This modern world...

I needed a wheelbarrow, hygiene products, beer, deodorant, soda, a memory card, and shotgun shells. In America, this means one thing: A trip to WalMart.

I was dismayed to wander their vast garden department and discover that apparently wheelbarrows are no longer a thing? At least at this Wally World they weren't. Nor were there any nice wagons in the toy department I'd trust for garden cart duty.

Off to Sporting Goods for some ammo. There were a couple boxes of Federal 9x19 and about a case of TulAmmo, and stocks of .40 and .45 were back to normal levels. Deuce-deuce was still completely absent save five boxes of CCI Stingers.

Even though the "3 Box Limit" sign was gone, I decided to ration myself to a box of Federal 9mm, a 50-round value pack of Remington L223R3V to help replenish stocks after the CTC match, and a box of shotgun shells. I looked around for someone in Sporting Goods to help me, but found no one.

Nor did I find anyone in the adjacent departments: Toys, Automotive, Housewares, Lawn & Garden, Hardware... the entire northern fourth of the store was like the Empty Quarter, devoid of blue-shirted life.

I returned to Sporting Goods, where another customer had showed up at the ammo cases. He was calling his buddy about the inventory levels, asking if he wanted the Federal 9x19. I informed him that I was waiting on one of the boxes myself. He was cool with that.

I pulled out my own cell phone, used the portable magic elf box to get the phone number of the 73rd Street Wally World (2.2 out of 5 stars in Google!) and called the front desk, informing them that I was calling them from inside their own store, and could they get somebody in Sporting Goods?

*Customer needs assistance in Sporting Goods. Customer needs assistance in Sporting Goods.* came over the intercom.

By this time, a third person had showed up, looking for help. We chatted a bit. Still nobody.

I called the front desk again. She explained there was a manager's meeting going on, but she'd try to get somebody back there.

*Customer needs assistance in Sporting Goods. Customer needs assistance in Sporting Goods.* again.

Another couple showed up seeking assistance, this time with questions about fishing stuff. There was now a little knot of us, growing increasingly agitated. I checked my watch. I'd been waiting twenty-five minutes at this point.

I pulled out the magic elf box again, and looked something up on the internet. The number I was looking for was 1-800-WAL-MART.

"Hello, yes, I do wish to discuss my shopping experience. The one I'm having now. Yes, right now. I'm standing in the Sporting Goods department of your store at 7325 Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis, and have been standing here for twenty-five minutes despite two calls to the front desk..."

The person on the other end was polite and helpful sounding. Less than five minutes after I hung up...

*Will a salaried member of management pick up the phone? Corporate on line one. Will a salaried member of management pick up the phone? Corporate on line one.*

Two minutes after that somebody showed up with the keys to the case and got us our ammunition with a quickness, as well as a level of obsequious toadying that would please a Whole Foods customer. You'd have thought we were a trade delegation from Dubai and not a handful of J. Random Customers needing shotgun shells.

Five minutes later, as I was pushing my cart through the grocery department, my phone rang. It was Josh or Justin or Dustin or somebody from Bentonville, sincerely asking me if everything had been resolved to my satisfaction and was I having a pleasant shopping experience? Why, yes, Josh or Justin or Dustin, I am now, thanks to you guys at corporate. You need to crack the whip on this store more often.

I'll tell you what, they may have the occasional substandard store, but as a company? WalMart isn't playing around.

That was quick.

With every new gizmo or convenience device in your life, there comes the moment when you have that "How did I ever do without this?" epiphany.

For instance, many years ago, not long after I had purchased my first car with remote door locks, I came walking home from the grocery store, arms full of bags. After schlepping up the stairs to the second floor, I found myself standing outside the apartment door and thumbing the Bimmer's key fob as though it would unlock my domicile.

Yesterday, I found myself out front of Locally Grown Gardens, looking at flats of vegetables and herbs, and I pulled the phone out of my pocket and asked it "Is marjoram a flowering herb?" with my voice and it served up the Wikipedia entry on marjoram.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that that may be the single most amazing thing I've ever done with a computing device in my life. LawDog has long referred to his computer as the "Magic Elf Box", which I've always gotten a chuckle out of, but yesterday was the first time I've found myself staring at the gizmo in my hand like an extra from The Gods Must Be Crazy with an airborne Coke bottle. This is nothing less than a Portable Magic Elf Box that fits in a shirt pocket...

Science Fiction

While up in New Hamster last month, Marko and I ran into town to do some errands. As one is wont to do, we stopped at Best Buy because it's a big building full of shiny things with blinking lights; sort of a bug zapper for nerds.

I'd been idly toying with the idea of getting a new camera for a while now, being less than completely satisfied with the little Kodak I bought as an emergency stopgap a couple years ago for the Lucky Gunner thing, and so I wandered through the camera department at Best Buy, poking this and hefting that, kicking tires and looking at price tags when, over on the clearance end cap, I noticed an open-box Canon PowerShot SX500 IS.

That seemed like a lot of camera for $149... I pulled out the Portable Magic Elf Box and confirmed that MSRP was, indeed, $299. Hm. Manual override on everything; a full 30x optical zoom... Sold.

