There's nothing more tragic than a neglected blog. And if I had to choose one word to describe Passionately Apathetic over the past six months, it's just that: neglected. Unfortunately, blog neglect is serious stuff, not fun and games like child neglect. What's really sad is that blog neglect is all around us--all you have to do is keep clicking on the "Next Blog" button on the banner at the top of any Blogger site and visit a few random blogs. More often than not, the latest post is least three years old. (Please note that I'm not actually encouraging you to click away from this site...you'd miss a spectacular post, and I'm not about to direct traffic away from a blog that's already starving for attention.)
I've been neglectful...however, as the title to this post implies, I'm back! And I'm here to make things right by squeezing in one more post before 2012 comes to a close. "The Return" doesn't just refer to my long-overdue blogging comeback; it's also a reference to James's return from Africa last Sunday. Loyal followers will recall that in June 2010, I published this blog's inaugural post, issuing a challenge to James by claiming I could produce higher quality content on my blog(s) than he could on Life is an Adventure, despite working with remarkably boring content. For those of you who forgot, here's how my challenge read:
I firmly believe that only about 15% of a story's value comes from what you're writing about, and the other 95% comes from how you write about it. (If you're wondering about the math, this blog promises to be so entertaining, it requires 110% of my effort.)
Well, the past 31 months flew by, and now James is back. In case you don't believe me, here's a picture of him eating a good ol' American burrito at Chipotle earlier this week. If he looks a little confused, it's because he forgot how to assess the quality of food without seeing it covered in flies.
Now that he's back, we can decide once and for all who won this long, drawn out blogging competition. When I originally issued the challenge, I wasn't really sure how to objectively decide the winner, so I threw out a few great ideas: followers, ad revenue, page views, number of posts, and quality of posts. We'll just have to take a look at all of those categories to crown the champion.
I finished with an impressive four followers (which, interestingly enough, includes James himself!). I don't see any followers on James's blog, which means he either doesn't have that particular widget displayed, or he doesn't have any followers. For simpliticy, we'll assume he has no followers. Advantage: me.
I won the ad revenue contest hands-down. Between this blog and Away From the Cubicle, I racked up more than $100 in revenue and received my first offcial payment as a writer this past summer. I've since been suspended from Ad Sense (turns out Google doesn't like people talking about ad revenue in their blogs while displaying ads alongside those same blog posts...), but that's not really relevant to this analysis. Advantage: me again.
I don't have access to James's Blogger dashboard to check his official page view count (his Google account got suspended after my 300 unsuccessful password attempts), but the bottom of his blog has a ClustrMaps counter that will get the job done for this category. My Blogger dashboard tells me my two sites have racked up more than 23,000 page views, dwarfing the mere 10,600 page views on James's blog. Advantage: me (noticing a pattern here?)
In the next category, number of posts, it's once again no contest. My two sites boast a total of 180 posts, including 150 consecutive days of blogging on Away From the Cubicle during that glorious February-to-July stretch earlier this year. You read that right: that's 180 posts, and I've been MIA since July! James's blog fell a whopping 100 posts short, with just 80 posts in two and a half years. In case you forgot, he had all the excitement of battling lions and malaria, while I was working on Excel spreadsheets. Advantage: me.
Though the contest is clearly out of reach, we'll go ahead and assess the final category: quality of blog posts. Every single Passionately Apathetic post was chock full of pictures, text, humor, and entertainment. Away from the Cubicle typically included shorter, but no less brilliant, content. By comparison, a startling number of James's posts included nothing more than a single photo and, if his readers were lucky, maybe a short sentence and a title. Whoever first said "a picture is worth a thousand words" obviously never read Life is an Adventure. Worse yet, those random pictures were often creepy and best left unpublished:
And there you have it. I came up victorious in all five major categories. The numbers--and the unsettling images--don't lie. I'd like to thank all my followers for their support in this landslide victory, and also I'd like to publicly apologize to James's readers on his behalf. It's great to be back...though my fingers are no longer accustomed to all this typing and are starting to cramp. Happy holidays everyone!
It's easy to overlook all the thought, research, and deliberation that go into the products we use every day. Behind the scenes, companies spend millions of dollars trying to understand exactly how customers interact with their products in an effort to help us solve problems we didn't even know we had. Through surveys, focus groups, and even by simply watching people use products in public, consumer insights analysts, industrial designers, and marketers search for any angle that might give a product an advantage over the competition.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in products targeted at senior citizens. Let's face it, old people are closed-minded and hateful when it comes to technology--even non-smart phones are too smart and complicated for them. Back in 2006, one company tried to tear down some of the roadblocks preventing seniors from going cellular with their phone calls, and Jitterbug was born. The company carefully studied the frequent complains of the elderly when it came to cell phones. According to the age-challenged, cell phones were too confusing, too hard to read, and had too many buttons.
The Jitterbug phone is one of the most obvious examples of targeting a product at a specific group of consumers. Aside from the hideous shape, you'll notice that, as the image above points out, the handset is designed with fogies in mind, offering minimal keys for minimal confusion, and giant, back-lit buttons for those with sub-par peepers. Thanks to this simple but effective bit of consumer research, we now face the very real risk of old people texting and driving. Fantastic!
Yet another example comes from the growing but apparently underserved market of seniors. What's one of the first things that comes to mind when you think about old people? Medication, of course--they have to have their pills! And the first image that pops into my head when I think about medication is the generic, orange prescription bottle:
It's as old as time, but even the classic, simple prescription bottle wasn't entirely meeting the needs of its users. Research indicated that seniors had trouble opening the bottle, struggled to read the small font on the cylindrical container, and occasionally took the wrong pills entirely...sometimes with deadly consequences. A design student, working on her thesis project, overhauled the old bottle; with the help of an industrial designer, ClearRx hit the pharmacy sheves at Target stores across the country:
The name of the medication is printed in huge font at the top of the bottle, the label is presented on a flat, easy-to-read surface, and each bottle has its own uniquely-colored ring to help the medically-challenged quickly identify the correct bottle. You can't see it in the picture, but a recent twist on the ClearRx bottle includes a detachable magnifying strip that offers the super visually-impaired even more label-reading assistance. It's a simple yet brilliant idea. So brilliant, in fact, that the clear Rx bottle received a "Design of the Decade" award in 2010 from the Industrial Designers of America.
