Power bars and trendy names

This weekend I did two volunteer shifts under the Big Top – Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Not ideal, but I did the scheduling and that’s how things worked out for my life this month. 

There are a couple of new art exhibits at DEN: “Colorado: See the New West Like a Local” which is outside the security checkpoints, and “Crossroads” – about Colorado architecture – for those who have cleared security and have time to kill before a flight.

In recent months there have been a few changes – besides their names – in the buildings that used to be called Concourses A, B, and C.  Awhile back the buildings were renamed the “A Gates,” “B Gates,” and “C Gates.” Which many people still call the “concourses” – as does the airport at least once on its website. Although it seems to be moving to the new terminology – see this. Signage inside the airport has been changed from “concourses” to “gates’ which I’m sure confuses the passengers who’ve just been told by their ticket agent to go to the “[A/B/C] Concourse,” and can’t find any signs telling them where that is.

But I digress. Back to the changes. The Body Shop on B Gates closed, but there’s a new Body Shop on C now. Where I bought a bottle of Oceanus perfume oil. Yum. Rock Bottom Brewery is open on C, might have been for awhile now.  

The newest amenities for travelers at DEN – free of charge – are Power Bars on all 3 Concourses. OK, how do I construct that sentence using “Gates” instead of “Concourses”?  ”New Power Bars in all 3 Gates?” No. There are, what, nearly 200 specific *gates* at DEN, located on the A, B, and C concourses.  I’m referring to the three buildings in which all those gates are located. Whatever.

The Power Bars aren’t snacks. Each of them is a bank of about six small work stations, with stools for seating.  Each station has counter space, two electric outlets and a USB power port. One of the stations at each power bar is wider than the others and unlike the others has no stool in front of it – it’s designated with the universal wheelchair accessibility symbol. There’s a “Clear Channel” logo on the units and there are LCD screens at each station – currently blank but I assume soon to be populated with information and advertising. Use of the Power Bar stations is free, no time limits, just first come, first served.  A way to charge (re-charge?) a laptop, cell phone, iPod, etc., without finding an electrical outlet on a wall and sitting down on the floor next to it with your stuff.

I took pictures of the Power Bars but due to technical difficulties and lack of time can’t post them right now.

Details of the locations of the Power Bars are below the fold.

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Clean

Thursday I was Miz Grumpy so it’s just as well I didn’t blog then.  I was going through the major inconvenience known as “colonoscopy prep.”  The no-solid-food-all-day followed by the overnight at-home inner cleansing (the most polite phrase I can think of) before my 8:30 a.m. Friday colonoscopy.  Now I really understand the metaphor of something “going through [someone] like a dose of salts.” Oh, yeah. I wish they would (could?) make the liquid concoction that you have to drink so copiously, to taste less vile.

Friday morning I was a little less grumpy, if only because I was nutrient-starved and sleep-deprived.

My friend who drove me to and from the appointment was cheerful and the event itself was not unpleasant. Kudos to my HMO’s Gastroenterology docs and staff.  They are pleasant, competent and amazingly efficient. I really liked the drugs they gave me, which blotted out all memory of the main event.

I remember my bed being wheeled from the procedure room to the recovery room, then waking up in there. Where the doc dropped in to hand me a sheet with the results and six color photos of various parts of my plumbing including the one polyp he found – and removed.  We’re waiting for biopsy results on the polyp, but overall the plumbing looks good.

Although I wouldn’t have said so beforehand, I encourage everyone to have a colonoscopy if your doctor thinks you should.  Most people who’ve done it that I talked with, say the prep is by far the worst part – and as some of them point out, you also get a good inner clean-out.

I surprised myself by suggesting, as we were driving away from the clinic, that we stop at Zaidy’s for breakfast.  I further surprised myself by enjoying a moderate amount of scrambled eggs and a whole bagel and a cup of coffee.  After I was dropped off at home, I slept most of the rest of the day.  With breaks to wake up and walk Jasper, of course.

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Friends

I know some nice people.  Including the ones who called me Thursday to offer me their tickets to last night’s performance of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  And the friend who accepted my last-minute invitation to go with me.

Dinner beforehand was good.  It was a lovely spring evening to be out and about.  Downtown was bustling but not frantically crowded 

Inside Boettcher Hall, our seats were primo.  The program was Johann Sebastian Bach and Vivaldi; there’s nothing like baroque music to clean the cobwebs and clutter out of my brain for a few hours, and this program was a joy.

