A TV for Bill Gates

Finally, there is a TV worthy of Bill Gates. Witnessed on eBay: a $99M 50-inch plasma TV with NO RESERVE!

I was luckily able to get a screenshot (guaranteed undoctored by me) moments before the auction disappeared, no doubt snapped up by some sub-Saharan dictator.

Imagine: a 50" plasma TV for only ninety-nine million, nine-hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars!

Thick as a Brick

Forgive me if I'm thick, but what could the following, posted on amazon.com when one wants to see the hidden price of an item, possibly mean? I've read through it a few times, but every time I read it it seems progressively to degenerate into abstruse mumbo-jumbo:

"Why Don't We Show the Price?

"Manufacturers sometimes ask that retailers not display a price if it drops below a certain amount. The 'click here to see price' message indicates that the price of the item is so low that the manufacturer requested that it not be advertised (that is, displayed). In a brick-and-mortar store, you would probably have to ask a salesperson what the price of the product is. At Amazon, by clicking on 'click here to see price' you are essentially asking to see the price, at which point we show it to you."

Whaaa?

Spoonalicious

Remember this when you go out to eat at a nice restaurant: A Timeless Lesson on how Consultants can Make a Difference for an Organization.

Last week, I took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange. When the waiter brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, "Why the spoon?"

"Well," he explained, "the restaurant's owners hired Arthur Andersen Consulting to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis,they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil.

"It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift."

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare. "I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now."

I was impressed. I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter, "Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"

"Oh, certainly!" Then he lowered his voice. "Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the tip of you know what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent.

I asked after you get it out, how do you put it back?" "Well," he whispered, "I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."

(With thanks to Stefan. No, he was not the waiter.)

That's Amore

It's hilarious to see the street fights break out among the residents of New York City when the question "Who makes the best pizza?" is posed.

Patsy's? Totonno's? Carbone? Mimi's? Napoletana? Luzzo's?

Don't you wish we had a choice like that?

I finally picked Luzzo's out of a hat. A charming Italian guy--with an accent straight out of The Godfather--took my reservation for 7 pm (!) on a Friday night for a party of six.

See the menu below (click to enlarge):

Badgering Chowhound

I’m having a really great time hassling the Manhattan denizens of the Chowhound boards. It’s great to be able to turn it around for once. On montrealfood I was being driven up the wall by people who’d write in and want me to plan their eating itineraries for their three-day stays here. I didn’t mind so much actually providing them with one, but then to not even get a reply to that email . . . it’s like being a sales dude and having someone make you explain the details on ten different models and then say thanks and walk out . . .

Anyway, I’m going to be in Manhattan with the Tiny Tornado for a couple of days in March and I wanted to know whether I should go to Peter Luger or Old Homestead (for steak) and Totonno’s for pizza . . . well, the folk over at Chowhound certainly came through.

Them New Yorkers are fiercely proud of their food . . . you can feel it in their posts. Would that we could fire up the local community likewise.

I kinda liked that one of the posters said they’d been to montrealfood.com and would be asking me for recommedations for their next trip.

We all mellow, eventually.

Work for Peanuts

Does anyone else get pissed off when they receive a package packed with those goddamned foam peanuts? There are so many choices--bunched-up newspapers, air-filled plastic pouches, you name it . . .

So what the fuck is it with the peanuts?

Ed's TV

Oh boy, did I just dive headfirst into the deep end of digital doo-doo.

Having won an “EDTV-ready” 42” plasma TV on eBay (US$686.00 for a floor model! Not bad, eh?) I set about trying to find out how to mate it with the ready EDTV thingy that would make it officially EDTV-complete.

But just try to set about getting around to finding your way clear to doing that. There are more acronyms floating around in the jargon-enriched HDTV universe than microphytes in the Sargasso Sea. Absolute confusion reigns supreme. I consider myself extremely tech-savvy (though weighted more towards the computer spectrum than the consumer electronic) but the consortiums that be could not have made this HDTV business more difficult if they had worked at it 24 hours a day for all the light years to Alpha Centauri.

First of all, what the hell do you need to make a TV an EDTV TV when it was only an EDTV-ready TV before? After searching the Internet for an hour, I still only have a vague clue.

You need a Box — that much is clear. But what Box? Must it cost the same as my incredible bargain of a TV? Will I be able to even tell the EDTV difference with my rheumy, overworked eyes? Should I give a flying fuck?

Why, yes! For I am a tech warrior. I will not rest until my EDTV-ready TV has found its soulmate. I will toss and turn after turning the EDTV-ready TV off every night, constantly wondering: Is the picture as Good As It Can Possibly Be? If it is 480p now, won’t it be much, much better if it is 1080i? What is 1080i? How can I get 1080i? Is 1080i cheap? Will I be able to even tell the 1080i difference with my rheumy, overworked eyes?

And thus it will go, night after night.

And who is going to put this thing up on my wall? Certainly not me. But it must go on the wall! Everyone who’s anyone mounts their new EDTV-ready TV on the wall. No pedestrian IKEA box with casters for me. On the wall it must go! But how to hide the unsightly wires that will snake from it to the cable box, the DVD player, the VCR and the soon-to-be EDTV box? Why, drill a hole in the wall! Yes! But who will do it? Is there a dude who travels from house to house installing 69-pound plasma TVs on customers’ walls for a reasonable fee?