Now, for my loyal followers who aren't card-carrying AARP members, here's one more example that anyone can relate to: the iPod. It's incredible how many of the iPod's features were born out of intense consumer research. Once again, the concepts are simple, but the design is impressive. First, Steve Jobs and friends realized that smaller is better when it comes to music players. And a lot of people listen to music while riding on crowded buses or subways, with one hand busy gripping the overhead bar.
With the iPod Nano, you have an almost impossibly small music and video player--in fact, the picture above is an older generation Nano; the newer versions are less than half the size of the one above. It fits in a pocket with plenty of room to spare, and with the ingenious scroll wheel, people can take advantage of all the features with a single thumb--that's an incredible feat for a device that can do so many different things.
Now this is where things get interesting. Before most people buy a new car,
they want to take a look under the hood...but do they ever check what's in the trunk? One place people don't often think about industrial design and consumer research is the back of their vehicle. For the car owners out there--particularly owners of newer models--you may have noticed an odd mechanism dangling from the lid of the trunk that looks something like this:
This has always struck me as odd--it's a glow-in-the-dark trunk release that's on the inside of the trunk. In the history of the world, I don't think a single person has ever tripped, fallen into a trunk, and had the lid shut on them. Now, I know what you're thinking: the trunk release is probably designed as an escape for children who are playing around with the trunk and accidentally get trapped.
But what good parent would possibly want this? On those long (and even the short) road trips, when the kids inevitably start yelling, complaining, or just talking, the only logical thing to do is to stuff them in the trunk. Why give them a handy, glow-in-the-dark escape route?! The Malibu predates emergency trunk releases by many years, but if I ever own a car with one of these, the first thing I'll do is bust out the scissors and cut it off.
There's also a silghly different version of the emergency trunk release, and it looks like this:
The first one seemed strange to me, and this one is even more crazy. As the previous examples illustrated, every little feature in a product is born out of intense consumer research, focused on meeting all those little unmet needs. So, as the title of this blog post suggests, I ask you to think about what your trunk says about you. The emergency trunk release may seem insignificant, but it can speak volumes about the market your car's manufacturer was trying to target when it designed the car.
The first trunk release is pretty simple to understand--it was undoubtedly designed with child safety in mind, so you're likely to find that version of the emergency handle in boring family sedans. The second trunk release requires a little more thought and consideration. If you look closely, you'll notice that the diagram is clearly not showing a child climbing out of the trunk after an accidental lock-in. The person in the diagram is taller than the car, so it's an adult...and he's not just climbing out of the trunk, but springing out the trunk and sprinting away from the car like his life depends on it.
I'm not entirely sure how to interpret this, but the only explanation that makes any sense is that auto manufacturers designed this feature for drivers who are likely to get carjacked. That's the only situation I can imagine where an adult ends up in his trunk, let alone a situation where that adult is leaping out of the trunk and sprinting away from his own car.
So what does this say about the cars (and their drivers, for that matter) that have trunk release #2 dangling the back? Perhaps this feature comes standard on cheaper, low-end models that are likely to be purchased by drivers who live in a ghetto. Perhaps it's a regional thing, and this version of the emergency release is installed as an aftermarket feature by auto dealers in cities like East L.A., Detroit, the south side of Chicago, or East St. Louis. One thing I know for sure is that no one from the mafia is buying a car with one of these interior trunk releases.
Who knew that something so small could say so much? Next time you're renting a car, give the trunk a glance--it says a lot about the safety of the area you're visiting. And if you haven't made a mental note of the trunk release in your own car, give it some thought. If you're a parent, you'll probably want to have it removed immediately. If you live in a ghetto...well...you might want to leave that trunk release in place...
I'm not what you'd call a shopaholic, though I have been
known to browse the online storefronts from time to time. In the past six months, I've made a handful
of purchases from Amazon.com, and within days of placing my order, I receive an
Amazonian email asking me to log in and write a review of my
purchase. Amazon doesn't always have the
lowest prices or the best deals, but I'll give them this: the tomes of customer
reviews on all kinds of products make a very handy shopping guide.
Take, for example, the purchase of my first iPhone accessory
a few months ago--a car charger. I
wanted something small, durable, reasonably priced, and a charger that was made out of high
quality materials that would stand the test of time. It's
tough to make an educated purchase when you're shopping online...how can you
tell if an item is well-made and durable by looking at stock photos on the
computer screen? That's where customers'
product reviews come in very handy. My
search for the perfect car charger, however, did more than just educate me on
product options and features--it reinforced my previous impression that not all
reviews are created equal.
Amazon may be top dog in sheer volume of reviews, but mixed
in with nuggets of practical and useful information are an incredible number of
useless if not grammatically-challenged customer reviews. As I scanned different brands and models and
their corresponding reviews, I unearthed "valuable" tidbits like these:
Item works exactly
as described and super fast shipping was a plus!
This is a very
nice charger. It looks good and the light is nice too.
Works beautifully
and is beautiful to look at.
I get the impression that these buyers pulled the charger
out of the mailbox on the day it arrived, plugged their phone in for five
seconds, then sprinted to their computers to share their insights with
future Amazon shoppers. Reviews like
these tell me absolutely nothing except that the charger that showed up in the
mail did, in fact, resemble the picture on the package and that the charger
worked properly for one--or at least part of one--use. I also know that there is an Amazon seller
somewhere out there who provides "super fast shipping." Bam, enlightened! Information like that does nothing but
clutter the site and slow down the process of locating helpful reviews.
On the flip side, some reviewers channeled their inner Roger
Ebert and took the time to submit detailed, multi-paragraph reviews, covering
every aspect of their experience with the product--what they liked, what they
didn't like, and their overall satisfaction with the purchase. Instead of rushing from the mailbox to submit
a product review, the more intelligent customers had the sense to wait six
months or more before writing the review so they could offer some meaningful
insight on product quality. Some
reviewers took a follow-up approach and wrote an initial review, then came back
after six months and provided an update on the charger's longevity.
Despite having to sift through troves of useless customer
reviews, it didn't take me too long to select my winner: the Griffin GC23139
PowerJolt Dual. In this case, Amazon
also had the lowest price, and I made the purchase.
