Stupid Smart Key

For those of you that do not know what a "smart" key is, it is a relatively recent development in the automotive industry.  This feature has become nearly universal.  As early as 2008 or 9, some car manufacturers have offered a push button starting system for your car which does not require a tradition key in the ignition.  Instead, the car comes with a smart key, which allows the car to be started with the push button anytime the smart key is within a certain distance of the car.  Many require the smart key to cross the threshold of the driver's doorway before the car starts.  The specifics vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.  However, the key feature – pun intended, is that the car can be started without inserting a key.  Of course, the corollary to this feature is that the car can be turned off without the key.  There in lies the rub and the basis of my near-death story.

Recently I was in the desert.  I arrived there via a rented Mazda sedan, equipped with a smart key.  The outside temperatures ranged from 103 to 118 degrees while I was there.  As it turned out on the day in question the temperature was 118 degrees.  I left my hotel to drive out into the desert for some site seeing.  The hotel valet, as they commonly do in these parts, started my car so the air conditioning would be cold by the time I picked up my car.  Sure enough, when I arrived the car was cool.  I handed him my claim check and a tip, he closed the door and off I went.  Unknown to me, the smart key to my shiny new Mazda sedan was still in the hotel valet's pocket.

Oblivious to my pending demise, I drove 30 minutes out into the beautiful but scorching desert.  My plan was to photograph anything I found interesting.  I meandered without a plan or design until I found an interesting forest of cacti.  I pulled off the road, switched off the engine and hopped out into the sweltering heat.  I quickly snapped a few photos and raced back into my car.  It was so hot outside I thought the soles of my shoes were going to melt on the road.

Once inside I reached up pushed the ignition button to fire up my trusty ride and its life saving air-conditioning, and nothing.  The car would not start.  I tried three more times in disbelief.  Then, a feeling of complete devastation came over me as I realized the smart key was not in the car.  The car would not start without it.  I quickly deduced what had happened.  The valet started the car, got out and placed the key in his pocket where it no doubt currently remained.  My attention quickly turned from how this happened to how I was going to survive in this heat.  The temperature inside the car was now approaching the temperature outside.  I was 30 to 40 miles out of town and I had no idea where I was.  My cell phone had no bars.

Later, I determined that the car did have a message light that activated when the smart key was too far away from the car.  The indicator was a very small red "key" in the lower most right-hand corner of the dash board display.  No audio signal is activated with this warning.  If I fail to put on my seat belt, a much larger light flashes in a more prominent place on the display and is accompanied by a loud beeping noise.  If I fail to close the door securely an equally large light flashes and it too has an associated loud beeping sound that chimes until you close the door.  While both are indeed important safety-related issues, not having the ability to re-start your car confoundingly warrants only a small red light in the corner, nearly out of eyesight.

It is nearly impossible to believe that this obvious eventuality was not more carefully thought through by the proponents of the smart key.  Perhaps, they thought that if you discovered that you had left your smart key in the house before you left your driveway, everything would be just fine.  Nothing really much to worry about.  But I survive to tell you that leaving your smart key behind in 118 degree weather is something very much to worry about.

The solution seems obvious.  First, make the warning light much more obvious.  Add an audible warning as well.  Neither need to continue for long periods of time, but both should be sufficiently enthusiastic and obvious as to catch even the most preoccupied driver's attention.  Second, why not allow the car to re-start again once it has been started by the proper authorization of the smart key?  After All, the only way to steal the car after it has been started with the smart key is to carjack it.  At that point the car is gone and the safety precautions to prevent it from being stolen have all become moot.  Allowing the car to be re-started without the smart key, say for some period of time or some number of re-starts, would at least avoid the life threatening situation to which this Mazda and its engineers subjected me

Not Much LUV On Greyhound In The Sky

Apparently, flying s discount carrier does not entitle one to a straight answer or, for that matter, any common courtesies.  I was recently on a Southwest flight.  We had had just taken off and the "Fasten Seat Belt While Seated" sign was still on.  However, the plane had already leveled off.  I needed to use the restroom.  I waited for the Flight Attendant to walk by and I said to her, politely, "pardon me, it is ok if I use the restroom."  She, with the look of, "why are you bothering me", replied, "the ‘fasten your seat belt sign’ is still on."  She pointed to the sign just above my head for added emphasis.  So I said, "Does that mean no?"  To which she snapped back, "I didn't say that."  Charming. 

