Technology

Every time I come back there is more new technology. This time it is computers on the phone. I have called places and computers answered. My years in Southeast Asia have apparently destroyed my accent. The computers usually can’t understand what I say. But that means that I usually eventually get to talk to a real person. Sometimes the voice just reads you a long list of buttons to push, after which another computer voice may tell you to push more buttons and so on. I have even been called by computers asking me to press one for English or two for Spanish. I just hang up. I guess if it doesn’t know whether I use English or Spanish, then it probably isn’t a computer I know. 

I noticed that the announcer at the SW airport is the same as the announcer on the Weather Channel. Maybe that’s the one they call Microsoft Sam. He is everywhere.

This is one of those changes that maybe isn’t so good. For example, if you are late paying your credit card, Sam will call you all day long until he gets you. He is not fooled by answering machines. He won’t leave a message until he has called at least 2 dozen times. Then he will finally leave a message. But he doesn’t tell you what he wants. He expects YOU to call some number and remember some impossibly long pin number to retrieve the message.

Maybe those call centers in India aren’t such a bad thing after all.

Travel – Southwest

My next trip was to the southwest. I was really looking forward to the warmer weather. In fact I initially packed as if I was going to the tropics but fortunately a quick check of internet brought me to my senses. It wasn’t THAT warm! Nevertheless it was pleasant to not be cold. I was able to leisurely walk around and see life up close at one of those legendary senior summer camps the area is known for.














Got some great pictures of palm tree cell phone towers and even a windmill cell tower! (Regular cell tower for comparison.)

I was also intrigued by a log cabin mobile home and an adobe mobile home I saw. There was a giant flea market too selling all kinds of stuff including cheap junk fron C--- like I can get in the third of my worlds. It didn’t seem very crowded compared to Asian equivalents, but that was good because the people were a lot taller and I wouldn’t have had my usual advantage of being head and shoulders above everybody else and able to breathe.
There was a steady rain all day and night before I left. It wouldn’t have been a big deal in the tropics but locals said it was extremely unusual and they seemed to have trouble driving in it. The next day that storm blew us all the way back to my home area, pushing us 100mph faster than normal. But somewhere along the way it froze. As we slid down the runway upon landing, we could see that we had landed in a winter wonderland. The winter wonderland continued falling and blowing all the way home in fact. This is the kind of weather that SUVs were made for with their 4-wheel drive and height. It’s probably why there are still so many of them around.

Travel - Northwest

I have been busy travelling recently. First I went to the NW corner of the country where all the fabulous scenery was hidden in the fog. It was dark and gloomy and rainy but brightened by numerous coffee shops on every other corner. I still kind of dread coffee shops, though. All the decisions. But at`least if you make your friends go first it gives you an extra minute or two to make up your mind. My cognitively challenged brother has developed a strategy to answer multiple choice questions – he always chooses the last choice. Hmm. Maybe I should try that at the next coffee shop.

It’s not just that you are confronted with 25 choices of basic coffee – most of which you have never heard of and have no idea what you might be getting in to. But you have to choose regular or decaf, or even a combo. Then it’s light, dark, or medium roast. (I wonder if anybody would like village char-roast??) Size is not something simple like small, medium, or large. In fact some workers are so snobbish that they pretend they don’t know the meanings of those words! If you’ve actually gotten that far, it is advisable to just grab your coffee and run. If you don’t, they will continue pestering you with questions: do you want milk? What kind and what flavor? Low fat? Do you want it heated? What about flavoring in the coffee? How many shots? Do you want to leave room for cream? Would you like something to go with your coffee?

Most churches in my home area have served coffee before or after the service for years. But in the NW they have latte bars in churches – and as a visitor I got a free latte!  I guess it’s caffeine buzz that keeps everybody in that city going during these gloomy months.

Winter

Winter is definitely here. There’s at least 12 inches of it on the ground and more in the air. It is colder than when I first arrived so I am adding layers to the layers. (If this keeps up I’ll soon be too fat to walk!) I am told that one of the Eskimo languages has 14 words for snow. Here we just use descriptive phrases since English has only one word so we add words like powdery, fluffy, wet, hard and dry. Sometimes it is sloppy to walk in, other times it is soft and quiets everything. But when it gets really cold it squeaks and can make the world pretty noisy.
 

Driving becomes interesting too and can be very much more time-consuming. Everyone slows down a little when it is snowing, and you would think that traffic would move along at a slightly slower speed, but for some reason when everybody’s “slowing down a little” is added up it becomes gridlock. I am sure there must be some obscure mathematical formula involved....