The capabilities of modern point-'n'-shoots are simply stunning. The other night, Bobbi and I meandered into the yard to see if we could spot the comet, with no luck. Before going back in and getting out of the cold, I ran the zoom on the Canon all the way out and, on a lark, pointed it at the moon and squeezed off a single hand-held frame, letting the camera handle the rest...

Day-umn.

Feel free to embiggen. "Shoot the moon" indeed...

XVIIIth Century Brain in a 10101st Century Head

So, my dead desktop has my only running copy of Acrobat on it, which I kind of need to do some, you know, work-type work over the weekend. So I'm going to drag its mortal remains to the 'puter store and see if the drive is salvageable, and which would be cheaper (or even feasible): A bare-bones XP system into which I could drop the old drive, or just getting a Winders 7 version of Acrobat for this machine.

Anyhow, I was sitting here, fretting, and not wanting to go anywhere until I'd heard back from various bosses and coworkers and whatnot via email... all while the Portable Magic Elf Box* is sitting there all charged up next to me. Derp. I guess I can just unplug the dead box and go, then...


*That would be the Android phone, for new readers. Which, you know, can get email anyplace, even in line at the 'puter store.

From Facebook...

Day One.
Put my feet on the floor when I woke up. Got dressed. Walked two laps around the block before turning on the computer. My brainy little watch says it was sixteen minutes of walking, seven tenths of a mile.

Day Two:
Woke up at shortly after 0500. When it became obvious I wasn't going right back to sleep, I instead put my feet on the ground and started my day, rather than lying abed waiting for the alarm clock. Took three laps around the block to see how far that would be. Comes up to 1.02 miles, or near enough to a mile as makes no nevermind. 1.02 miles in twenty minutes and fifteen seconds.

Day Three:
Woke up with the alarm clock at 6AM. Got dressed. Three laps around the block. 1.05 miles in twenty minutes and ten seconds, according to the portable magic elf box.

Day Four:
Woke up about fifteen minutes before the alarm clock. Put my feet on the floor. Got dressed and headed out the door, put in my three laps.
Walked 1.04 miles in twenty minutes and fifty-five seconds.

It's easy to kid yourself about the shape you're in. Usually, at least.

But when you're laying on the cold, hard caliche in the glow of truck headlights, well into a panic attack as oxygen debt sets in and you're being pretzeled by someone who is going to pull your own gun from your holster and shoot you with it and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, there's no lying to yourself about what shape you're in.

I'm going to fix that. Baby steps, first, starting with more exercise and less beer.
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How not to answer the phone...

When I first got the portable magic elf box, I was playing with it in the waiting room of the hospital while Bobbi was attending to her mother. I discovered that the phone had pre-programmed "excuse messages" that could be sent to callers if you couldn't answer the phone, stuff like "I will contact you as soon as I'm out of this meeting" and things like that, so I reprogrammed them to say the kind of things I found funny at 0300 on a Sunday, stuff more along the lines of "I can't talk right now; there's a badger gnawing on my leg," and "I am unable to answer the phone at the moment. I think a dingo ate my baby." I haven't used any of them since. Until...

Last night, Bobbi and I had gone out for a bite to eat and then stopped at a coffee house afterward for a cuppa joe before heading home. The music was a little loud, I was in line for a refill, chatting with the Baristess or whatever you call her, and my phone buzzed. It was Shootin' Buddy. I noticed the little "Excuse Message" tab and thought "Huh. I've never used one of those new-fangled excuse messages before," and selected one blindly, at random, figuring I'd step out on the patio and call him back as soon as I got my refill.

Protip: Do not send a lawyer an excuse message text that reads:

I will contact you as soon as I shoot this guy.

No sooner had the screen lit up with my accidental response than I was bolting for the patio door. Sure enough, the phone was buzzing urgently before my hand hit the knob.

Note to self: To avoid panicking people who care about me, use the one about being chewed on by a badger.

Never done that before...

Dithered in Knoxville and finally set out shortly before noon. It was maybe 15F and things were clear until I hit the mountains south of Jellico, where a lot of cars seemed to think the white salt on the road was the same as the white snow on the grass, and so you never knew when you'd come on a knot trying to pass a car 55-ing it along in the slow lane.

Once into Kentucky, the snow pretty much vanished, although the icicles on the cliffs of the highway cutouts attested it was still cold. Gassing up on the north side of Lexington, it was 21F according to the weather app on the portable magic elf box.

Heading west on 64 took me out from under the worst of the cold. Despite the walls of the steep cutout east of the Kentucky River bridge being draped with icicle sheets that would have looked more appropriate lining I-89 outside of West Lebanon, NH, most of the weather stations around Louisville were already reading ~32F.

Heading north into Hoosierland on I-65, the icy patches on the shoulders began getting closer to the travel lanes, while the petrified turbulence of frozen rapids in spillways leading into the roadside ditches gave mute testimony to how quickly pouring rain gave way to lunar cold earlier in the week.

I did something I never would have done before: At exit 29, bearing in mind the pictures from Indy traffic cams and Bobbi's reports of surface streets in the Circle City, I pulled off and got a motel room to shoot the final into Roseholme Cottage after rush hour the next morning.