No sooner had I navigated my way through the One-Click Checkout than I received Amazon's standard
email asking me to rate the product. Aspiring
to provide a truly useful review, I'm going to withhold my final judgment until
at least July. I think it was Tom Petty
who said, "the waiting is the hardest part," but it's also true that
good things come to those who wait.
So now what? The
story has a happy ending, right? I needed a charger, I found one, and I bought
it. And along the way we've all learned
a valuable lesson about what it takes to write a useful product review. I've praised the good ones; I've
complained about the bad ones. End of story?
Not so fast...I've
also learned that, as the title to this post suggests, there's a third class of
product reviews that are inherently valuable to everyone, even if the reader
has absolutely no intention of making a purchase.
These reviews are worthwhile simply for their entertainment value.
There are a lot of truly useless products on the
market. It's no secret that millions of
shoppers visit Amazon as much to read customer reviews as they do to make their
final purchases. A very wise group of
writers took note of these two simple facts and came up with the brilliant idea
to write hilarious, sarcastic product reviews. We'll jump right into an example: below we have the Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve T-Shirt, the epitome of "useless product."
This shirt is currently available for as little as $11.33 on
Amazon.com. Amazon user B. Govern
expertly typed up a customer review for this priceless article of clothing. So entertaining was the review, in fact, that
more than 28,000 users have rated the review as "helpful." Here's the verbatim:
This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically
sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the
magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my
girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-Mart with the shirt on and was
immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt
that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon'
from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted
to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they
called meth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly
a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.
I arrived at Wal-Mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking
is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was
browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I
turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops
standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I
wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her Mountain Dew, and I
drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest
of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.
Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the
'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have
been better if they glowed in the dark.
See how this works?
B. Govern managed to insult Wal-Mart shoppers, fat people, and trailer
dwellers in three short paragraphs.
Other users took a more visual approach, uploading their own photos of
the wolf shift. There are too many
classics to post, but here are two of them:
The wolf shirt managed to turn back the clock for John
Travolta, and it seems to be the source of all things awesome about Chuck Norris.
Here's a second prime example of entertaining customer
reviews on Amazon. Having spent many
years at The Gym, this is a product I'm extremely familiar with: American Flag pants. There's a strong positive correlation between the quality of your gym and the number of washed-up 1980s bodybuilders roaming the facility who look like they should have a flagpole protruding from their @sses:
Here's a brief sample of the many hilarious customer
reviews that accompany these patriotic leg-sleeves:
It was such a
relief finding this amazing garment. This pant allows me a truly unlimited
range of lower body motion while staying smartly attached to my ankles with an
elasticity previously known only to my underwear. Patriotism and Freedom of
Movement. Does it get any better than this?
I originally
bought workout pants made out of France's flag, but whenever my workout partner
Hans would come over, for some reason they would turn completely white, a
breeze would come out of nowhere, and they'd start flapping/waving in his
direction. Weird.
AMERICA IS MY
SPOTTER!
Now, let's face it: Amazon sells a lot of practical, serious merchandise in addition to random crap, so it's not always the ideal place to go for the
time-crunched, sarcastic product reviewers who doesn't want to waste precious hours tracking down the useless products. If you're looking for an online marketplace that sells nothing but worthless, overpriced junk that's begging to be publicly mocked, Skymall is the epitome of perfection.
Skymall is so bad that it can only convince potential customers to browse its product offerings when they're held captive in their airplane seats with nothing else to read but the sad selection in their seat-back pockets. I truly wonder if Skymall has made a single sale to a person who wasn't brain-dead from the boredom of a lengthy cross-country flight...
An old article on humor website Cracked.com demonstrates exactly how Skymall lobs softballs that are waiting for someone to hit out of the park. In an article titled The 7 Most Useless Skymall Products (Reviewed Accordingly), author Soren Bowie, a regular contributor on Cracked, shares a variety of his sarcastic product reviews that he's posted on Skymall's website. Among other Skymall offerings, he takes hilarious shots at an oversize novelty lawnchair, a dog-deterring birdhouse, and a hidden camera alarm clock. Perhaps funniest of all, one of his reviews offered me my first exposure to the ridiculous Gravity Defyer sperm logo shoes.
His strategy is absolutely brilliant. A quick look at Bowie's articles on Cracked reveals that his posts regularly attract hundreds of thousands if not millions of viewers. And much like this blog, he seems to post something about once a month...but unlike this blog, Bowie is getting paid directly for his writing efforts.
I started to wonder how he managed to build up such an impressive following, but the answer is clear: when you're writing hilarious product reviews--whether it's on Amazon, Skymall, or elsewhere--you've got a built-in following right off the bat. I can only assume that readership on his Cracked posts skyrocketed as more shoppers admired the work of a mysterious product reviewer named "SorenB"...
When I look at these impressive results, I realize that I might be better off giving up this whole
blogging thing and devoting my writing efforts to insulting and sarcastic product
reviews--with all the online shoppers out there, I could instantly expose my writing to
millions of readers across the world. Once they get a taste of what I have to offer, I could branch out into actual published writing--perhaps a debut on Cracked.com? From there, it's only a matter of time before I take over the world of online humor. Time to go shopping...
Of all the places I've been in my life, the cutting edge of technology is not one of them. From time to time, I stumble across an online survey that asks a question like, "are you a trendsetter among friends and family; someone who is always first to buy the newest electronics?" On the rare occasion that I answer the question honestly, I have to admit that I'm usually the guy people look for when they have an outdated form of media and need some ancient, electronic relic on which to play it. I have not one, but two VCRs. My car has a cassette player. I have two big screen TVs...unfortunately, the "big" dimension is depth, not width. And on those big-screen (deep-screen?) TVs, I receive a whopping five channels--exotic stations like CBS and ABC.
And, for the longest time, I was one of the last holdouts in America still walking around with a flip phone--a text-disabled flip phone, to be precise. That's not to say I wasn't impressed with the iPhone. It seemed like everyone around my had one, and I was consistently impressed with the things they could do with an iPhone. But I could never justify the added monthly cost to tack a data plan onto my service. Sure, an iPhone would be cool, but I already had an email and internet addiction at home; did I really need to spend money to take it on the road with me?
