ARCHIVES

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Follow Up – Packing an iPhone for International Travel

October 22, 2009

The above is a photo of an automated text message I got when I landed in Bangkok. (Free pie at a Bangkok Burger King?!) Unfortunately, my phone failed about 4 days later, so I’m not going to be able to provide much of a follow up for these apps. I’m not sure what happened to [...]

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Scan as you Go Grocery Guns

September 22, 2009

I saw these at a grocery store in Provincetown, MA, while visiting. Using your grocery card, you check out one of the scanners from the wall display, and grab some empty grocery sacks. As you shop, you use the scanner gun to scan each item (the big yellow button) as you put it in the [...]

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Analog Displays and Physical Mapping

September 22, 2009

I snapped this picture in the lobby of the Frost Bank building in San Antonio. The panel, nowhere near the elevators, was designed to give the fire department a view of what floors the elevators were on. I love the look of this display – the lights behind the numbers, the movement going up and [...]

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Don’t Make Me Think Parts Packaging

April 25, 2009

Putting something together before you use it is rarely fun. I happen to be one of those people who can manage it fairly well, but like the other day, I would have rather been grilling dinner than putting the grill together. This way of packaging parts, though, made it a bit easier. Clear labeling prevents [...]

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Timing is Everything

February 4, 2009

A few minutes after importing an old iPhoto library into the new iPhoto, I checked to see what was happening. The coincidence of my niece’s face and my dismay at “483 minutes remaining” matched so perfectly I LOL’d.

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Sadistic Customer Surveys – When it Hurts to Help

January 30, 2009

I received an email this morning from Quality Inn (Dear TORI), inviting me to complete a “short and easy” guest satisfaction survey about my recent stay. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered to even open the email, but since I had been quite annoyed about their wireless log in process, I decided to let them know. [...]

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Time Out

January 25, 2009

While I remodeled most of my kitchen about two years ago, I have not yet replaced the built-in oven. The oven still works, but it’s clock and timer was set with a plastic knob which over the years grew brittle and broke off. I’ve come to rely on the timer on my microwave — an [...]