Under regular conditions, I'd be maybe an hour from home. Realistically? I didn't want to tackle the last leg as it was getting dark, with the roads jammed with idiots* in a vestigial rush hour. It's supposed to get above freezing today, and I'll take the last bit after morning rush hour, fresh and rested.

*If it was just me? I'd drive that Subie home like I had a Finnish last name. But it's all those other people, the ones that want you to be part of their wreck, that worry me.

Coincidence?

Shootin' Buddy wanted me to find the directions to a restaurant for breakfast, so I dutifully scribbled them down on a PostIt note, plugged them into the portable magic elf box, and off we went into the great unknown, 'way out past 86th Street to where the buses don't run.

Unfortunately, rather than getting directions to Erika's Place in Westfield, IN, I instead took down directions to...

...Erika's Place in bustling downtown Cicero, IN. Wholly coincidentally, on this date, two thousand and fifty-seven years ago, the great Roman philosopher, lawyer, poet, and author Cicero was killed in the street by legionaries on the orders of Marcus Antony as an enemy of the republic. (Which is one of the more egregious examples of the pot calling the kettle black that I can think of.) There is no town of "Antony, IN".
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Summertime in SoBro, Part IV...

If this street scene doesn't give you that proper SoBro flavor, nothing will:


From left to right across the street is an aromatherapy joint, Salon Rue 52, and Indie Bike (purveyors of naught but cycling apparel.) To the right, out of the picture, is LUNA music, an independent record shop ("Proudly Serving Indy's Hipster Community Since 1994!") On this side of the street is Garuda Indonesian restaurant, which was yesterday's lunchtime goal.

It's a fairly new joint, and Bobbi had heard good things about it from a coworker, so we went to check it out. I had a tofu spring roll appetizer and the beef rendang, and left stuffed, without even finishing my noodles. You are not shortchanged on the portions, and the food is delicious. The service is prompt and courteous. You should eat there.

After lunch, we ran an errand to $big_box_home_improvement_store, where Bobbi was picking up some stuff to patch missing mortar in the basement's block walls. She was grabbing a trowel and tubes and bags of this'n'that. "Should we get a grout bag?" I asked.

"I don't know, I think the trowel would do..."

"Hey, I've no clue; I've never repaired masonry." I replied, "Maybe we could ask one of the dudes that works here about grout bags."

She looked doubtful, and said "I'd rather ask the internet."

At which point I whipped the ever-handier Portable Magic Elf Box out of my pocket and spoke into it: "repairing masonry using a grout bag." Shazam! We went ahead and bought one, since it was only five bucks.

Walking down another aisle, Bobbi's... er, t-shirt drew the intense concentration of one of the employees, who then noticed "Hey, there's a rifle on your shirt! And a knife in your pocket! And one on your belt!"

"Actually, that's a Leatherman tool on my belt," replied Bobbi, momentarily nonplussed.

"Did you hear what they just did in Ohio? You can carry guns into sporting events there now. And bars!"

"Uh, you can carry guns in bars in Indiana, too."

He looked like he didn't think that was a very good idea. "Really? When did..." It was at that point that I had to bite my lip to keep from saying "You know where else you can carry guns in Indiana? $big_box_home_improvement_store." But I didn't want to have to title this post "We Was Banished From The Woolworths". Besides, I thought it was pretty funny that I was having this conversation while wearing an INGO hat.

And then we finished our shopping and went home, and everybody lived happily ever after. So far.

Streets of SoBro...

Did you know this camera can make phone calls?

(click to embiggenate)

I've been messing with some of the features on the new-ish portable magic elf box's camera. Today I tried using the 'panorama' function. Above is a piccie of the heart of SoBro, the intersection of 54th and College, taken whilestanding on the corner in front of the Fresh Market and panning from southeast to northwest. Eateries visible in the picture are, from L to R: Bebop Pizza, The Jazz Kitchen, Moe & Johnny's, Cornerstone Coffee, Sam's Gyros, Twenty Tap, and Fat Dan's.

It's easy to fall into choice paralysis around here.

I was all grumpy this morning...

...but then the Rescue Squad showed up, and suddenly the afternoon turned awesome!

Me: "I think I'm going to order this 'charcuterie plate'. I'm not sure what a charcuterie is, but it says something about sausage and cheese, so... Hang on, let me check my magic internets phone..."

D: *consults her portable magic elf box* "It says here that 'charcuterie' means smoked meats... like sausage..."

Me: "Okay, I am so there."

I even ate the whole slab of pâté. I had no idea that smooshed goose entrails could be so yummy.
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Yum.

Blogmeet yesterday at Brugge Brasserie. This was my dessert:


Mm-mmm! Purina yuppie chow! (And their delicious in-house "Bad Kitty" beer.)

Small crowd, possibly due to summertime, but that meant the conversation was fast and free-flowing. I got to play with my new Portable Magic Elf Box when we couldn't remember the name of the local gourmet spice store, and all I had to do was speak into the mic "The Adventures Of Roberta X Spice" and get the answer. The name of the store is Artisano's. I swear this thing is like magic...

Hope to see everyone again next month!