when he first sat down, and then proceeded to struggle the entire flight to change menus.  Now I don’t know much Spanish, so I couldn’t help him (and why would I – too much comedy!), but I do know the big blue “HELP” button that persists in the corner of the screen at all times… Maybe he could try that in future? 

It happened again today – the flight attendants on Delta were really friendly – again.  People actually smiled when interacting with them.  I am seeing a trend.

I’m flying to ATL today for a few meetings and speeches.  On Delta, which I never fly, and I must say I’m very impressed with the service.  I’m nothing on Delta – no elite status on them or any of their partner airlines – I’m one step above Jethro who’ve they’ve obviously stuffed somewhere in cargo because they had oversold the plane by – count ‘em – 5 seats.  Wow.  However, it’s a good plane (767-300), on-demand seatback entertainment, decent food (although I have to pay for it), and the flight attendants are actually nice.   Amazing that civility gets a mention these days, no?

A few funnies:

· The security line: heinously long at 5am. Luckily, I have my magic United card so I can get to the front of the line. Now keep in mind what I just said –the line is practically from the metal detectors to Nebraska. So you would think the TSA checker-dude who makes sure I am who I say I am would be hauling ass, checking off names, issuing cryptic stamps and shoving me thru the metal detector as fast as he could. You’d be wrong – dude wanted to engage in conversation with me. Asked me where I was going (uh – ATL, like it says on the ticket), if I knew how to get to the A gates (uh – I fly approximately 6 trillion miles a year , hence I’m in this special line, hence I probably could build the airport out of toothpicks in my sleep, but yes, thank you), if I was having a good day (sure, I just skipped 30 minutes in a security line, but the more you talk to me, the further along the 400,000 people in line behind me are in constructing some way to lynch me while making it look like a biiig misunderstanding). Dude – just stamp the little paper and let me go.

· The dude next to me is Japanese and is clearly used to traveling in cramped quarters.  He literally got on, put a blanket on, and is now sitting forward in his seat, head looking at the place he is soon to be, sleeping.  I couldn’t sleep like that even on four percoset, let alone naturally.  Impressive.  He does, however, smell like a strange combo of noodles and fish, which at 6am  is just friggin revolting.  I’m sure I smell like beef and fries, tho, so he is probably blogging in his sleep right now about how much Americans stink.  I do think he got the blanket because I turned the air thingy on as soon as he sat down.  My air thingy is hooked directly to the turbofan engines and is blowing like a muther.  Freezing, yes.  Stinky, no.  I might get hypothermia, but I won’t smell tuna at 6am.

· The dude next to him is just a prick.  Slammed his seat back (apparently he forgot that there are 30 rows behind us).  Ate with his mouth open the entire time (stinky salad – natch).  And is just someone I want to punch in the head because he is annoying.

· The chick in front of me is playing a trivia game on the seatback but she, also, apparently doesn’t know the seatback monitor is located in the headrest of the person in front of her.  She is SLAMMING the touchscreen when she wants to answer a question and then, and I’m not making this up, she pumps her fists when she gets an answer correct.  The person in front of her, a little Chinese woman, is going to have to go to the ER for whiplash when this flight is over.

· Meanwhile, in some sick twist, my friend Heatherlyn is up in first class even though she bought her ticket about a day ago and paid less than $300 more than me for the privilege.  Beytach. 

So I'll admit it.  I have an iPod touch - but I only use it for browsing the web and taunting my wife by having yet another piece of kit that I rarely use in the house, sucking up power as it rests in my electronics cozy in the kitchen.

I figure, hell, for $10 I'll try the new software update.  It has Exchange Mail and I want to see how good/bad the integration is.

Problem is - capacity planning at the old Fruit Stand clearly isn't a core competency.  In fact I'd say borderline retarded rhesus monkeys are running the poor little OSX servers that ostensibly power iTunes.

Since 6am this morning I've been trying to get the update, only to see this:

Huh?  Did someone miss the memo?  1.1.4 is about as current as Scott Baio.  For the love of all things holy, if you're going to generate the world's biggest hype day for a product with little incremental value above the current release, please, please hire some competent IT people.  Or at least monkeys that haven't been used for cosmetics testing.

• Four Seasons in Palo Alto: I was there for a night - late night, early morning, needed coffee.  Now keep in mind this is in East Palo Alto - kind of like the ghetto version of 90210.  Room was fine, place was trying to be all pimped out with plasma TVs, etc etc.  Then in the AM: the Hamilton Beach coffee maker.  Seriously - does this company still even exist?  How in the hell do they think this is anywhere approaching acceptable?  Predictably, the coffee tasted like warmed over piss.
• Intercontiental in San Francisco: Also a nice hotel, half the price of the "Four Seasons".  Keurig coffee maker in the room complete with a selection of pods.  Coffee actually tasted like coffee. 
  

So…. one of my team was in Singapore last week which happened to work out well for me as Samsung just launched the Omnia phone. 

http://omnia.samsungmobile.com/

Of course, I asked her to pick one up for me.  I had no idea how much it would cost, which is how I usually get into trouble in these situations.  True to her word, she texted me (I was in dublin and she in Singapore) in the middle of the night with the price (which is more than my first mortgage was on my condo) to which, under the influence of several Guiness, I said “YES YES YES!”

Check the specs on that thing – HSDPA (fast fricking access), 5MP camera with geotagging, GPS, WiFi, every other app known to man, a touch sensitve screen, acceleramator for rotation – whatever.  It is just crazy.  And I will have it in 2 days – I might just might meet Sumita at the airport with open arms (then take the phone, leave her there and run home with my new phone, using GPS all the way.)

I hate Adobe products in general.  For all the shit we get about releasing bloatware, one just need look at Adobe Reader to see the true definition of ‘application that has 100% too many functions for the average person.”  I hate Flash less, but that’s because i think it was an acquisition.

I say this because our homegrown product called “Silverlight” is enabling some real web innovation.  This morning when I logged on the machine, I noticed my new MSN Toolbar had a new skin just in time for the fourth of july

look at that!  Flags and red, white, and blue – all delivered magically without any software download or user intervention.  It’s this kind of magical serendipity that makes people smile and drives loyalty.  Then, I saw the coup de grace – there are fireworks exploding behind the buttons…  they are animated, so I can’t show you.  Instead, just go to

http://www.newmsntoolbar.com/

and download it today…

I bought what I thought was “Visine” last time I was in Japan to give my eyes a break after being on 17 hours of airplanes.  I often had kind of a fuzzy feeling when I got off the plane, so I thought – voila – Visine.

Apparently, body chemistry of Japanese nationals is very different than mine.  The “Visine” I think is actually sort of of “Fire Acid” which causes me to wince in pain for a solid 5 minutes post-application.  I literally can’t even open my eyes – they are just streaming tears.  An hour later, I’m still not sure my eyes are “refreshed” as much as terrified to get tired for fear of me dousing them with another application of firewater.

The bottle clearly says Visine (altho it is hard to read through my streaming tears), but now I’m thinking this is actually a Japanese brand of Vodka or something.  Those kooky Japanese – I can totally see them putting Vodka in a little tiny bottle like this.