someone spotted me using this keyboard yesterday and quizzed me for a few minutes. he wanted to know if it would work on a Kindle. i think not but i wasn’t sure enough to say. i think the kindles have no bluetooth, but that even if they do they are not designed for productivity. they are designed for purchasing content from amazon. whatever the case, the gentleman was oddly strident about his enthusiasm for the keyboard. “i’m thinking i have to get one of those things. right now. i mean, it’s going to be extremely important.” he didn’t overdo it but he was projecting urgency onto me in a somewhat oddball way.
i wrote a bunch of words today. words all over the place. i’ve been adding haiku-like lines to the discarded umbrellas site. since the theme of umbrella carcasses is nothing unusual i thought i’d add something different. sometimes the lines are commentary (of sorts) on the umbrella photo, other times it’s random.
a relatively small amazon order today brought an army of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper rolls, a lemon/lime juicer, a couple of 3d bluray discs, and a carrying case for the Wacom tablet i can just not seem to warm up to. i got the thing so i could learn to draw without burning through paper and pens but i just can’t get the gist of the thing. i think i read that Katchor uses a similar, more high end tablet product, and that it took him, a skilled artist, months to get the hang of it. i also blew a couple of hundred $ on Corel Painter, since it works so well with the Wacom, but i still can’t adapt to the technique. i will learn, though. i know i will.
speaking of Katchor i pre-ordered his next book, due out March 5.
i am tired and tired and tired this day. i have to get up at 7am on tuesday for a corporate-esque wankfest that may or may not be beneficial for me. i am always skeptical of these things but usually they turn up something useful. i haven’t gotten up at 7 (except to pee) for years.
we might be going to Providence, RI, in a few weeks. only saying “might” because plans are allowed to change and they often do. i’ve been curious about Providence for a long time. when i made it to Washington DC last year i had been contemplating the trip since 2009, so there’s a record on my side for changing and procrastinating on well-laid plans.
i was thinking about that DC trip yesterday. it was rife with unintended coincidences. i stayed at a hotel in Alexandria which happened to be the last place i saw my dad alive. i didn’t realize that until after i booked. and the cost of the hotel room? $181. 181 is my magic number. there were a couple of other co-inky-dinks but i can’t remember them now.
it’s funny how thoughts surface in the mind at times. i couldn’t get a phrase from a NY Times restaurant review out of my mind. “When we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?” it’s from a review of a Times Square restaurant, though the word restaurant should probably be in quotes to keep in the spirit of the review. apparently the decimating review has not hurt business. i like the phrase DONKEY SAUCE.
a personal email invitation to Payphone Hack Day at NYU arrived tonight. i’ll take a pass but it’s interesting for me to see varied disciplines take a seemingly legitimate interest in public telephones. i will be nice enough to respond with ideas but i’m not spending 2 days of my life among loud people. i don’t know that these folks will be LOUD but as i am the farthest thing from loud i think a large group of people will be louder than me, and i cannot compete with loud.
i’ve said many times on this space: if you want to win an argument with me, just yell. just yell louder than me. that’s all it takes. you can be as wrong as a trombonist in a string quartet but if you yell enough you will always win your argument with me.
and as for payphonery i don’t get a good vibe from the DoITT any more since they deleted the PPT dataset i requested. they also ignored my question asking why. i think they’ve always thought me a bit of a loon, for as much as they burn their precious cycles thinking about me at all. the skepticism from people i’ve talked to in the payphone provider business toward the DoITT is palpable.
i think they should make a payphone that works. i don’t care if advertising panels follow me home and drink all my vodak. i’ll take display advertising to the hilt if its revenues subsidize my ability to use public telephones to successfully complete telephone calls. reliable and functional telephone devices would be the greatest innovation of all in the realm of public telephones. it’s not going to happen because it’s too expensive and no money is at stake.
