Musings

Any historical rundown of technological ingenuity and innovation must include happenings in the Detroit Metro area. I have seen (and explored) drive-through liquor stores—and I don’t mean a drive-up window; I mean structures, some with solid doors to close out the weather, and other similar stay-in-your vehicle retail establishments. Here I note my first drive-through Sbux, and it’s in the the Detroit area.

We just drove-through once, but based on that experience, I’d hypothesize that the drive-through alley creates a Venturi effect that slows the staff dramatically. Or something. Gad, they were slow.

Food for thought: are these drive-through business establishments mostly vendors of food/drink?

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

It’s tough on auto companies.

They need to develop the next generation of product, but if they send their test cars out in public (after all, there’s only so much you can learn in the lab or on the test track), they must endure snoopy spies…who photograph and post pictures of the not-yet-released vehicles on the internet, so secrecy is…stomped? diminished? destroyed?

So, I’m one of those people who saw, photographed, and posted.

Posted at 5:55 PM | Comments Off on Camo car (Ford flavor)

Store One: Apple Store. Test item: iPad Mini.

Niiiiice. Really nice.

Store Two: Microsoft. Test item: Surface.

A bit slow, nice screen. Kinda strange (for a Mac-person).

Store Three: Office Depot. Test item: Nexus 7.

Really slow (sales-dude said the system was overloaded—not a good sign); never loaded photos from this blog, just text. Screen fine. Text strange (as in different fonts) but readable. Map cacheing isn’t quite what we expected.

Take away….

I now know what it’s like to hold the Mini—I’d hold it from the side and use one hand by instinct, but that’s not the most efficient way; take a lesson: learn the two-handed cradle that’s best for phone-typing.

Posted at 6:48 PM | 2 Comments »

Tempted by the new iPad mini?

It’s 5.3 inches wide, and after fiddling with a ruler, I’m thinking that my hand doesn’t have a wide enough span for that to be comfortable to hold between thumb and fingers. I saw in the demo that some models were holding it on one edge. That sounds tricky too, as you have to avoid spurious contact with the touchscreen.

My thought is, hold one first if you have smaller hands and desire one-handedness….

Posted at 6:35 PM | 1 Comment »

We saw many, many specimens of rubber meeting the road today, as in deposited there…after degrading and separating from the tire they were originally part of. And, we felt these were fresh samples, as they were still in the lanes, and not yet marginalized by repeated traffic.

Posted at 11:05 PM | Comments Off on Economic costs of “the heat” extend to tires

I really like our simplehuman™ dish drainer.

Except. Except the fancy draining design (vaguely visible at left) accumulates…crud…and periodically needs disassembly and cleaning. Which is a pain.

I see they’ve redesigned the dish rack, but I’m guessing I’d still have the crud accumulation problem…. Maybe, just maybe, it’s mostly the water.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Simple chores (accumulate)

This beastie strongly prefers being an indoor cat, I’m convinced. Still…he train-watches.

In part, this is for you, Jeff.

Posted at 9:43 PM | Comments Off on Look both ways

I know these aren’t the only two pointy-bridges, but we traversed one northbound, and here’s the southbound one…effectively bookending our trip.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Bookend pointy-bridges

Sometimes you are lucky, and even when you are traveling between metropolises, you can take non-interstates, and find architectural gems like this bridge across…um, yes, the Ohio, right by the somewhat scary Rockport Generating Station, which WikiPee says has the one of the highest smokestacks (not cooling towers) around.

Farther up the road, we dined in a German sausage restaurant—thankfully, with a salad bar (three dollars extra, mam), and passed through the town of Loogootee. John hypothesized that the name came from a native term or phrase, and I, to be contrary, said, oh, no, it’s corrupted French. Which seems to be likely—ha! (Like I said, ya get lucky once in a while!)

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Carrier. Container. The side (shown here) and the top used different terms. Either way, you stack your devils if you buy one of these.

I didn’t.

Mental exercise: think back to pre-plastic days, when you had simple organic materials at hand. What did you do for containers? Most organic materials didn’t seal the way plastic does. What’s the impact of that? Submerging in salt water (think sauerkraut) or sealing in fat (a surface layer in a ceramic vessel)…that kinda sealed stuff. But a flexible plastic skin? Nothing like it. And…?

Now, eggs back in the day. Well, you could keep it at room temp, or hard boil it. I remember with great fondness boiled egg sandwiches we had the day long ago we toured Calakmul. Hit the spot!

Pardon for the wandering post; I could have…oh, never mind, I’ll save it to use in a day or two….

Posted at 7:02 PM | 1 Comment »