Once I hit my 30s I made a concerted effort to be more patient when attempting new activities. This was a big concession for me because for a long time, like most teenage boys, I was not exactly a fast learner when it came to understanding that mastering a new skill took time. For years I gave myself a very steep learning curve, usually a couple of months at the most. Couldn't play like Stevie Ray Vaughan the first time I picked up a guitar? Screw it, time for something new. It has only been in the last couple of years that I finally came to grips with the fact that getting good at new things takes time and a lot of initial sucking. I can tell I am making progress because there is no way the 22 year-old version of myself would have stuck with golf while being this bad for this long. However, that doesn't mean my new attitude has spread to every facet of my life. What I'm starting to discover is that while I'm more willing to struggle with new things, I have less patience when it comes to gadgets and machinery, especially things which might be a couple years old. I simply can't stand having to fight with a machine which should be working perfectly because it doesn't have as many complex parts as the latest gizmos. If I have an alternative I'm still very quick to jump to it.
There is a new radio station on the dial in Boston and even though the format change resulted in a few former co-workers suddenly finding themselves without a job, I can't help but like the new playlist. (Sorry, guys. I wanted to hate it, honestly, but I just can't.) However, the station they took over had a pretty weak signal and could only be heard on the best and clearest of days, which is half the reason the last station went out of business. The new company has boosted the signal a little, but it still comes in with a fair amount of static. It is fine as I'm driving around but, much like my cellphone, the reception is particularly spotty in my bedroom. Since that is where I do the majority of my radio listening, this is a bit of a problem. The other afternoon I decided I simply couldn't take it anymore and tried to improve the signal by messing with the antenna, which on my stereo is just a wire. Trying to find a position where I could hang the wire and have a good signal, then step away without static coming back in as soon as I let go was a total exercise in frustration. I gave it exactly 10 minutes before deciding it wasn't worth the effort and I would just listen to my iPod.
It was extremely weird to be fighting with an antenna, if for no other reason than I hadn't had to do it for years. Of course, I lay my lack of success completely at the station owner's feet. How can you launch a radio station in 2012 and not make sure the signal is strong enough to reach a wide audience? It is not like this was a department store which didn't know the area and didn't know which product was going to be in demand and sold out as a result. Those guys can correct it next month and in the meantime they have a bunch of other stuff to sell you. All this company does is broadcast and they don't appear to be able to do that with any great skill. People wonder why radio has been slowly dying for the last couple of years, this is exactly the reason. There are simply more reliable ways to listen to music which don't require the wind to be blowing in the right direction or your neighbors to not have their disposal running. Also, most podcasts don't have 5 minute commercial breaks for every 20 minutes of talking. If you are going to make people give up the control they have with their personal music libraries and ask them to sit through commercial breaks than you had better not make them strain to hear you on top of it, because these days people just won't stand for it.
Unless this station wants to have new owners and yet another new format in a couple of months they need to work on improving their signal and doing it quickly. Because if they think I was impatient in trying to listen than they need to meet the generation which is coming up behind me. Most of those kids have never had to deal with anything but lightning fast internet and high definition cable television. They are the first ones to have grown up in an exclusively on-demand world and have come to think it is the norm. At least I know I'm impatient and occasionally remember to give myself a reality check by thinking about how slow the internet used to be or how amazing I found the sound quality of my first CD. The next group coming along flip out when a video has to buffer for 10 seconds, so don't expect them to spend any time messing with a radio antenna, if they even know where to find it. As for me, I clearly have some work to do on increasing my level of patience. The good news is that if the only lapses I continue to have during my quest for greater patience are with pieces of technology which are going to be outdated soon anyway than I can continue what I'm doing and just wait them out. Ironically, that will just take a little patience.
Showing posts with label First World Problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First World Problems. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
We're Waiting...