Will he know where to find the EDTV box?

Wish I were Ed—he must be making a fortune.

Gadgeteer Volume IX

Question is, do I need this thing?

Perspirational Stories

As long as I’ve lived in Montreal, which, including winter return visits totals around 30 years, I’ve recognised that this is a city that knows its winters. It’s comfortable, even happy with its winters. People gripe about the weather, but in the end, even on a day with a temperature of -25C (-13F) and a windchill of -35C (-31F) they go about their business.

I have few gripes about the winter here. I like the clear delineation between seasons (well, perhaps not so clear any more) and a day such as the above, if rare, doesn’t bother me.

But (and you knew there was going to be a but! I always try to preface a good rant with a seemingly rational, measured couple of paragraphs! It makes me seem rational and measured!) what the fuck is up with the heating of every indoor space when everyone is dressed in North Face Nuptse goose down (rated to forty below zero!)?

You come in from a howling minus-twenty gale, actually comfy in your rabbit-fur hat and vast, down-lined coat, face covered with your kashmere scarf and hands toasty in your Patagonia gloves, stomping around in your heavy Sorel boots, and you get on a heated bus. Or step into any Metro station. Or walk into Eaton Center.

Within seconds, you’re perspiring profusely, desperately regretting your zeal in winterwear. But guess what? Before you know it, just when the sweat is actually dripping down your back and into your long underwear, you’re getting off the bus! Or emerging from the Metro! Or stepping into the howling gale between the concrete canyons of de Maisonneuve!

Okay, the shopping centers I can understand. There are hundreds of employees who need to work all day. We don’t want to be putting them in coats. But a bus? The bus needs to be heated so the bus driver can stay warm? The Metro? Those slovenly pigs in the booth need to be warm?

I hate going out some days. The colder ones are the worst, but not because I dread the cold, but because I dread the heat.

Yesterday, when the wind was blowing at a fairly brisk clip, rendering the ambient temp at around -5 C (23F), I was so hot at my neighbourhood Metro grocery store that I took off my coat then and there and walked the five or so minutes home with only my T-shirt on my upper torso. I got a bunch of weird looks, but let me tell you, it felt good!

Every time I get on a bus in winter I head for the nearest window and slam it open as far as it will go. Let the goddamn bus driver freeze. This is Montreal, not Palm Springs.

Last Vacation Thoughts (I promise)

I’m in the middle of reading His Way, an unauthorised biography of Frank Sinatra by hack writer Kitty Kelley. It’s kind of like reading a National Enquirer article on only one subject for nine hours.

But then I got to thinking: wouldn’t YOU love someone to write an unauthorised biography of you? Something that included all the shady details: that furtive coupling in the 1984 Datsun hatchback when you were obviously already practically living with Jadyn. Wouldn’t that be cool? You just provide all the sordid details in a ten-hour long interview and then the guy writes it up, Enquirer style.

Could be a burgeoning business: unauthorised biographies for hire. You heard it here first.

Travel Stories Part XVØ

Much like Blork, I too was on the road recently. Travelling to my destination with my 5-year-old son, it was Bliss in Montreal; the American customs guy waved us through, not even asking for the letter from “his mother” (the term I now use to refer to my ex-wife.)

And then, Houses of the Holy! At the gate, the agent calls me and I’m delivered two boarding passes to First Class. Add to this that the stew in First Class was a Japanese from the same city that my son spends his time in when he’s there. We were soon all three babbling happily in local-area-inflected Japanese while she plied me with Sauvignon Blanc. (Me: “Okay, this is my last . . . “ She: “Well, it doesn’t have to be!”)

But pay the piper we all must, and these days, paying the piper is coming back into Canada, whether it’s through Vancouver or YUL.

I was almost dancing on the luggage carousel last night when I flew in from SFO (not first class) because the immigration dude had waved us through. No questions about where His Mother was or anything like that.

And then Tai-chan lost the customs form. It was in my laptop bag and I’d asked him to watch the bag while I looked for our bags on the carousel, and he said “I’m holding it, Daddy!” so everything was minty. But somehow, his little hand must have removed the customs form, because when I piled on the last bag, it was gooooone. Nowhere on the floor, which was a scrum of cattle seeking their bags, so I resignedly wheeled through to the endpoint—the person who collects the forms and lets you on your way to your loving relatives’ arms . . . and prayed she’d take pity.

She didn’t. It was the Little Room. The dreaded Little Room . . . where they might as well be shining a spotlight into your face as they interrogate you. “Describe the area through which you went through immigration . . . be careful, because I need you to describe it exactly . . . was it to the right? To the left? No, it couldn’t have been the left, sir, because people with children are guided to the right . . . think again, sir . . .” (this is literally almost verbatim as to how this interrogation proceeded, I kid you not.) You can recognise the Little Room (it's actually quite large) at YVR and YUL because they have a large bank of mirrors--one-way mirrors--behind which they retire to ("Be right back") to observe your behaviour while they're not there (and to sneak a smoke, I'll warrant.)

You can imagine the Death Ray that I was aiming at my poor quailing son after this (after 45 minutes of this) but afterwards I realised that it was karma, mere karma that on my fourth entry back to Canada in a row, I get the Little Room. It was not his fault.

You win some, you get the Little Room.