Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy the Flight

Monday, December 14, 2009

I have never been to Minneapolis. I hear that they have a nice mall, but I lost just about any desire to go there when the Twins beat my Cardinals in the World Series in 1987. I also just checked the weather, and the high Wednesday will be 7 degrees. I'm sure it's a nice enough city, but I don't see myself catching a Timberwolves home game any time soon.

That said, I'm pretty sure I could find Minneapolis if I was looking for it. If you can remember back a few months (before Tiger-TV), a couple of pilots were playing around on their laptops and didn't realize they had missed Minneapolis until they were 100+ miles on the other side of it. I know we've probably all spaced out and missed an exit, but off-hand I can't really think of a job where it's more important to pay attention to what you are doing (I mean, even a surgeon usually only has one person's life in their hands, not hundreds).

I don't know the population of Minneapolis (and I'm not curious enough to look it up), but it's not like they were trying to spot Bigfoot at a Star Wars convention. I'm not sure exactly how high they were flying, but I checked on Google Earth at about 38K feet, and this is what the Twin Cities look like from there:

Regardless of what happened in this particular instance, it did make me question what's really going on up there. I mean, they threw a heavy-duty lock on the door to keep the terrorists out, but maybe they should put a webcam up so we can make sure they are not playing Risk. You have to admit that you always feel better eating a restaurant where the kitchen is in plain sight, right? Another option would be for them to have to pop on the intercom every 10 minutes or so to say “This is your pilot – just wanted to let you know that I’m not taking a nap” (might get a little annoying, but it’s better than running into a mountain or something).

Apparently pilots trust the auto pilot a lot more than I thought they would. I had always assumed that the auto pilot was just something for big emergencies, but apparently flying a big commercial jet is about as complicated as cooking in a crock pot – a bit of work at the beginning and the end and free time to do whatever you want in between. I’m not disparaging pilots by any means; I mean, you definitely want a good one around if your plane is going down in a river (hypothetically speaking – I’m sure that doesn’t happen).

[As an aside, there are some jobs where I think “auto pilots” are underused. The other day we were at a work Christmas party, and they had a DJ there. Let’s be honest, there are only like 20 songs that get played at parties like that or at weddings. I might be in the minority in that I find them all annoying (there are probably millions of songs out there, and yet somehow all we get is Madonna’s “Holiday” and that “Celebration” song over and over), but if you have to play them, couldn't you just plug in an iPod and save a lot of cash?]

I do need to have a little empathy for the pilots who missed their exit, because I know there is an auto pilot somewhere in my head that kicks in sometimes. I’m guessing we’ve all driven somewhere without really paying attention to how we got there, but sometimes it even happens when I’m just walking around. The other day I popped into a bathroom at work, and as I was about to walk out I realized that I didn’t even know what floor I was on or at which end of the building. Granted, everything in my office looks the same, but it was a little disconcerting.

I also used my auto pilot a few weeks back when filling out a health questionnaire at work (just part of an annual health check). I really just wanted to get this thing over with and was flying through without looking too closely. I’ve been running and working out quite a bit lately, and when I came to the question asking my how much I exercise in a week, I plugged in 5 hours and moved on. After I submitted it, the results summary told me that exercise was one of my big weak points. Apparently, the question had asked how many minutes a week of rigorous exercise I put in. It should make for an interesting conversation later this week when I meet with the health coach (the next step in the process – I guess I’ll do anything for a $25 gift card), because on another question I said that I have no plans to increase my level of activity.

My wife tells me that I should pay more attention to what I’m doing, and she’s right – I’d probably save myself a few headaches and make the world a little safer place for those around me. I mean, I need to do the right thing here - it’s not like I’m just flying a 747 or something like that.

Get On Your Snuggie

Monday, November 16, 2009

I may have mentioned this before, but I have never really lived on my own. In fact, I have never really not had a "roommate" of some kind or another, with the only exceptions being my first two years (before my brother was born) and six weeks on a temporary assignment in Korea in 2000. I'm not complaining about that, because Myers-Briggs and every other personality test I take confirms that I straddle the line between introversion and extroversion and am therefore really ok either way.

Living with other people does have its challenges, even when they are people you love. Most importantly, it is significantly more challenging to rent a movie. We purchased a car recently, and I'm pretty sure I spent less time making that decision than I do on a typical Blockbuster visit. There are two ways to tackle this, and both have drawbacks. You can put one person in charge of picking, but that's an enormous amount of pressure to put on an individual. You can also try to come to a consensus, but that has sort of a Middle East peace process feel.