I could get a crush on Scott Yoo, the guest conductor and violinist.  Who just about rocked the house with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.   The podium was removed during intermission, and he fiddled away right on the same level as the musicians he was conducting.  Vigorously, intensely, totally.

Thanks, everybody.  That was fun!

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Maybe he’s hoping to get a date

Oh, how refreshing.  Spring has finally come to Denver, flowers are daring to bloom and trees to leaf out.  And the looney tunes are coming outdoors, pale and shriveled from hunkering in their basements all winter, and squinting in the sunshine.

Exhibit A:  the guy who says he *seriously* wants the Denver City Council to create – and I have to give this title the placement it deserves: 

The Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission

Yep.  ET, phone City Hall.   The commission would be tasked with ”dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth.”  Like, maybe, dating.

As required by law when the fine citizens of the City & County of Denver are proposing initiatives, City staffers held a public meeting with this visionary activist yesterday.  Some interested folks turned up, including a few young folks wearing tinfoil hats.  Bless their hearts.

If City Council doesn’t enact this initiative into law, and its sponsor gets enough signatures on petitions for it, it will go onto the ballot at the next election.

Think about it:  if it passes, and the commission is created, the commission will need at least one staffer.  What a job that would be.  Although I’m not sure it would be a terrific career track for anyone.

The sponsor of this lunacy?  Is 54 years old, divorced, has no children, and lives with his parents.  As profiled in the Rocky Mountain News:

Occupation: Owns an Internet business, which is marketing a new technology that reduces stress “because it reduces the chaos of electromagnetic fields,” he said.

Education: A year at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa.

Number of times abducted: 0

Ever seen an alien? No. But “I believe they do exist,” he said. “I’ve seen very hard evidence.”

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Different

Have you seen those commercials for Comcast phone service?  The ones where some doofus is saying “But now I’m calling you on my new Comcast digital phone!” But of course that makes no difference to the situation at hand – which results from the caller being a hopeless screw-up and isn’t curable by a change of phone service.

Well, people, today I’m writing my blog entries using my new iMac.  

Which doesn’t make me any smarter or more articulate.  But does indicate that I’m living through a world-shaking transition in my technology life – from Windows to Mac.  

I’m proficient working in a Windows environment:  organizing files and folders, using my favorite programs, knowing what’s located where and how to do what I want to.

Now I’m in Mac World, and I barely speak the language here.  I have to learn how to do things here, that were second nature in the Windows Universe.  Simple things, like closing windows and applications – which means a click on the upper left corner vs the upper right. 

Working with photos?  Not yet.  I’m still working on the basics.  Like learning that the Delete key = backspace, and forward delete requires the fn key + Delete.

I’ve learned that I’m too used to using a trackball to enjoy the Apple Bluetooth Mighty Mouse.  Mainly because the menu bar is waaay up on the top left of this 24 inch monitor screen and I have to move the mouse nearly halfway across my desk to get the pointer up there.  Too much wrist and arm movement involved.  So I plugged in my trusty old trackball, and it works!  I can maneuver around the iMac Half-Acre display without wearing out my wrist.   Wireless mousing is nice, but avoiding another carpal tunnel experience is better.

It’s going to be a nice world, I think, but a brave new one for me.

LATER EDIT:  Finally, after downloading a trial version of Photoshop Elements, I’m working with pictures here.  I’m not sure about this huuuge monitor, though.  I can’t seem to resize Elements to occupy less than the entire screen and I’m going to have to change the ergonomics here so that I’m not craning my neck to see the top part of the screen.  In the meantime, I’m adding a picture of my puppy and my new iMac, in the same shot.

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Scurried

Yesterday Jasper and I went to Washington Park for the Furry Scurry.  So did 10,000 other humans and 5,000 other dogs.

It was a hoot.  I got there early enough and hung around our corporate team area but none of them ever showed up there and I didn’t see any of them in the crowd elsewhere.  Which doesn’t mean they weren’t there.  

As we had first walked into the park and toward the event area, Jasper was scared by the noise and the crowd.  I picked him up and carried him then, and for almost the first time ever I felt him shaking a little.  

