Saturday, March 12, 2011

"Recalculating" (updated, 3/13/11)

I took my GPS to Florida recently and generally speaking it worked OK. I missed a few voice directions here and there and the always polite female voice (Samantha-in-GPS-land) resignedly said: "recalculating."

After a few misses I thought I detected a tone of exasperation in the last "recalculating." But I was totally unprepared when we started off one morning and she started giving directions in GERMAN.

At first we didn't know what she was saying and in what language. Then we started laughing hysterically
when we recognized she was speaking German. 

How that happened neither I nor my wife could figure out, especially while driving. So when we heard Samantha's (I think it was still Samantha) guttural cry of: "neuberechnung!" Not only did we not know what she was saying it was enough to make me pull over to the side of the road and get to the bottom of this nonsense.

Solution: Go to "settings" and change the language to English. Problem: How it got to German? Unsolved.

By the way, I entered "recalculating" on iGoogle's translation service and got "neuberechnung" which may be what we heard and maybe does mean "recalculating."

My mini-quake

The horror wrought by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami brought back a memory of my mini-quake while serving in the U.S. Army in Japan in the early 1950s.

I was stationed in Hokkaido, the northernmost island, and we were bunked in quonset huts. In case you don't know what a quonset hut is, its got a cement floor and a half-dome rounded metal roof. I had a single metal cot in a back room.

As I slept one night, my cot started jiggling across the floor. Although startled I nevertheless realized what it was -- a tremor strong enough to move a cot but not much else.

I went back to sleep and that was that for the rest of my tour.

Later, I went to Tokyo on R&R and stopped in at the famous Imperial Hotel built by Frank Lloyd Wright after a fire destroyed the original hotel in 1919. I believe Wright designed his hotel specifically to survive a major quake. It least, that's how I remember the story. By the way, it's still there and rated one of the finest hotels in the world.

Doesn't look at all like it did in 1954. You can Google it for a current view.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

You Ask, I Tell

We just returned from a week in the Orlando, FL area. Had a very nice time. I golfed several times, my wife spent time with her sister, nephew, niece and grand-nieces.

The flights were pretty good, too. We flew Continental from Newark to Orlando and back. I really like the kiosk system they've installed for checking in, particularly with baggage. Very quick and simple, especially if you've printed out your boarding pass at home.

So today we get a survey from Continental via email asking us our reaction to all aspects of our trip. Basically we were pretty satisfied BUT I did point out a few things that irked.

We were prepared for the no-meal, no-snack rule so we brought our own sandwiches for lunch. They gave us a beverage. Big deal. The overhead bins were bulging (we had room for two small backpacks) but it was obvious that people are carrying on more since the airlines started charging for checked luggage. (Disclosure: we have a Continental charge card so we get one bag free).

The inflight "entertainment" is no longer free. You get endless promos on those little seat-back screens but if you actually want to see something you have to swipe your credit card and it's either $6 for plain people and $4 if you have the airline card. We opted out.

The biggest rip-off in my mind, however, is the $29 dollar fee for a seat with extra leg room, such as an exit or bulkhead row. Believe it or not, those rows were taken.

So I commented in my survey if you are going to charge extra for extra leg room, how about discounting the seats with no leg room, like all the other seats on the plane?

And, if I have to pay $29 to sit in an exit row do I also have to pay $29 to exit from that row in case of emergency? Just swipe your credit card (no cash, please) before sliding down the chute.

I wouldn't put it past them.