Some Odds and Ends

I’m a lousy trav­eler. For one thing, I’m still on Pacific time. No mat­ter how hard I try, I keep men­tally sub­tract­ing three hours from the clock. I got up at 9 and it felt like the crack of dawn (I had been up until about 3 AM that morn­ing). I ate break­fast at 11 and it felt just fine. I had lunch at 3 PM and din­ner felt very early at 8 PM. It’s like I’m in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent kind of time zone: DST (David Sub­jec­tive Time).

An obser­va­tion about Amer­i­can Air­ports: Since 9–11, there has been another change to them besides the obvi­ous secu­rity mea­sures. It’s the voice announce­ments on the Pub­lic Address Sys­tem, which have now been stan­dard­ized. The same woman who appears to be from some­where in Texas can be heard from San Fran­cisco to Seat­tle to Den­ver to Bal­ti­more to Boston. It may be the most annoy­ing voice I’ve ever heard in my life; mid­way between School­marm, Tel­e­van­ge­list and Motor Vehi­cle Admin­is­tra­tion Clerk. Her accent is hor­rific, and her tone is like fin­ger­nails scratch­ing black­boards inside my eardrums. Pas­sen­gers should be aware that BAG­Gige left unat­tended will be con­fis­cated and DIS­troyed at the dis­cre­tion of Secu­rity Per­son­nel. Thenk-yoo for your coop­er­a­tion. I’m con­vinced that this woman was not some incred­i­bly lucky Hous­ton Broad­cast­ing School drop-out, but had to be a friend of the Bushes, who got her this plum assign­ment and she prob­a­bly gets a roy­alty check every time we endure another Thenk-yoo.

Installed OS X 10.4 (AKA, Tiger) last night. That’s why I was up till 3 AM. Just kick­ing the tires. So far, I haven’t found Spot­light to change my life, but I did locate some files quickly. On the other hand, I was always such a care­ful filer for fear of los­ing some­thing that I prob­a­bly am not one of those peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from that new feature.

Tomor­row, at the crack of dawn (and I mean really at the crack of dawn — 6 AM EST, or 3 AM DST), we embark on our very last MIT Flea. Every­thing must go. That means the books, CDs, soft­ware, and any­thing else we’ve scav­enged have to go. If we are lucky, we’ll leave with more cash than it costs to get a spot as a ven­dor ($25).