You might be tempted to think that online movie rentals have made all of this a lot easier, but even that doesn't compensate for another complication, which is that there aren't that many new movies worth renting in the first place. It seems like most are either gross-out horror movies or gross-out comedies, and the rest are based on comic books or 80s toys (I'm just holding my breath for a GoBots adaptation).

Fortunately, there are a few out there still moving the art of film-making ahead. For example, the other day I saw this (couldn't find an original version, but I think the "laugh track" adds to the effect):

Now, let me first admit that I laughed pretty hard the first time I saw a Snuggie commercial - not really at the commercial itself but just at the concept of a Snuggie. I mean, blankets have been doing well for most people since, well, whenever humans starting hunting large furry animals. Are people living in ice caves, where it's so cold that if you stick reach out of a blanket to change the channel you lose a few fingers to frostbite? Apparently I was wrong though, because people are buying them - people I know to be rational, smart people - so there must be something to it.

I'm not really interested personally, but I am a happy consumer of the commercials. I'm not sure where to begin, but let's start with all of the dancing. Apparently, wearing a Snuggie is like being on Night at the Roxbury, whether in the kitchen or out camping with the family. Snuggies aren't just for kicking back on the couch anymore, either - I mean, you can't play Pictionary during a gas outage in the dead of winter wrapped in an old-fashioned hole-free blanket. I've never had much luck eating popcorn while wearing a quilt at the movie theater.

As for the dog Snuggie, I'm not sure what made me laugh more, the thought of some poor dog about to pass out from the heat because they're forced to wear a second blanket (people seem to forget that they have a built-in Snuggie already) or the glasses (probably the high point of the whole thing).

Unfortunately, as original and entertaining as the commercial is, the Snuggie is far less original and ground-breaking than the makers proclaim it to be. Now that people are apparently wearing these around, it'll only be a matter of time before they add a hood. Then it'll be pretty obvious that Snuggies have been around for a long, long time.

Maybe Mogwai Will Be Half-Off This Year on Black Friday

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Last year on the day after Thanksgiving, I found myself at Target at about 7 a.m. doing some bargain shopping. That's early enough on its own, but I think I'd been up for about three hours already, including waiting in line for an hour in the cold Utah rain to squeeze into a cramped Toys-R-Us (is it just me, or was that store not a lot more spacious about 25-30 years ago?). Being that tired and in that sort of atmosphere will cause some irrational behavior - it's sort of like a shark feeding frenzy, where you'll bite on anything not tied down. Somehow I ended up with a bunch of $5 DVDs, most of which are unwatched nearly a year later.

One of those is Gremlins, which I still think is a bit of a classic (but apparently not enough of one to cause me to crack the case). If I remember correctly, though, the creatures in Gremlins were based loosely on little monsters that were blamed for causing mechanical failures during WWII. I may have to watch the movie to remember how they got rid of them (I think sunlight is involved - should be easy in Arizona), because I'm pretty sure there are a few hanging around my house.

Last night I took an emergency trip to the store (to get chocolate syrup), and my car ran without a hitch, just as it has for about the past 8 years. This morning when I got in and turned the key, it was idling high, and the "check engine" light was on. I'm probably missing something obvious, but how else (besides gremlins) do you explain my car breaking while sitting in a garage all night?

When they are not digging around in my engine block, they're apparently digging around in my neighbor's yard. The other day our neighbor warned us about some flooding on one side of our house, but I figured out pretty quickly that it was coming from their side of the wall. A guy came and fixed it the other day, but apparently the gremlins aren't letting him off that easy, because yesterday the water was back.

It's no accident, then, that these things tend to hit in waves. The problem is that no one has watched that movie for a while, so my pest control company (who were just here the other day) spray for scorpions and ants but don't deal with gremlins at all. I'd call the people at Monsterquest to check this out, but I stopped watching that a while ago when I realized that they never find anything (shocker!).

While I'm on the subject of Monsterquest, I think the reason I like stuff like that in the first place is that I'm intrigued by the unknown. What I've also learned recently, though, is that in some cases I prefer the unknown to stay that way. For example, a week ago I was happy in my ignorance regarding what happens behind the closed doors of an airplane cockpit. I think I'd prefer assuming there are gremlins on board to knowing that the pilots are probably up there playing Minesweeper.