Some things in life simply can't be helped. As much as we would like to cut out anything which makes us unhappy, certain activities must be suffered through. For example, waiting in line. No one likes to wait in line because it is a giant waste of time. Also, it prevents us from moving on to the next activity and moving from activity to activity is essentially what makes the world go round. We have finished our shopping and now we want to either go home or to another location, yet society dictates we stand in one spot and wait patiently to hand over money, which is another thing we don't want to be doing. That just adds another level to the whole line experience: I don't want to do this anyway and now you are making me waste time before I do. Still, to combat these thoughts what I like to do is use my time in line to make sure that the coming transaction is over as quickly as possible. If I plan to pay by cash I take out my wallet and attempt to figure out what the final tally will be so that I have the amount in my hand. If I am paying by card than the least I can do is have the card ready to go. The people I can not figure out are the one who wait until they are at the register to start this process. If you hate standing around so much, why not use that time to make sure the people behind you don't have to wait as long?
This afternoon I went to mail a letter (I know, this in and of itself is peculiar). My town's post office happens to feature a place where you can drive up and drop your letters into mailboxes without getting out of your car. I know it sounds incredibly lazy (because it is), but that doesn't change the fact that it is also faster. Parking, unbuckling my seatbelt, getting out of my car, walking across the street to the regular mailboxes and dropping the letters in, then walking back to my car may only take a minute, but that is about 50 seconds longer than it takes to drive up to a mailbox and flip the letter into the appropriate blue container. Again, this is why you should always use the drive-through at the bank, no matter how long the line is. At least, normally it moves that fast. Today I was the fourth car in line. I didn't hop out because I thought the line would continue to move at the brisk pace to which I am accustomed, but the problem was the first woman in line apparently was new to either the concept of driving, driving this particular car or how mailboxes worked, because she had been forced to drive passed the mailbox and open her car door to get her letters to the mail slot. She had one foot out the door and was fighting with her seatbelt to get enough height to drop in her letters. If you are going to have to open your door and step 70% of the way out you may as well park and get a little exercise for your trouble.
I wouldn't have been as annoyed if the second car in line didn't decide that in front of the mailboxes was the appropriate place to sort the various letters she had to send. The woman behind the wheel would take four or five letters at a time, check them over and then push them into the mailbox before repeating the process with the next five letters. First off, even though there are three mailboxes at this location, there are only two categories to sort the letters: stamped or out of town. Also, considering I have seen the inside of a post office and it looks like they pretty much dump all the letters into one pile and sort them at that point, you could essentially drop your letters into any mailbox and it will eventually arrive at your desired destination. So not only was her sorting annoying, it was unnecessary. Secondly, it took me three or four handfuls of letters to realize despite the sorting she was dropping all these letters into the same mailbox, which meant she was sorting mail which didn't need to be sorted. (Considering all the letters were coming from her, she also should have known that before she even left the house.) If she was so concerned about making sure that all the letters had the correct amount of postage than she could and should have taken care of it while the woman in the first car was contorting herself to ensure she never had to actually step all the outside her vehicle and admit defeat.
I know complaining about a process which should only take 20 seconds taking over a minute and is still incredibly convenient is the definition of the phrase "first world problems." Honestly, I try not to do it so much and I'm constantly reminding myself to take a step back and put on the perspective that I've still got it really easy. But I've come to realize that no matter how few things I really have to complain about, I'm never going to suffer fools well and people who slow down what really should be an idiot-proof system are the ultimate fools. There are enough items in the world which break without any help, so the last thing I want it to be stuck behind is a person who seems intent on testing the limits of just how complicated they can make an otherwise straightforward machine. (For example: the people who insist on going through the self-checkout lane at the grocery store even though they have no idea how to scan things. I know it looks faster, but that only happens when you know what you are doing. Just go through the regular line and save us all the time.) It simply seems that making sure you will be ready to go when it is your turn is a much better use of the time spent in line and if you aren't ready, step out of the way of the people who are. As a society we may not be able to completely do away with standing in lines, but there is no reason for us to make it take any longer than it absolutely needs to.
This afternoon I went to mail a letter (I know, this in and of itself is peculiar). My town's post office happens to feature a place where you can drive up and drop your letters into mailboxes without getting out of your car. I know it sounds incredibly lazy (because it is), but that doesn't change the fact that it is also faster. Parking, unbuckling my seatbelt, getting out of my car, walking across the street to the regular mailboxes and dropping the letters in, then walking back to my car may only take a minute, but that is about 50 seconds longer than it takes to drive up to a mailbox and flip the letter into the appropriate blue container. Again, this is why you should always use the drive-through at the bank, no matter how long the line is. At least, normally it moves that fast. Today I was the fourth car in line. I didn't hop out because I thought the line would continue to move at the brisk pace to which I am accustomed, but the problem was the first woman in line apparently was new to either the concept of driving, driving this particular car or how mailboxes worked, because she had been forced to drive passed the mailbox and open her car door to get her letters to the mail slot. She had one foot out the door and was fighting with her seatbelt to get enough height to drop in her letters. If you are going to have to open your door and step 70% of the way out you may as well park and get a little exercise for your trouble.
