Morning Magic

Let's try a little experiment. Set your alarm clock for an ungodly hour tomorrow morning, if you aren't already in the habit of doing so. If you groan or bristle at the thought of arising twenty or so minutes before the sun's first light, turn off Konan or the guy with glasses and the annoying gray tuft on his balding head, and go to bed early.

I live on acreage with (mostly) quiet neighbors and little nearby traffic, so this might work for me a little better than for you. However, while living in crowded southern California years ago, I had the same pleasant experience; if it can be done there, it can be done anywhere.

Now that you're awake, go outside. If it hasn't rained in the wee hours, dew will most likely cover nearly everything, and the air will be cool, so you might want to dress accordingly. Unless a cold front has crashed through and wiped out the desired atmospheric conditions, the air a few hundred feet above you will be markedly warmer than at the surface. (I'm taking the liberty of assuming a cloudless night with little or no air movement.) Assuming the aforementioned, an atmospheric inversion will be in place, and you will experience an interesting phenomenon.

Distant (up to a mile or so) noise is trapped under the inversion and will reflect off the cold-air/warm-air interface, returning to your ears quite loudly. This accounts for the interesting effect of sound waves carrying much farther than they do under typical daytime weather conditions, after the sun has warmed the ground and eroded the inversion. This ducting effect explains why a far-away moving vehicle sounds as if it is mere feet from you.

Welcome to Physics 101.

Now let's assume there is no traffic--perhaps it is a weekend or holiday morning, or you're lucky enough to live in a rural area. Perfect. You will find the quiet to be deafening, transcendental, and dare I use the word cosmic? Compared to the racket made by vehicles and noisy neighbors, the calm cannot be described.

Later, as the first hint of sunlight appears in the eastern sky, birds will awake and begin to chirp. If you're a coffee drinker as I am, the pleasant aroma will add to the effect as you sip your brew and feel its invigorating effects.

If you've followed my plan and not cheated by sneaking back to bed, you will greet the dawn with a euphoria that eclipses whatever benefit you might have had from watching the late-night clown shows, though modern technology has afforded you the luxury of recording their 11 o'clock antics, which I understand most people to do. In addition, you now have a whole day ahead of you.

Of course this all washes out if you're a night person as I used to be.
Perhaps I'm just getting older and am heeding the words of Ben Franklin.

Everything Will Be Alright—For Another Year, Anyway

 
Vin Scully has announced he will return to the Dodger broadcast booth for an unprecedented 61st season, most by any professional broadcaster in any sport. This is great news for LA Dodger fans, and good news for baseball fans in general.

I grew up in Southern California and was serenaded to Scully's ballgames beginning in 1965. It was an auspicious year for the home team -- Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Wes Parker, and the rest of the boys of forty-five summers past -- as they defeated the Twins in the World Series; thus, it was a great way to receive my indoctrination into Dodger fandom.

As with weather and beaches and mountains, those of us who came of age in LA took much of it for granted. So it was with Vin Scully's soothing voice and melodic demeanor behind the mike. Vin didn't just call a baseball game; he told a tale, weaved a story, brought to the listener the fragrant scent of a thousand ballgames past and thousands of miles away right into your mind's eye as if you had been there in person. No other broadcaster I've heard has been as adept at his craft as Vinny, as he is known to Dodger fans.

Through fires and quakes and riots, he has been there to assure us that everything somehow will be alright. And for at least one more year, now I know it will be.
 
 

My Voicemail, My Greeting

 
Since 2001, I've had my wireless phone service parked at AT&T. Forget that they've changed their company name from AT&T to Cingular and back like an old game of Pong. They offered me a deal that was hard to pass up, and for the most part, I haven't spent too much time regretting it.

A week ago, I made another business decision that seemed to make sense. Given that Apple is poised to roll out the new iPhone 4 at any hour, the price of the iPhone 3G fell through the floor, so I snatched one up at a mere $99.

For the past nine years, my outbound message on my trusty Nokia remained virtually unchanged. It's basic, to the point, and not the least bit irritating (in my humble opinion). Once I set up my iPhone, however, I immediately noticed one nuance: At least on AT&T's network, there is a subtle voicemail change, six seconds of robotic instructions that grate on my nerves and which I am unable to remove. The menu options deep inside the tangled mess of voicemail instructions have been altered slightly so that the incantation is permanently affixed to my greeting.

So much for wise business decisions.