I should have known my flight was going to be a problem when our departure was delayed forty-five minutes.  When I boarded, a Flight Attendant, a different one, equally a little too long in the tooth as the first to be acting like this, began to re-positioned my carry-on bag to make room for another passenger's bag in the same overhead bin.  She did this by employing what can only be described as the “pound and slam” method.  It appeared as though this technique was an attempt to reduce my bag into a space nearly half the size of the bag.  I asked her to please be careful as I had my cell phone and my iPad in the end compartments of the bag – the compartments she was repeatedly ramming intro the bulkhead.  She said, with a practiced arrogance "I've been doing this for thirty-one years.  Give me some credit." 

Credit?  I was giving her credit.  What I meant to say was, "Look Fool, I got here early and placed my appropriately-sized bag in the overhead myself specifically to avoid this type of mistreatment." 

While I will doubtlessly continue to patronize Southwest because they are the cheapest fares to where I generally fly, it is unfortunate (and unnecessary), that I have to give up common courtesies to do so.

Unbelievably Unbelievable

Living in Northern California, I have worn out the word "unbelievable."  I have come to use to it nearly on a daily basis.  On some days, I have had to use it more than once.


Normally, I would assume, if one told me something was "unbelievable" it would, by definition, be hyperbole.   But like I said, I live in Northern California, and people here routinely act unbelievably.


For example, people in San Francisco will regularly walk directly out of the doors to a building onto the adjacent sidewalk at full stride, without a pause of any kind and with no regard for people already on the sidewalk walking past the building.  I have had to make an emergency stop or quickly jump out of the way to avoid either running into these people or them running into me.  Unbelievable.


Or the woman, and I apologize for the gender generality here, but I have not seen a man do this, who stops in front of the turn-style at B.A.R.T to begin to dig through her purse for her ticket.  Not only can no one else pass through the turn-style, but the resulting disruption in the rhythm of the flow of people into the station causes a pile up that quite literally brings the entire entrance to a complete, albeit momentary, stop.  Are you telling me that you were genuinely surprised by the presence the turn-style or, perhaps its location, ya know, right there at the entrance to the station, where it was yesterday.  And if so, you couldn't move out of the way to dig through your purse so that ten, twenty, thirty other people are not affected by your lack of preparation?  Unbelievable.


The general level of rudeness I witness daily is truly unbelievable.  Take for example the walking smoker.  These people not only don't care about their own health, but could care less about yours and mine, too.  Everyday, I (and many others) end up following a person who is smoking.  There are five or ten or more people surrounding them on the busy sidewalk.  They blow their toxic smoke indiscriminately in all directions effecting the largest number of bi-standers as they can.  But it is outside, right?  The smoke I am being forced to breathe is no less deadly outside than it is inside.  Unbelievable.


Or the person who is walking slower than anyone else in sight, apparently with no place to go or no motivation to get there positions themselves smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk.  This way they can inconvenience the maximum number of people, who, unlike them, have some urgency in their lives.  Forcing everyone to slow down to his or her pace, the waddler refuses to move to one side of the sidewalk or the other.  I assume this is the same person who treats the far left lane on the freeway as their private Sunday-out-for-a-drive lane.  Unbelievable.

Spilled

Strangely, I seemed to be the only one who noticed.  Not his mother, or the people sitting adjacent to him.  Not the airline staff, or the people sitting next to me - and we had a bird’s eye view.  It was obvious to me what was going to happen, and soon.  Precariously perched, as it was, on the armrest of the chair currently occupied by the soon to be perp, it was a matter of when not if, the bottle would be toppled.