I wouldn't have been as annoyed if the second car in line didn't decide that in front of the mailboxes was the appropriate place to sort the various letters she had to send. The woman behind the wheel would take four or five letters at a time, check them over and then push them into the mailbox before repeating the process with the next five letters. First off, even though there are three mailboxes at this location, there are only two categories to sort the letters: stamped or out of town. Also, considering I have seen the inside of a post office and it looks like they pretty much dump all the letters into one pile and sort them at that point, you could essentially drop your letters into any mailbox and it will eventually arrive at your desired destination. So not only was her sorting annoying, it was unnecessary. Secondly, it took me three or four handfuls of letters to realize despite the sorting she was dropping all these letters into the same mailbox, which meant she was sorting mail which didn't need to be sorted. (Considering all the letters were coming from her, she also should have known that before she even left the house.) If she was so concerned about making sure that all the letters had the correct amount of postage than she could and should have taken care of it while the woman in the first car was contorting herself to ensure she never had to actually step all the outside her vehicle and admit defeat.
I know complaining about a process which should only take 20 seconds taking over a minute and is still incredibly convenient is the definition of the phrase "first world problems." Honestly, I try not to do it so much and I'm constantly reminding myself to take a step back and put on the perspective that I've still got it really easy. But I've come to realize that no matter how few things I really have to complain about, I'm never going to suffer fools well and people who slow down what really should be an idiot-proof system are the ultimate fools. There are enough items in the world which break without any help, so the last thing I want it to be stuck behind is a person who seems intent on testing the limits of just how complicated they can make an otherwise straightforward machine. (For example: the people who insist on going through the self-checkout lane at the grocery store even though they have no idea how to scan things. I know it looks faster, but that only happens when you know what you are doing. Just go through the regular line and save us all the time.) It simply seems that making sure you will be ready to go when it is your turn is a much better use of the time spent in line and if you aren't ready, step out of the way of the people who are. As a society we may not be able to completely do away with standing in lines, but there is no reason for us to make it take any longer than it absolutely needs to.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Trashing My Plan
Back in the late 90s, neither myself nor any of my siblings drove what you would consider to be high-end vehicles (a trend which continues today, I might add). Because these cars were all on or near their last legs, you never wanted to put too much money in to keep them running. So, sometimes when we needed an expensive part to keep a car on the road my father and I would head off to the local junkyard to see if we could salvage one from another dead car. I always liked trips to the junkyard. First off, 90% of the movies I was watching at the time featured a gunfight in a junkyard, so I thought action was around every turn (it wasn't). And even if there wasn't a movie being shot, at least I would learn about engines (I didn't). Anyway, one time we were looking for a headlight for my sister's Volvo and were about to take it out of one of the cars on the lot when the guy who ran the place came over and began to yell at us. You see, we had wandered into the place where the high-end wrecks were and even though there was nothing in place to tell us otherwise, we should have just known not to go over there. Apparently, these were the "good" junk cars. Not particularly appreciating getting talked down to by a guy who looked as though he invented the process of creating crystal meth, I never went back there ever again. (Snobby behavior? Yep. And I'm not apologizing for it.) Still, I learned a very valuable lesson that day - not all trash is created equally.