Yet by late fall, cracks started to appear in the anti-iPhone wall I'd built around myself. Two things started to make me reconsider. First, I could see the end of unlimited data plans on the horizon. AT&T dropped it's unlimited data plans in 2010, then announced last summer that it would start throttling download speeds for its remaining unlimited data customers who had been grandfathered in. Around the same time, Verizon, my carrier of choice, announced that it, too, was doing away with unlimited data for new customers. That left Sprint as the only major remaining carrier offering unlimited data. I was envious of my iPhone-using Verizon friends who would be grandfathered in...and I started to wonder how much time I had before Sprint, my last hope, axed unlimited data.
I started casually shopping, looking for a way to get a reasonably-priced unlimited data package. Sprint was my main target, but after considering every possible angle--company discounts, joining a family plan with my parents, you name it--I couldn't find a way to get the monthly bill down to a price that I found acceptable. Perhaps that was for the best...contrary to the company's name, I'd heard numerous complaints that Sprint's data speeds absolutely crawl. I lost hope and decided I would stick with my flip phone until the bitter end.
And bitter it would be, because my desire to upgrade to an iPhone only grew stronger when Apple released the iPhone 4S. A lot of die-hard Apple fans, expecting Apple to launch a spectacular new iPhone 5, were disappointed that the new version wasn't radically different than the iPhone 4, with some upgrades to standard features like an improved camera and faster processor. Nevertheless, I was impressed, but I suppose it doesn't take much to impress a guy who's phone is pretty much just a phone. The camera on the new 4S offered 8 megapixel resolution--better than my actual camera and a huge leap forward from the 1.3 megapixels on my flip phone. The pressure was mounting, and a few more cracks formed in that wall...but I was still holding strong.
Then, out of nowhere, a random email showed up in my inbox and drove a bulldozer straight through that wall. I almost deleted the email on the spot, mistaking it for spam, but it would change my cell phone future in a profound way. I still don't know how she got my email address, but a Verizon sales rep sent the message, announcing a special deal offering an unlimited data package for a mere $20 a month. I emailed back and forth with her about thirty-seven times just to make sure I there was no fine print, no catches, no traps. This sounded way too good to be true--not only would I have a cheap unlimited data plan, but I'd even be able to stay with Verizon! The wall was gone; I was getting an iPhone.
I went to Verizon's website to place my order. I tried to take advantage of the Verizon trade-in program but was disappointed to learn that my Moto W755 flip phone had a trade-in value of exactly $0.00. I also felt a little cheated that I didn't receive double the amount of Verizon's standard "New Every Two" discount since it had been at least four years since my last cell phone upgrade. But I tried to dwell on the positive; after all, this was a day of celebration!
After a grueling six week wait thanks to an Apple back-order, the day finally arrived, and on December 3, 2011, I found myself in place I'd never been and would likely never find myself again: on the cutting edge of technology. I immediately went out and purchased a case for the phone, and after considering a wide range of options, I went with the most industrial, heavy-duty, and expensive case on the market: Lifeproof.
The case is shock-proof, cold-proof, dust-proof, and most appealing of all, water-proof. This thing is so tough that I never have to be away from my email--not even in the shower. I was flattered to see that Lifeproof was already using my picture on their website:
Back in college, I dropped my Nokia Cinder Block 230 cell phone in the toilet. As much as it pained me to reach in and fish that thing out (yes, it fell in after I'd used the toilet), the $200 price tag to buy a replacement hurt even more. But I still wasn't going to buy insurance for the iPhone. I don't know if Verizon even offers it, but if they do, I imagine it costs about as much as a homeowners' insurance policy. The replacement cost of an iPhone is substantially higher than that of a Cinder Block 230, so I wasn't going to skimp on the case...it was going to serve double duty as my insurance policy. Walking around with an $80 case on a cell phone feels a little strange; part of me feels like I need a second, cheaper case to protect the expensive case that's protecting the phone.
Generally speaking, I've been very pleased with the LifeProof purchase. If I have any complaints about Lifeproof, it's that the case is a tad on the bulky side, and in addition to being life-, shock-, dust-, and water-proof, it's also dangerously close to being headphone-proof. Only the newest version of the Apple headphones fit into the tiny hole that opens by unscrewing a small cover on the top of the case. But it's already protected my iPhone on a few brushes with drops and stray liquids...
As I acquainted myself with the new phone those first few days, I had a nagging concern in the back of my mind that the iPhone acquisition might be the first step down a slippery slope. Was this the end of simplicity for me? Perhaps complexity would flood my existence...would I soon find myself hanging pictures on my walls? Driving a new, tape deck-free car? Sending text messages? The future freaked me out.
But with more thought, I realized that the iPhone would actually move me further down the path of simplicity. This may sound like the words of a man trying to rationalize, but stick with me on this...the iPhone is an indispensable tool, particularly when traveling. My greatest source of frustration when I take a trip is the massive pile of electronics that I have to haul with me. By the time I've packed all the gadgets and accessories, my carry-on bag is so full that I can't even pack a single pair of spare underwear. I won't go into details, but let's just say things get interesting on extended trips...
In the pre-iPhone days, this is what I'd take with me on a longer trip:
In that chaotic mess, I've got a camera, wall charger, power cord; an iPod, wall charger, headphones, and power cord; a GPS, dashboard mount, and power cord; a (flip) cell phone, wall charger, and car charger; a laptop, mouse, and power cord; and an A/C converter to plug in the laptop in the car.
That's a lot of stuff to carry and keep track of on a trip. If nothing else, the iPhone will pay for itself by avoiding checked bag fees. Most of all, I absolutely despise pulling the laptop out when I go through airport security. When I'm trying to take my shoes off, pull out the zip-lock bag full of liquids, and hold onto my I.D. and boarding pass, I don't want to be moving things in and out of a carry-on bag. It's a wonder I haven't lost more stuff at the airport...