The time we spent hanging out in our designated corporate team area turned out to be good for him.  It was a safe spot where there were friendly people and dogs to meet, and after 20 minutes he seemed to lose the anxiety.  Despite the absence of our teammates, we had a good time.  Jasper’s so cute that many people talked to us, and were impressed that he was only 4 months old.  

He walked a lot more of the 2-mile course than I’d expected.  It was a breakthrough on his learning curve about being out on a leash and walking along with me in a straight line.  I suppose it’s the pack thing – he was doing what the other dogs were, learning from them.  And he definitely wanted to be in the middle of the pack most of the time, after we got going walking the course.  I started to worry that he was going to blister his pads walking so much on pavement, because he’s used to wandering around on turf here at home.  

I wish I had pictures, but handling Jasper was all I could deal with.  After all, I did carry him for probably half of the distance all told.   I do have the memories, including Jasper and the big sweet Newfie we walked with for awhile.  And Jasper and a bunch of dogs about his size playing tangle-the-leashes in the corporate team area.

We got home at 11 am, both very tired.  He could use a bath after all that, but I’m not an experienced dog bather so I may wait until I have time later this week, then give it a try.  In the meantime I’ll wipe him down again with a damp washcloth to see if I can remove a little more of the dirt.

Thanks for all the good wishes, donations, and moral support.

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And we wanna be Really Really Dumb

In a sane society he would be showered with the big money now paid to US Major League Baseball players, drug-addicted rock stars, and CEOs of huge and soon-to-be-bankrupt corporations.  He might be dogged by paparazzi when going to a movie.  His statements would be lead items on teevee newscasts.

Thomas L. Friedman is, I hope, not starving, but I doubt the NY Times signed him up with a contract for tens of millions in compensation. He understands the Mideast, the oil and energy situation, and many other issues critical to our survival, and explains them in newspaper columns and books so that simple people like me can understand them.

He is a genius. We should listen to him.

But we’d rather obsess endlessly over Paris and Lindsey and Britney and the Thug of the Week in professional sports and American Idol.

Friedman’s columns are syndicated and I get to read them in The Denver Post. Today’s is a classic – even unto the title, “Dumb as we Wanna Be” – and I am going to reprint it right here because I devoutly hope that as many people as possible will read it and think. It is copyrighted and owned and possessed and controlled and whatever by the author and/or the New York Times and believe me when I cross my heart and look heavenward and swear and affirm that I have no designs, carnal or commercial, on this copy, and am only hoping to spread the message of a very wise man who walks among us.

In case you don’t read it all, here’s the last line, the money quote, amen:

[T]he biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

And here’s the full column:

April 30, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Dumb as We Wanna Be

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

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A certain four-letter Anglo-Saxon word to you, Windows Vista

Here it is. A picture of the final straw on this here camel’s back. The ultimate frustration for someone who spent years as a mere network user at work, with limited ability to customize her own PC environment. Who after paying her OWN DAMN MONEY for a PC to use at home, is confronted with this EACH AND EVERY TIME SHE CLICKS THE “SHUT DOWN” BUTTON ON BOTH OF HER VISTA-EQUIPPED PCs:

Yes. I was yelling.

Look, I have never ever put my PC to sleep. I have no idea why I would want to. It’s either on and I’m using it, or it’s off and I’m not. And it’s really off: peripherals powered down, the surge protector block turned off too. Not sucking electricity just so I can save a teensy bit of time when I want to use the machine again.

Until Vista came along, the “Shut Down” button for Windows (my cousin the software engineer calls it Winbloze) would produce a box that defaulted to your last choice. Which was probably what you usually did and wanted to do that time too: restart, shut down, log off user, whatever.

But not now. Oh no. Whatever you did last time, Vista doesn’t want to know. Because obviously the exalted gurus at Microsoft know best for you and your PC: You are feeling sleepy. Verry verrry sleepy. Do not pursue your desires and the stress they bring. Just relax. Go to sleep.

In three hours I’ll be at the local Apple store meeting with a concierge for an hour of personal shopping. I’m keeping the Toshiba notebook PC but dumping this desktop. Yeah, I know that Macs have a sleep option too but I’ll deal with it. Maybe this unalterable default to the sleep mode is an example of Microsoft aping Apple, but it’s irritating as hell on top of everything else.

And every time I see that “sleep” default on a Vista shutdown screen? I’m thinking: Bite me, Microsoft. You drove me over the edge into MacWorld and put a few thou into Apple’s coffers with that stupid little stunt.

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