Now, I have had issues with trash collection ever since my town switched over to the generic green barrels you see everywhere. It has nothing to do with the company and everything to do with the fact that I used to be able to throw away whatever I needed to and now I can't. Like everyone else on the planet, I'm simply not a fan of getting things taken away from me when I feel as though they are working just fine. For the most part I manage, but occasionally the need to throw away more than the Stepford barrels allows rears its ugly head. A few days ago some new chairs arrived at my house. As often happens these days, the boxes they arrived in were about 50% packing materials. The last time this happened I ended up simply stacking the styrofoam on top of the barrel and came out the next day to discover the material still here and a note on my barrel telling me the company won't take recycling when the lid on the barrel can't be closed. Having learned from that time I made sure to break all the pieces up so they were so small I could shove them far enough into the barrel to secure the lid. What I couldn't fit into the recycling barrel I put into the regular trash. I felt guilty about not recycling all the packing material, but thought it was better than the alternative.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I went out to collect my barrels the next day and found yet another florescent green note attached to the lid. On the paper were several options of the things I could have done wrong, but underlined was the option: styrofoam in the container. First of all, since when is styrofoam not recyclable? When I order Chinese food (cause I'm such a health nut), that comes in styrofoam packages which have the recyclable logo on, so I assumed it was all the same. Is it not? Here I felt bad about not recycling all of it and and it turns out I wasn't supposed to be recycling any of it. Then I got annoyed because I assumed this sticker meant they hadn't taken my recycling and I would have to wait until the next recycling period, which on my street won't be for another two weeks. This meant I would have been holding on to some of this trash for a month, which is not exactly going to inspire me to make sure everything which can be recycled gets recycled. I've said it a million times: when you want people to put in the extra effort on something the best way to make sure it happens is to not also make it hard for them. Fortunately when I opened the lid to confirm my suspicions I was met with an empty container.
I was once told there is a camera on the arm which picks up the barrels, so my best guess is that the truck driver emptied the contents and then discovered I had violated the rules. The fact that he didn't check before adding it to the rest of his haul shows that this is apparently one of those rules which they would like if I followed, but not so much that the guy is willing to actually get out of the truck to make sure I'm not attempting to recycle something I shouldn't and he certainly isn't about to go in after it once he sees illegal trash among the rest of my approved trash. Now I am just waiting to see if I get anything else in the mail or if next time around my house is on some kind of watch list to make sure we aren't breaking any more rules. Either way, the fact that there is good trash versus bad trash is just another one of those things I feel like isn't an issue in a lot of places. As near as I can tell it is just my street and the nearest junkyard. Unfortunately, unlike the junkyard, it is not like I can decide to take my business somewhere else in the future. Pardon the pun, but they kind of have me over a barrel here.
Now, I have had issues with trash collection ever since my town switched over to the generic green barrels you see everywhere. It has nothing to do with the company and everything to do with the fact that I used to be able to throw away whatever I needed to and now I can't. Like everyone else on the planet, I'm simply not a fan of getting things taken away from me when I feel as though they are working just fine. For the most part I manage, but occasionally the need to throw away more than the Stepford barrels allows rears its ugly head. A few days ago some new chairs arrived at my house. As often happens these days, the boxes they arrived in were about 50% packing materials. The last time this happened I ended up simply stacking the styrofoam on top of the barrel and came out the next day to discover the material still here and a note on my barrel telling me the company won't take recycling when the lid on the barrel can't be closed. Having learned from that time I made sure to break all the pieces up so they were so small I could shove them far enough into the barrel to secure the lid. What I couldn't fit into the recycling barrel I put into the regular trash. I felt guilty about not recycling all the packing material, but thought it was better than the alternative.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I went out to collect my barrels the next day and found yet another florescent green note attached to the lid. On the paper were several options of the things I could have done wrong, but underlined was the option: styrofoam in the container. First of all, since when is styrofoam not recyclable? When I order Chinese food (cause I'm such a health nut), that comes in styrofoam packages which have the recyclable logo on, so I assumed it was all the same. Is it not? Here I felt bad about not recycling all of it and and it turns out I wasn't supposed to be recycling any of it. Then I got annoyed because I assumed this sticker meant they hadn't taken my recycling and I would have to wait until the next recycling period, which on my street won't be for another two weeks. This meant I would have been holding on to some of this trash for a month, which is not exactly going to inspire me to make sure everything which can be recycled gets recycled. I've said it a million times: when you want people to put in the extra effort on something the best way to make sure it happens is to not also make it hard for them. Fortunately when I opened the lid to confirm my suspicions I was met with an empty container.