Now let's take a look at that same shot, post-iPhone:
That's just beautifully simple. I have all of the electronic capabilities I had before, but all I have to carry are an iPhone, power cord, headphones, and car and wall chargers. Best of all, never again will I have to take that *^#@$ laptop out in the security line. The only potential flaw in my slimmed-down travel profile came in the form of the iPhone's tiny on-screen keyboard. I do a lot of typing (and blogging) when I travel, and I just don't have the thumb speed to keep up with my racing thoughts on that tiny iPhone keyboard. The same goes for the standard pen and paper--too slow to cut it.
What I needed was a full-size keyboard that plugs into the iPhone, but that's bulky and defeats the purpose of a portable handled device. Fortunately, I tracked down an accessory that solved my typing problem:
I don't care how strange it looks when people walk by and see me with my hands below the table, furiously tapping away at my crotch. These handy pants eliminated the one and only obstacle standing between me and ultra-light packing...just don't ask to see the joystick.
Aside from the travel conveniences, I've also justified my cellular upgrade with the incredible benefits that come from having a camera at my fingertips at all times--the iPhone is an absolutely necessity when it comes to blogging. Not a day goes by when I don't encounter something weird or hilarious that I want to capture on camera. In the past, taking pictures of other people was always a nerve-wracking endeavor; there was no way to hide my intentions when I pulled out my camera and pointed it at someone. It was at great personal risk that I captured pictures like this one in Key West in 2010:
But now, it's almost scary how easily I can capture photos and videos of people with the iPhone. I casually point the phone in their direction and pretend that I'm texting or checking email, and unbeknownst to the rest of the world, I'm capturing pictures or video clips. By conservative estimates, it's safe to say that the phone has prevented between five and ten beatings from random angry people who don't want their picture taken by a stranger. And in that regard, the I have little doubt that my iPhone has already paid for itself many times over in medical cost avoidance.
I have now spent five months living the wild and crazy iPhone lifestyle, and there's no going back--the features and convenience are so amazing that I know I'll never again fire up the old Moto W755. The camera is incredible, the GPS is a life-saver, and the variety and usefulness of all the apps are stunning. But my favorite thing about the iPhone is something that you'll never hear anyone list as a top iPhone feature--in fact, it's a feature that I even had on the W755: an alarm clock.
What's so great about an iPhone alarm clock? First of all, I have the option to set a weekday-only alarm, which means I don't have to reset the alarm every night, and there's no risk of forgetting to set it the night before a workday. And best of all, the iPhone gives me the option of waking up to the sound of crickets. Getting up at 6:05AM will never be fun, but it's a little less painful to rise to the soothing sounds of crickets instead of loud, incessant chiming.
I was a little late to the game, but I clearly have no regrets about jumping on the smartphone bandwagon. As it turns out, none of my initial concerns were justified, and I've successfully avoided that potentially slippery slope. Simplicity is still mine...my walls are bare, I'm driving a car that's closing in on "classic" status, and I even called Verizon and had them disable text messaging on my iPhone. I'm left with just two concerns:
(1) It's rumored that Apple will release the iPhone 5 late this year. For most of the world, this is exciting news. But for me, it's tragic--having now tasted life on the leading edge of technology, can I handle being being bumped from the front of the pack?
(2) What do I do with all of my now-obsolete electronics? For the first time in five months, I charged up the battery on my old camera just to take the picture of my iPhone for this blog post. That seems to be the only thing the iPhone can't do--take a picture of itself. At least not yet...maybe the iPhone 5...
On a Saturday afternoon in early February, I walked down to the mailbox and pulled out the usual stack of weekend ads and junk mail. Dropping the stack on the table, a small postcard with the Google logo printed on the back fell out:
Intriguing...what possible reason would Google have to send me anything in the mail? I flipped the card over and looked at the return address, and my heart started racing:
AdSense Support? My only involvement with AdSense is this very blog and its now infamous $2.37 in ad revenue that it's generated since I started blogging in the summer of 2010. This postcard could only mean one thing, and it most certainly was not good news: Google was booting me from the AdSense program! This had to be some kind of rejection letter, telling me that I was a drain on Google engineering resources and explaining that my blog was not of sufficient quality to support advertising. Perhaps Google had grown tired of trying to convince businesses to place ads next to my lackluster writing.
I was so depressed, I almost tossed the postcard in the trash without opening it. Instead, I abandoned the postcard on the table and walked away dejectedly. It wasn't until later that day that I finally opened the postcard as I sorted through all of the week's junk mail.
My heart started racing once again; my spirits suddenly lifted. This was no rejection letter at all. My eyes immediately fixated on one particular phrase: "To enable payment for your account..."
Was this it? Had my moment finally arrived? Here I was, thinking that I was on the verge of a blogging dead end, but it looked like Google was urgently asking me to take some kind of action so they could pay me! The postcard said that I needed to enter a PIN number on the AdSense website to enable payment.
I sprinted over to the computer and logged into my AdSense account. I hadn't checked it in months...seeing that paltry balance is hardly a wellspring of inspiration to continue writing this blog. Last I'd checked, Google wouldn't issue an AdSense payment until the account balance reached $100, and that milestone was decades away at my current rate of earnings. I started to wonder if things had taken off since I last checked and my words had somehow struck Blogger gold. When I logged in, my heart rate ratcheted up another notch when I saw a red warning sign:
Earnings on hold--that sounded promising. Google wanted me to verify and enter a variety of information...tax stuff, phone number, and the PIN number from the post card. Holy crap, I think they were going to pay me!
But my disappointment returned--as I clicked around and investigated further, I realized that Google had made some kind of change to its AdSense program since I'd last logged in, and they were only looking for me to update my personal information. One thing that hadn't changed: the $100 minimum for AdSense payments.
Over the course of half a Saturday, Google had taken me on a wild rollercoaster ride of emotions. Before I picked up the mail I was perfectly content. When I saw the post card: ashamed and disappointed. After opening the postcard: elated and optimistic. After logging into AdSense...back to the disappointment.