The bottle in question was nearly as tall as the young boy for whom it had been purchased and was filled with milk.  Strawberry flavored milk.  Under the best of circumstances, it would have been hard to imagine this child negotiating the girth and weight of this bottle to his mouth without incident.  Nevertheless, his mother, remaining utterly clueless as the scene unfolded, cheerfully opened the gargantuan jug and placed it on the armrest, with the helpful instructions to the boy, “Now drink your milk, sweetie.”

Adding to the folly, the child’s grossly overestimated coordination skills were now being further challenged by the introduction of an adult-sized breakfast on what was, arguably a platter not a plate, complete with an adult-sized knife and fork (his father, who delivered the fare and utensils, apparently suffered from the same inappropriate portions disability as did the boy’s mother).  It was only minutes before something had to give.


I was half expecting a medium sized, well-armed S.W.A.T. team to storm the concourse to extricate the knife from the boy, which accompanied the meal.  After all, it wasn’t five minutes ago that I was nearly dragged to the floor and beaten senseless by several non-English speaking, baggage screening geniuses who mistook my eyeglasses for a small thermo-nuclear device.  They threatened to confiscate my glasses because they were too stylish, at least that is what I was able to glean from the rapid-fire clucking sounds these stewards of our national safety were making to one another.  When calmer heads, and their English speaking mouths, were called to intervene, it turned out that it wasn’t my fashionable glasses that caused such an uproar, rather it was their titanium construction.  Given the level of scrutiny and the number of people involved, now totaling six, you would have thought that titanium had just been invented yesterday and that I was “springing” it on the unsuspecting world today.


Eventually, the thoroughly inspected spectacles were released, unharmed, to my custody, and we, my glasses and I, were allowed to proceed into the airport where I was now faced with a small foreign child wielding a knife.  I concluded that the knife, being, as it were, behind the mote, must not have been made of titanium, or in any way resembled eyewear. 

I thought about how strange it was that this was the first knife of any kind I had seen inside the airport since security had been tightened due to the events of 9/11 and it was in the unskilled hands of a small boy and about to become a contributing factor in a minor mishap.  With the boy wrestling with the plate as large as his lap, one tiny hand grasping the knife, giving you the impression it was twice the size of a normal knife, and the other clenching the bottle and his natural preoccupation with the Buzz Lightyear backpack, complete with lights, the milk bottle never stood a chance.  To his credit, and to the surprise of all the witnesses, the first drink of milk went off with out a catch.

The small boy, unlike his mother, seemed actually to be aware of the magnitude of the task and brought his limited faculties to bear.  The second drink was not as successful.  Not only was the milk bottle toppled from its stand, to come crashing down splashing anyone within a twelve foot radius, but the full order of eggs, bacon and toast, less the one small bite the boy managed to eat before the melee ensued, was launched equally as far.  A bit further, I might add, than even I had anticipated making me, by way of my milk covered shoes, more involved in this situation than I had hoped for.  The entire waiting area at the airlines was thrown into a state of panic as business travelers and tourist scrambled to brush food and drink off their clothes and out of their hair.

The shocked look on the boy’s face was soon replaced by loud crying and tears.  Between his sobbing and the soiled passengers brushing and stomping off debris, I could barely hear the announcement from the airline staff that our flight was ready to board.  No one else could hear it either, or simply didn’t care, as they were preoccupied with cleaning the small bits of food and damping the milk from their clothes.  It was only after the third announcement that the crowd began to refocus their energies from the emergency laundry activities they were engaged in to gathering their bags to get on the plane.

Meanwhile, the boy, who did not escape the spray from his fallen bottle, sat dripping of milk and sobbing.  His mother, undisturbed by the egg on her face, appropriately enough, and the dagger-looks being cast her way from everyone, sat calmly finishing her breakfast.  After a few moments, she said to the boy, “I’ll get you another just like it after we get on the plane, dear.”

$10,000 Padlock: Go Post Office.

