Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Driving what used to be excitement

Regular readers know I am writing this from San Mateo just south of San Francisco. Aren't the tubes great? I can not only write this from here but collaborate with the listgirly to get a photo of the day up. SF is expensive. The Marriott is $170/night which is average but they add $10/day for internet and $15/day for parking. Dinner last night was about $45. And my rental Pontiac G6 is $51/day. Maybe I should be happy I get to drive a Pontiac before they are all gone. Pontiac's old slogan was driving excitement! I must say I'm not getting the whole excitement thing. Maybe if I had rented a Jeep I could have come to understood the Jeep cult. I'll ask for one next time. Photobucket During Sunday's drive to the airport, I heard an NPR story about the increase in bird-airplane collisions. US readers probably remember the US Air flight that amazingly "landed" safely in the Hudson river after a pair of bird strikes. Nice to hear this story just as I'm ready to jump on a plane, eh? And I live in America's birdiest city to boot! Luckily there were no kamikaze birds Sunday afternoon. This trip ushers in the end of my two week coke sabbatical. I drink a fair amount of diet coke and was wondering what would happen if I stopped. Would I get drowsy? Would I crave it? Would I go stark raving mad? I am happy to report I did not notice any change at all. When I was eating salty food I wished for Coke, but that was it. During my morning popcorn I substituted about 8 oz of Pomegranate-Blueberry juice alongside a glass of water. I think as I bring coke back in to my diet I'm going to stick with the fruit juice at popcorn time. It wasn't bad and that way I'll get a few more nutrients - albeit with a few calories every morning. My company is going to do a project involving the Amazon Kindle and has acquired a couple of units. Luckily I was able to snag one to bring along for this trip. I was told not to buy "too much" on the company dime. This unit already had Outliers on it which I hadn't read yet. I also purchased a fiction book. I have quite taken to the Kindle though not enough to spend $300 on it. It has a great screen and the device size is good. The pages seem to fly by. Incidentally, it's uncommon enough that people ask me about it all the time when I have it out in public. There are a few problems though.
  • Graphs and charts don't always display properly
  • I can only get books from Amazon
  • I can only get new books, no used, no library, etc
The limitations don't seem so bad when I picked up the Kindle for free (albeit temporarily). But if I bought one I'd have more expectations. Finally, I have already finished Outliers and it was great. Recommended. At this pace I may have to buy one more book on the old company and potentially get scolded. But in fact I find that danger along with the prospect of more reading truly exciting. So I will risk it.

4 comments:

  1. I'll have to say that even though you're my husband, I love reading your blog posts because of the funny little surprises in there, like "America's Birdiest City". :p

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  2. Hope you are having a nice stay in SF, despite the high prices, and that you get to see something and not just only work.

    The Kindle sounds like a really interesting gadget. I'd love to try one, but we have no such thing here in Sweden. I would also like it to be able to read pdf-files, and I understand that this one doesn't do that. Guess you can't have it all! =)

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  3. Jeep = Excitement. And they really do wave. (I don't, but people in Jeeps wave at me constantly)

    I really want a Sony eReader, because you can load .pdf files on it and I already have a large eBook .pdf library. But I can also just read them on my laptop, which is what keeps me from buying the Sony every time.

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  4. listgirl is a lucky girl with you!! How fantastic is it, to have a blooging husband - great!!

    Enjoy your time in SF and thanks for sharing your day with us

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