Google has turned itself into a money-printing powerhouse with its innovative, Internet-based products--it's a very impressive portfolio of free Google tools: Maps, Books, Documents, Chat (instant messaging), Voice (phone service), Calendar, Music, Finance, Translate, Wallet (online payments), YouTube, Offers, Wave, Picasa (photos), Chrome (web browser), and one you're looking at right now--Blogger. There are far too many to list, and I've personally only used a fraction of all the available Google options--I don't even know what half of them do:
I'm not so sure about its newest--and first offline--offering: Google Emotional Rollercoaster. That *@#$ postcard took at least five years off my life expectancy--I'm still recovering from the palpitations. Since Google caused this mess, I figured they might be best positioned to fix it. So I turned to another product: Google Health. I'd heard the name but had no idea how the tool worked. Regardless, I hoped to find an online solution to my new offline problem, so I Googled "Google Health."
Uh oh. When I visited Google's blog post, I learned that Health never gained a sufficient following to achieve Google's desired scale. (Interestingly, PowerMeter, a product I was not aware even existed, suffered the same fate). I do enjoy Google's choice of words when describing the end to an unsuccessful product's life. They aren't "cancelling" or "terminating" the product, they're simply "sunsetting" or "retiring" it. I picture Google Health easing into its golden years, buying a condo in Florida, and playing shuffleboard until a dinner/Matlock matinee at 4PM.
It looks like I'm on my own on this one; not even Google can save me now. Next time I receive a postcard in the mail with anything Googley on it, I'm going to maintain an even disposition and avoid jumping to any hasty conclusions. My motivation is slowly returning--as part of the whole AdSense account verification process, I linked my bank account to AdSense, and I was pleased to see Google's $0.18 trial deposit show up in my account.
Apologies for the microscopic image--click to enlarge!
I don't want to exaggerate the importance of this little milestone, but I think this qualifies me as a professional writer, doesn't it? I've now had actual money deposited into my bank account for my work...not like that $2.37 in phantom earnings that I can't access until my AdSense account balance balloons to $100. My heart is on the mend. Sure, I've had at least five years lopped off the end of my life by this crazy whirlwind of optimism and disappointment, but the last five years aren't the good ones anyway.
In case you missed it, Thursday, May 19th, 2011 was a dark, dark day. Much like 11/13/2011, it's a date that will never make the pages of the history books, but a terrible tragedy struck the Minneapolis area:
The Gym, formerly the Twin Cities' top-ranked training center as rated by The Gym's former owner, was repossessed by the bank and shut down that morning. The Gym's closure marked the sad end of a spectacular five year run with the only gym I'd ever known. It didn't take me long after joining The Gym in the summer of 2006 to realize that I was in the right place--what that blandly-named building lacked in creativity, it made up for with a top-notch weightlifting environment.
During an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon workout that summer, two police officers walked in, talked to the guy at the desk for a minute, then made their way over to a steroid freak on the incline bench. An officer walked up on each side of the bar, spotted the guy on his final rep, then one said, "you need to come with us." The cops escorted the guy out of The Gym, his bag and chalk still sitting next to the bench. I knew I was a member of the best gym in the state. My opinion was solidified in the years that followed as I overheard countless conversations of gym members sharing stories of their prison experiences.
That's why I felt utterly hopeless and depressed when the bank shut the place down. Where would I go? What was I going to do after work every day? Was I destined for afternoons of couch time, ice cream, and Oprah? After some time off, a few of us former Gym members exhausted all other options and reluctantly joined a Lifetime Fitness, trading power-lifters and ex-cons for soccer moms and accountants.
There's no doubt, The Gym's membership list included a cast of odd characters longer than the rap sheet of some if its longtime members. But in the nine months I've now spent at Lifetime, I've realized that for whatever reason, gyms inherently attract an incredible number of unusual members. The specific oddities you'll experience may differ slightly depending on the type of gym you join, but as a universal gym rule, members seem to fall into a handful of stereotypical groups. The following is my top ten list of weird gym people, in no particular order:
#1: The Count-Out-Louds
The count-out-louds (COLs) are a rare, but unfailingly annoying breed of gym member. During a workout, a COL makes it his job to let everyone around him know exactly how many reps he's completed. Don't get me wrong--you've gotta keep track of your reps during a workout, but most people are able to manage that complicated math in their minds...quietly. One particular COL at Lifetime seems to talk louder and louder as the set wears on, grimacing and exhausting himself until he's shouting unintelligible numbers at everyone around him.
#2: The Cheaters
Every gym has 'em--the people who load an insane amount of weight on a machine, then climb on and start exercising with the worst form or smallest range of motion humanly possible. I can only assume that these people are trying to impress other gym members with their incredible feats of strength. My personal favorite is watching the guys who load twenty or more of the 45-pound plates on a leg press machine, then use their arms and/or hands to press on their legs and move the weight. Can the exercise still be called a leg press at that point?
The partial bicep curl also seems to be a favorite exercise among Cheaters, but I guess ignorance is bliss--who knew that the human elbow could bend beyond a 45 degree angle? I'm also a huge fan of the Cheaters' infamous half-bench press. After all, letting that barbell get anywhere near your chest is just too *$@^# risky!
#3: The Wanderers
You don't have be a life coach to know that focus and direction can be key difference-makers on the road to success in life...or success in workouts, for that matter. That's why it's so sad to watch Wanderers during their painfully aimless workouts. Veteran gym members walk into the gym every day with a specific plan in mind and concentrate on one or two major muscle groups during the workout--shoulders, legs, back...something. Wanderers, on the other hand, treat the gym like a wine tasting, trying a little bit of everything and accomplishing absolutely nothing over the course of an hour.
This crowd tends to swell in population immediately after New Year's, during that painful ten-day stretch during which couch potatoes resolve to get in shape and then quickly reverse course and decide that fitness will be next year's resolution...again. To help the process along, whenever I'm talking to friends at the gym in early January, I try to make loud, discouraging comments with the hope that these short-timers will overhear and start packing as quickly as possible, reducing the pointless January gym overcrowding.
#4: The Thieves
You can set your bag near it, you can leave a dumbbell on top of it, but nothing seems to stop bench thieves from working their magic. It's nothing more than simple gym etiquette, really--before you start using a bench or machine, you ask the people around if anyone else is using it. But some people choose to ignore this simple courtesy...and believe me, there's nothing more frustrating than returning from a 30-second trip to the water fountain to find a middle-aged woman using your bench as a magazine rack for her issue of Better Homes and Gardens while she does bicep curls with pink, one-pound dumbbells. This sort of thing happened from time to time at The Gym, but those occurrences seemed fewer and much farther between. I guess you make it a point to learn gym etiquette when most of your fellow gym members have wrists the size of your thighs and aren't terribly concerned about the prospect of returning to prison.