Now that practically everyone either has a cell phone or frequently calls someone who does, you likely know exactly what I am referring to. Specifically, this is my voicemail greeting before and after AT&T got done with it:

Me: You've reached Rob Petitt's voicemail. At the tone, leave your name and message, and I'll get back to you. Have a great day!

Robot: At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press '1' for more options.

This sounds like two people arguing over the phone, the robot through its silicon wisdom offering correction to my woefully inadequate thus inept instructions. By 2010, even a baboon knows what to do when encountering an unattended phone line and that, once it has left its message, it is time to hang up. I guess AT&T thinks they're spiffy by allowing the caller to press '1' for more options.

The sequence of instructions, on about the third level deep, led me to option #7, eliminating cut-through paging. Curiously, this option exists on the Nokia but is absent on the iPhone. Aside from this, the sets of instructions are virtually exact. Am I the only one who finds this odd?

No.

Last week, I sought help from my trusty friend, the internet. I crammed a few terms into a search engine, clicked the equivalent of "frappe", and was met with dozens of posts that appeared to have been written either by me or by some like-minded soul. It turns out there are a lot of folks who are riled up about the robo-lady and AT&T's insistence that we force-feed her to our callers. One particularly level-headed blogger assured that there was a rather straightforward remedy for her, and that I begin by contacting AT&T customer service. I did so, quite politely I might add, and opened up a trouble ticket. The ticket was sent off to the voicemail department for their technicians to review. As of this moment, my complaint has met with sympathetic ears, but not a satisfactory resolution as the internet posts have assured me will happen. I will follow up here if and when the case moves forward.

If you are as easily set aflame as I, and if your hackles are similarly up after reading about my encounter with Goliath, I would urge you to contact your wireless carrier and seek to banish the robo-lady, or at least return the choice to us paying customers. After all, we have purchased this so it is our voicemail, and it surely should be our greeting as well.
  

The Lakers Won but LA Lost

  
Having once been an Angelino, I was absorbed into the LA sports scene at an early age. Now a decade removed from southern California, I still bleed Dodger Blue and wear Laker purple and gold at every opportunity. If I can't watch a game, I at least catch the box score the following day, grinning when they win, and agonizing when they don't. So when the Lakers knocked off the hated Celtics in a thrilling seven game series, I was ecstatic.

Now comes the ugliness that has become the dark side of professional sports: looting and unwarranted violence.

What is the sense in destroying the city which represents the home team? The team, and the city, should be the object of adoration rather than hooliganism. Clearly, it only takes a few idiots to mar an otherwise euphoric event. These clowns are the one-percenters, the fools who look good in county-issued orange.

Since there likely will be no parade or subsequent riot in Bean Town, there surely won't be any vandalism. So in a way, the Celtics of Boston figured out a way to beat the Lakers.
  

No More Sardines For Me

 
The last US sardine packaging plant, which opened in Maine in 1875, will soon close. Partly due to shrinking demand and partly due to our shrinking economy, the plant can no longer remain in business. Our thirst for imported goods from cheap labor markets is undoubtedly at fault.

In a way, we are slitting our own throats. And as a result, one-hundred and thirty American jobs will be terminated, a meager sum when contrasted with the closing of large factories in favor of shifting to offshore labor (try telling that to the families of the displaced workers). Just another sign of the times.

Now for the shocker: China and Thailand will rush in to fill the void. Only God knows what ingredients will comprise the Asian sardines. With words like melamine, mercury, lead, and other toxins floating through the airwaves and the sea, it's probably time to switch to a more trusted source for the tiny fish.

As unemployment grows, more dollars will flow to foreign nations, notably Canada and some northern European countries, for what was and should remain an American product. While I trust our Canadian and European allies not to poison us, I would strongly prefer to keep the USA label on the cans.

For us fish lovers, cod liver oil--though mostly if not entirely imported from Norway--and domestically harvested cod and salmon are good sources of omega-3 oil.

As toxic heavy metals ruin the world's oceans, few fish are safe from the poisons; hence, few fish-eating humans are safe as well. There are some clean sources of omega-3 oil, notably Carlson's Cod Liver Oil. This is the one I use on a daily basis. I'll just give up my occasional sardines. Consider this not only a personal safety measure but a boycott of Chinese goods, however weak that boycott may be.

When onshoring replaces offshoring, Americans will return to work while foreign laborers will be left to fend for themselves as we are today. Only then will our economy once again flourish. For now, the tiny sardine factory is merely an emerging part of the same malignant iceberg.