I was watching the evening news the other day because I was feeling too optimistic.  The lead story was on a “brazen daylight robbery” of a U.S. Postal Service truck.  I immediately thought to myself, what would some fool want with a bunch of junk mail?  After all, that’s the Post Office delivers to my house. 

Then I started to imagine the frightened postal worker who was robbed.  As the story unfolded, it turned out that the postal service vehicle in question was an eighteen wheel semi tractor-trailer truck which was stopped at a stop light.  While the truck waited for the light to change, the robber causally opened the rear door of the trailer and helped himself, presumably, as the video of the incident did not show what precisely the robber took, to a hand full of letters.

The report then cut to the Post Master General who stated that he was “very disturbed by this crime” and that he would be offering a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of this criminal.  $10,000 dollars?  It was at that moment that I realized that the $1,000,000 a day the post office is losing largely – yesterday’s lead new story,  is the result of simple stupidity.  Had the door to the trailer been locked, say a cost to the tax payer of, em, er $2, the robbery would have been thwarted.  And the $10,000 would be available to help pay the retirement of these brain-trusts working for the post office. 

Nike Minus

I apologize to all of you that may have purchased the Nike + Sports Watch or any of this progeny prior to reading this review.  I have used my Nike + Sports Watch for nearly two years now and I have being meaning to write a review since the first time I used it.

As an avid runner and cyclist, I was excited to get the Watch primarily for its GPS feature.  At the time it was one of only a small number of watches so equipped.  While I did some research prior to purchasing the watch, nothing prepared me for the faulty design.  Having owned several Polar brand watches equipped with heart rate monitors it caught my attention that the Nike + was paired with a Polar brand transmitter.  One of Nike’s first “sports watches” came with its own off-brand heart rate monitor that was not very accurate.  What I discovered was that Nike chose for this watch, for whatever reason (generally, the bad decisions are related to costs.  Read:  increase profits), to use an older model transmitter no longer used by Polar.

The issue with transmitter is two-fold.  First, the transmitter is un-necessarily bulky.  The newer models of this transmitter, all available when this model of Nike was introduced, are all sleeker, fit closer to the body, fit more tightly to the skin, are more comfortable to wear and easier to clean and maintain.  Additionally, the older model employs a small medal hasp to fasten the transmitter strap together for use around your body.  However, if the hasp breaks or is lost the transmitter is rendered useless.  This happened to me almost immediately.  When I called Nike they said they do not supply “replacement” parts.  As a result, my $300 watch was useless because of a $.03 metal hasp – which cannot be replaced.  Ironically, this design flaw had already been corrected by Polar.  The only explanation for using this old, poorly designed transmitter by Nike when the newer, less problematic transmitter was already available to them had to have been cost saving.  A poor decision I submit, as I, and I can only assume many others, replaced the entire watch with a better designed competitor’s model rather than purchase a replacement transmitter when the cheap metal hasp was broken or lost.

The decision to replace the entire watch was made that much easier when you look at the next significant

design flaw.  The first thing I noticed when I took my shiny new Nike + watch out of the box in which it arrived was the short watch band.  When I put it on it fastened around my wrist using the last holes in the band.  And I have an average-sized wrist.  Anyone with even a fractionally larger wrist than I could not wear the watch at all.  How hard would it have been to walk around the Nike cubical farm and measure a few of the wrists of the male employees before finalizing the watch band’s length.  Instead, it appears, they chose the wrist models most convenient to them: five or six year-old Asian sweat laborers.  As a consequence, should my wrist get even the tiniest bit larger, due to, say, my improved fitness – the motivation of which lead me to buy this “fitness enhancing” product in the first place, I would not be able to wear the watch.  Or, heaven forbid that I might want to wear the watch over a long sleeved shirt of jacket while running or cycling.