#5: The Neat Freaks and The Slobs
Another important lesson in gym etiquette: clean off the equipment after you use it. But it's important to strike a balance, because there's a difference between touching the equipment and leaving it drenched with sweat. Back at The Gym, one man took his fear of gym germs a bit too far. Every time he walked in, he headed straight for the sanitizer bottle, picked up a towel, and sprayed it with cleaner until it was dripping wet, then wrung it out on the floor. For the rest of his workout, he wouldn't touch a single dumbbell or piece of equipment without first scrubbing it down with his soaked towel.
Oddly, a guy with a polar opposite philosophy often worked out at the same time. Normal people usually don't sweat too much during a non-aerobic, weight lifting workout, but this man, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bill Clinton, constantly looked like he had just climbed out of a swimming pool, and not once did he ever wipe down a piece of equipment. Using anything after Mr. Clinton was downright frightening--beads of his sweat were still streaking down the bench long after his workout ended.
Here's my general rule: if I only touch something, I don't wipe it off. If I sweat all over it, I wipe it off. I don't get too hung up on cleanliness at the gym. I wash my hands at the end of the workout, and I make it a habit not to go around licking the equipment. So far, that strategy has worked pretty well for me.
#6: The Freeloaders
Television is a great way to help pass the minutes during a grueling cardio workout, but TV can also destroy a well-intentioned lifting routine. Clearly, some members believe that as long as they're at the gym, it counts as a workout...no matter what they're actually doing. I thoroughly enjoy watching gym-goers sit idle on a bench for ten-minute stretches, eyes glued to the TV screen a few feet away. (Even better when they're sitting in a gym, watching The Biggest Loser...a brilliant strategy to one day end up as a contestant on the show.) This phenomenon has gotten so bad that I'm convinced that some members' sole purpose in joining the gym was to take advantage of the satellite TV subscription, not because of any interest in health or fitness. Here's my philosophy: if you're able to follow the plot of the TV show you're watching at the gym, it doesn't count as a workout.
#7: The Screamers
Every gym has a least a few people who fall into this category--the painfully loud grunters and screamers. Back at The Gym, the frequent screaming made at least a little sense. There were always crazy power lifters who were lifting incredible weight, enough to justify the gut-wrenching shrieks. That, and at The Gym, it was always a safe bet to assume that someone may have been stabbed when you heard screaming. But beyond the hard-core power lifting crowd, the grunting and screaming gets old very quickly. One particular member was a poster child for this group. A short, round, bald man who resembled Humpty Dumpty, this guy always screamed--and I mean always. Doing warmup stretches? He screamed. Toning his calves with some light weights? More screaming from Humpty.
#8: The Droppers
If you've ever worked out at a YMCA, then you already know that the group known as "The Droppers" consists primarily of high school males who seem to enjoy drawing attention to themselves by dropping dumbbells from a height of several feet at the end of each set. Ironically, Droppers aren't typically lifting very heavy weights, which makes it hard for me to understand why they want everyone to know that they just completed a set. Even when Droppers are standing within arm's length of the dumbbell rack, they choose to drop the weights. I just don't get it. I'm still waiting for the day when a Dropper breaks a few of his own toes with an errant drop--it would make for a delightfully appropriate, self-inflicted punishment for an extremely annoying habit.
#9: The Overly Comfortable
Unlike Droppers, members of the Overly Comfortable crowd skew much more heavily toward the upper end of the age spectrum. This group gained fame not from its members behavior in the workout area, but in the locker room. After a post-workout shower, most people dry off and get dressed--the way it should be. But that's not the case for the Overly Comfortable. After showering and toweling off, the Overly Comfortable are in no great hurry to track down their clothes. I guess we should be happy that these people feel comfortable with their bodies, but from what I've witnessed (despite my best efforts), the Overly Comfortable are the least deserving of this overwhelming sense of confidence that they seem to possess when it comes to their body image.
I suppose when you reach age 65 you just assume that you've earned the right to take your sweet time in putting your clothes back on, but I can't say that I appreciate the group of senior citizens that has turned locker rooms across the country into a nauseating network of nudist resorts. If you're a complete stranger and want to strike up an awkward locker room conversation with me, please, please have the courtesy to wait until you're at least partially clothed...
Apparently I'm not the only one who has experienced this uncomfortable situation...what a fantastic illustration!
#10: The Inflated Egos
The Inflated Egos are a unique class of gym members, easily identified by their illusions of tough-guy grandeur and their mysterious allergy to sleeved shirts. You'll rarely make eye contact with any of the Inflated Egos, because they spend 95% of their time admiring themselves in the mirror. But keep an eye out, because Egos are so engrossed in self-admiration that they've been known to walk right into other people while not-so-subtly sneaking another glimpse of their own reflection.
To make matters worse, the Egos occasionally pass the time between sets by flexing in front the mirror. If you're a professional body builder preparing for competition, then practicing your posing technique is an important part of the job. But if you're a narcissistic, recreational weight lifter with an undeserving sense of pride, flexing in the mirror is just plain laughable.
It's also important to realize that the average IQ of the Inflated Ego crowd is extraordinarily low, and if you somehow manage to get pulled into a conversation with one of the Egos, your only shot at a semi-meaningful discussion rests on your ability an speak at length about one of the following three topics: weight lifting, bar fights, or strip clubs. Outside of those core subjects, you might as well be trying to explain calculus to a hamster.
#11: The Freaks
Yeah, I know I said this would be a top ten list, but I need one final catch-all group to fully capture all of the other odd gym members who fall outside the ten other categories: The Freaks. This category covers all of those strange gym-goers who are so unique in their oddness that they fall into their own niche of weirdness. What exactly am I referring to? I have two perfect examples, each supported by brief video clips. First, there's dancing guy:
The clip isn't even ten seconds long, but let me assure you: every spare second that this guy isn't on a machine, he's dancing--not just a few seconds here and there, but for the entirety of his hour-plus workouts. And believe it or not, he was relatively subdued when I captured this clip. When he really gets into it, he'll clap his hands and get his hips swinging like you wouldn't believe.