I was once told there is a camera on the arm which picks up the barrels, so my best guess is that the truck driver emptied the contents and then discovered I had violated the rules. The fact that he didn't check before adding it to the rest of his haul shows that this is apparently one of those rules which they would like if I followed, but not so much that the guy is willing to actually get out of the truck to make sure I'm not attempting to recycle something I shouldn't and he certainly isn't about to go in after it once he sees illegal trash among the rest of my approved trash. Now I am just waiting to see if I get anything else in the mail or if next time around my house is on some kind of watch list to make sure we aren't breaking any more rules. Either way, the fact that there is good trash versus bad trash is just another one of those things I feel like isn't an issue in a lot of places. As near as I can tell it is just my street and the nearest junkyard. Unfortunately, unlike the junkyard, it is not like I can decide to take my business somewhere else in the future. Pardon the pun, but they kind of have me over a barrel here.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Looking For More
I feel like I write this every year (oh yeah, it's because I totally do), but I find the TV coverage of The Masters super annoying. The tournament has strict control over how much airtime they are willing to let the networks have, so even though the golf start at 8:30, ESPN is not allowed to start broadcasting any of it until 3 in the afternoon. What you get in the interim are very sporadic and annoying break-ins of people giving updates from the event going on right behind them while not being able to show you any of it. I know that what they they are doing in Augusta is basically trying to play hard-to-get, knowing that people always want what they can't have. They think by limiting how much coverage we see it will drive up interest, but all it really does is annoy the fans (normally the people you would want to keep happy) every single year. The reason they do this is quite simple - because they can. Much like the captain of the cheerleaders in high school they know they can be a bitch and still have people lusting over them. The Masters is like the unofficial start to spring and golf season as well as being the first major of the season, so golfers just love this event. The tournament has power and its officials are happy to use it. (Just once I would love for the Masters to be scheduled as the fourth major of the year and let's see how much coverage would be limited then.)
At least they have gotten a little better in the past few years by expanding their online presence. Now you can either go to their website directly or download an app to your tablet which will give you several viewing options before the TV coverage kicks in. For example, you can either watch as groups play through a couple of specific holes or follow one group all the way around the course (for some reason they never seem to choose the really interesting groups, though). The other alternative golf fans have is to follow enough golf writers who are at the event on Twitter to keep them up-to-date on what is going on there. It is not the best option, but it is better than nothing. Still, this creates a problem for people like me whose computers are full of large files and who don't have a ton of virtual memory to spare. After streaming video for 10 minutes my computer slows down immensely and I'm left watching halted images where the people are moving in slow motion even though the audio remains at normal speed. The result is I hear the crowd applaud a full 5 seconds before the putt drops or the video will skip ahead to catch up with real time and I won't see the putt at all. And that's if I can watch long enough to not have the site crash on me. Now, I've had a little more luck with my tablet this year, but it is still not great. It streams better than my computer, but it doesn't change the fact the screen is rather small. Do you know how stupid you feel when you are watching something on a 10-inch screen while you are in a room with a 52-inch television?
Reporters who can't think of a better story for that night are always filing reports about how medical professionals are worried that people are getting too attached to their mobile devices and tablets. Well, today was a perfect reminder that it doesn't matter how much new technology we get, TVs will always be the king of attention-hoggers. Personally, I have never understood the fascination with watching TV or movies on your smartphone. If I want to watch TV I have a TV for that. I don't much see the need to watch the same thing except on a much smaller surface. It's the same confusion I have about people who would rather take a train than fly. Why? We've invented a better experience. No need to keep using the old method when the upgrade is so readily available. TV screens are much bigger, the picture quality is awesome and, as an added bonus, you don't have to carry the thing around with you at all times - you can put it in one place and have your hands free to do something else. So why on Earth would you purposely watch something on a smaller screen if you didn't have to? Checking Twitter it was pretty easy to see that I am not alone in my feelings. Many people were expressing frustration with the coverage online and could not wait for the network feed to start.