Finally, the watch does not provide for “sessions.”  For example, I might want to track my walking sessions separately from my running sessions to preclude the watering down of the data gathered during the sessions.  As it is, I can either track everything and have all the data averaged together, essentially making all the data irrelevant and inaccurate or track only one type of exercise and forget the others.  My ten-year old $15 Timex could track multiple training sessions, as well as laps and a hand full of other running-oriented function.  Surely, this could not have been that expensive of a feature and would have made the Nike + an actual, effective tool for monitoring fitness.

While the display is large and easy to read, the information presented is either displayed on the smaller upper portion of the screen or below on the bigger larger portion of the screen.  However, one cannot toggle between them.  Really?  On any given run for example, one might be more concerned about elapsed time than one’s heart rate.  Or one might be more interested in one’s pace rather than the distance covered.  With the powerful and flexible Nike +, you must first choose your display profile on your computer – before you leave for your run and it cannot be changed during the activity.  This design mess is made that much more limiting if you do not have access to a computer in between activities, like when you are on vacation or away for a weekend.

For those of you that are considering a sports watch with a GPS feature, check out almost any other product.  The Nike + system is so poorly designed and so overly priced you could easily find a superior product entirely by random choice.

Paper Towel Science

It continues to amaze me that janitors and maintenance personnel universally seem to not understand paper towel dispensers.  Mind you, these are relatively low-tech devices.  One simply opens the cover, places the paper towels into the holder and close the door.  The only real decision to be made and the one that is apparently the most problematical is how much paper to place in the holder.  Here, a basic understanding of the dispenser is critical.

The dispenser is designed to accommodate a certain type of paper towel.  These towels are folded in a manner which allows each towel to be removed from the dispenser while simultaneously "loading" the next towel to facilitate on-going easy dispensing.  To set off this self-loading procedure, the first towel has to be manually fed through the slot, which is generally located at the bottom of the holder.  Once loaded, the action is automatically repeated as a function of the folds in the paper stack.

Assuming the towels are placed into the holder correctly, that is to say, such that the dispensing can happened, the only other requirement is that the holder not be over loaded.  Here is where the janitorial world seems to misunderstand the process.  If the holder is stuffed to its capacity the natural unfolding process is inhibited.  Instead of pulling one towel out at a time the compression of the towels due to the over filling causing the towels to tear and come out in pieces.  In order to get a usable towel when the dispenser is in this condition, one has to force out a hand full of paper towels at once.  This is generally a waste both in time and paper, because in order to get one or two usable towels, ten or fifteen must be yanked out.  The extra unneeded towels are discarded.

Ironically, this waste of towels causes the dispenses to become empty prematurely requiring more frequent attention by the maintenance man, who, no doubt is thinking that by stuffing more towels into the dispenser he will have to service it less frequently.   Quite the opposite result is assured.  Not only does over filling the holder result in the need for more filling, but wastes paper towels which are specifically designed to be dispensed in a manner so as to minimize their waste

“It’s Just A Dog.”

"The MRI will cost four thousand dollars."  That is what the vet said to my brother, thank god he was not talking to me.  He was told his pet Rexie needed the scan to determine if she had a tumor on her brain.  Rexie is fourteen years old and blind.  She is a loving, sweet and gentle animal.  Without the MRI there would be no way to restore her sight, relieve her suffering or save her life.  Her prognosis is grim.  Yet, even with the MRI and any successful treatment resulting from it, she will not likely live much longer.  Such is the reality of pets.

While completely  predictable,  the realization that your beloved pet, a family member unqualified in any meaningful way, will likely predecease you, is nevertheless something for which it is impossible to prepare.  I can only begin to imagine the sorrow he and his family will feel when she dies.  And I do not envy them the decision to forgo the possible life-lengthening treatments based almost entirely on the costs of those treatments.  To say, "oh, she's just a dog" is to so understate the magnitude of the decision as to render it as meaningless as it is trite.  Making such a decision is the ultimate burden conferred as a result of the unwritten covenant that accompanied the pet to your home.  A burden often fully understood if ultimately underestimated.

It will be had to imagine life without the joy Rexie was, it is even harder to imagine what the last fourteen years would have been like without that joy.  A blessing beyond description even with the tears of her passing.