Next, we have skipping/prancing woman:
Let me start by saying that I apologize for the length and quality of this video clip, which warrants further explanation. The local Lifetime Fitness has a 1/11th mile indoor track, where you can often find this 50-something woman on weekend mornings. What is she doing? I'm not exactly sure. I can describe it only as some kind of combination skipping, dancing, toe-tapping, arm-swinging, Michael Flatley-esque run/walk. And on such a short track, you're subjected to this unusual routine every 45 seconds, which makes for an odd workout. I'd hoped that I could capture a much better video of this strange ritual, but I decided to air on the side of subtlety. This woman already attracts enough strange looks from Lifetime members when she's not being followed around the track by some creepy guy with an iPhone, video recording her prancing.
It appears that the glory days are over and The Gym is closed for good, but while the faces have changed, the daily entertainment and frustration that comes from being around strange and annoying gym members will live on forever. As I've come to learn, that's just a universal truth, as certain as death, taxes, and monthly dues.
July 4, 1776. December 7, 1941. September 11, 2001. November 13, 2011. Okay, so the history books may never recognize 11/13/11 as a milestone in American history. But that doesn't make the day's occurrences any less significant. For months, I had pictured exactly what the occasion might look like, but when the day finally arrived, it somehow slipped my mind. And I missed it. Not by much--only 21 miles--but I missed it:
But you can't really blame me. When I left for Arizona on November 11, the Malibu was sitting at 99,992 miles as I flew out of Minneapolis. I knew that when I returned on the 13th, the drive home from the airport would push me past the elusive 100,000 mile barrier, and I would be ready and waiting with my camera. The instant those five consecutive zeroes appeared under my speedometer, I would capture the historic moment, even if it meant slamming on the breaks and coming to a dead stop in the middle of the interstate to ensure a high-quality photo.
During my time in Arizona, I feared that something--I didn't know what exactly, but something--would happen to the Malibu while I was out of town. It just couldn't possibly happen...a Chevy Malibu reaching 100,000 miles? It's like winning the lottery...or getting hit by lightning...or winning the lottery at the exact same time you get hit by lightning.
With the excitement of the trip and the painful transition from the 70s of Tucson to the shrinkage-inducing 20 degree temperatures of a Minneapolis winter, I failed to give the odometer the attention it so desperately deserved. The plane landed, I picked up my luggage, found the Malibu (sadly, no one had stolen it), and managed to get the car started...on the first try, no less! Me: 1, Theft System Light: 0. I pointed the car toward home and was on my way.
When I pulled into the garage, I realized I'd missed it. I looked down, and my odometer read 100,021. Tears filled my eyes as the significance of the moment began to overwhelm me. Over the course of eight and a half years (and with a 25,000 mile head start courtesy of the previous owner) I had timidly gone where no Malibu owner had gone before. It was the perfect ending to a year that, by Malibu standards, was pretty darn good. (The Malibu celebrated the occasion by briefly shutting off the Check Engine light, which promptly returned in all of its blinding glory on November 15.)
It's been a full 13 months since I last wrote about the Malibu...twice, I guess, back in December, 2010. That's a good sign, because when it comes to the Malibu, no news is good news. With my opening blog of 2012, I figure now is as good a time as any to update the infamous repair expense thermometer:
As of the previous update, the repair thermometer sat at $6,494, which means that I spent another $924 on Malibu repairs in 2011. That may not sound like a great year, but it beats the $2,600 I spent on repairs in 2007...or the $2,050 I spent the year after...and it's well below my five year annual average of $1,500. But enough about the numbers. Behind the $924 repair budget sits a fine, fine Malibu story.
The entire $924 was spent on a single repair...and a strange one, at that. On Friday, April 22, I came home from work and pulled the car into the garage. Family came to visit that weekend, and I didn't drive the car again until I started backing out to go to work on Monday morning. The moment I started backing up, I heard a loud grinding sound. Believe me, I've been through enough Malibu repairs to know an expensive sound when I hear one, and this didn't sound good at all. My first guess was that something was lodged under the car. I got out and looked around, but couldn't find anything unusual. I got back in the car and slowly started backing up again, only to hear more grinding. Whatever this was, it didn't seem to be going away.
I slowly navigated the car out of the garage and into the parking lot, loud grinding accompanying me for the duration of my short, pathetic journey. I felt certain that a tow truck was in my not-too-distant future. I got out and walked around the car again, and in the bright morning sunlight, I spotted the problem: the front driver's side wheel well was resting comfortably against the tire. I had no problem identifying the issue, since I had just replaced the rear struts on the Malibu--at great expense--the previous October.
I went upstairs and called a tow truck, then called work to tell them I wouldn't be making it in to the office that day. On the bright side, I'm happy to report that that particular phone call has become supremely efficient over the years:
Me: "I'm going to have to work from home today."
Work: "Malibu?"
Me: "Yeah."
As I waited for the tow truck, I realized that the Malibu had hit rock bottom in it's track record of mediocre quality. It's one thing when your car breaks down while driving. But the Malibu found a way to break down while sitting in a climate-controlled garage! To put that in human terms, the Malibu's parked strut-failure is the automobile equivalent of seriously injuring myself during an afternoon nap. Hardly the injury of a courageous warrior...
But like I said before, 2011 ended up being a pretty solid year. I got to ride in a tow truck and walk home from the repair shop, and I guess I should consider myself lucky that the struts didn't break while I was driving...after all, I'd hate to roll another car off the interstate. And after installing my second pair of new struts in six months, I cruised through the remainder of 2011 without another repair bill. Things could certainly be worse...
With 100,000 miles and nearly $7,500 in my rear-view mirror, I'm slowly rebuilding the Malibu, piece by expensive piece. New struts, new driver's side window controls, two new tires, an overactive Theft System...I have no reason to feel anything but confident--I'm practically driving a brand new car! My sights are now firmly set on 200,000 miles.
I now close with the same offer that I extended at the end of 2010: help me fund the next leg of my journey, and ride shotgun as the Malibu extends it's already impressive mileage record. I promise you this: the next time five consecutive zeroes show up on my odometer, I won't forget to snap that picture. So click that button...