The old saying is that less is more. That might be true everywhere else, but it does not apply to sports on television. My point is it doesn't matter how many alternatives golf fans are offered, the only thing which will make them truly happy is more coverage of the tournament. Also, it actually makes a lot of business sense for the tournament as well. I know the Masters only has a few commercial partners, but don't those companies want as much exposure as they can get? Their logos may be splashed all over the website, but think about the stereotypical golfer in your mind - do they seem like the kind of people who are going to be comfortable around technology? You may be reaching a younger audience with your web presence, but all the disposable income is locked away with the old folks who still use dial-up. The only way to reach them is through their TVs and that means more hours of the tournament on a big network. Now, the other day I wrote that the quickest way to make sure something doesn't happen at Augusta National is to tell the members that they have to do it, so I'm not about to stand up and demand they expand their viewing windows. Hell, you can't even try to bribe them with TV money because they already have more than they know what to do with, so it's not like a sponsor can threaten to leave unless they expanded coverage because that bluff will be called in a second. I just think Augusta National would be wise to remember that in marketing, just like in life, things are cyclical. What is in demand now could easily be a forgotten fad by tomorrow. To complete my analogy from earlier, there are plenty of fat, former cheerleaders who know just what I'm talking about. Let me put it another way - just because you can act like a bitch doesn't mean you should.
At least they have gotten a little better in the past few years by expanding their online presence. Now you can either go to their website directly or download an app to your tablet which will give you several viewing options before the TV coverage kicks in. For example, you can either watch as groups play through a couple of specific holes or follow one group all the way around the course (for some reason they never seem to choose the really interesting groups, though). The other alternative golf fans have is to follow enough golf writers who are at the event on Twitter to keep them up-to-date on what is going on there. It is not the best option, but it is better than nothing. Still, this creates a problem for people like me whose computers are full of large files and who don't have a ton of virtual memory to spare. After streaming video for 10 minutes my computer slows down immensely and I'm left watching halted images where the people are moving in slow motion even though the audio remains at normal speed. The result is I hear the crowd applaud a full 5 seconds before the putt drops or the video will skip ahead to catch up with real time and I won't see the putt at all. And that's if I can watch long enough to not have the site crash on me. Now, I've had a little more luck with my tablet this year, but it is still not great. It streams better than my computer, but it doesn't change the fact the screen is rather small. Do you know how stupid you feel when you are watching something on a 10-inch screen while you are in a room with a 52-inch television?
Reporters who can't think of a better story for that night are always filing reports about how medical professionals are worried that people are getting too attached to their mobile devices and tablets. Well, today was a perfect reminder that it doesn't matter how much new technology we get, TVs will always be the king of attention-hoggers. Personally, I have never understood the fascination with watching TV or movies on your smartphone. If I want to watch TV I have a TV for that. I don't much see the need to watch the same thing except on a much smaller surface. It's the same confusion I have about people who would rather take a train than fly. Why? We've invented a better experience. No need to keep using the old method when the upgrade is so readily available. TV screens are much bigger, the picture quality is awesome and, as an added bonus, you don't have to carry the thing around with you at all times - you can put it in one place and have your hands free to do something else. So why on Earth would you purposely watch something on a smaller screen if you didn't have to? Checking Twitter it was pretty easy to see that I am not alone in my feelings. Many people were expressing frustration with the coverage online and could not wait for the network feed to start.
The old saying is that less is more. That might be true everywhere else, but it does not apply to sports on television. My point is it doesn't matter how many alternatives golf fans are offered, the only thing which will make them truly happy is more coverage of the tournament. Also, it actually makes a lot of business sense for the tournament as well. I know the Masters only has a few commercial partners, but don't those companies want as much exposure as they can get? Their logos may be splashed all over the website, but think about the stereotypical golfer in your mind - do they seem like the kind of people who are going to be comfortable around technology? You may be reaching a younger audience with your web presence, but all the disposable income is locked away with the old folks who still use dial-up. The only way to reach them is through their TVs and that means more hours of the tournament on a big network. Now, the other day I wrote that the quickest way to make sure something doesn't happen at Augusta National is to tell the members that they have to do it, so I'm not about to stand up and demand they expand their viewing windows. Hell, you can't even try to bribe them with TV money because they already have more than they know what to do with, so it's not like a sponsor can threaten to leave unless they expanded coverage because that bluff will be called in a second. I just think Augusta National would be wise to remember that in marketing, just like in life, things are cyclical. What is in demand now could easily be a forgotten fad by tomorrow. To complete my analogy from earlier, there are plenty of fat, former cheerleaders who know just what I'm talking about. Let me put it another way - just because you can act like a bitch doesn't mean you should.
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