TechDistortion

Audible Alert

The other night, I was just minding my own business having dinner at Olive Garden, enjoying a bread loaf…I mean “stick” yeah that thing’s more like a bread trunk or bread branch than a stick.

I digress…

An odd alert sound went off through the entire building. At first I thought it was a car alarm going off outside. It wasn’t. I looked around and nobody seemed to be reacting, flinching or panicking. In fact, most people looked as though there was nothing out of the ordinary and kept eating, talking and walking by. I was, frankly, puzzled. My iPhone is currently on an international roaming agreement with AT&T and then I received an Amber Alert on my phone.

Those people that follow me know that I always turn the volume off, using my Apple Watch for haptic feedback for incoming calls, messages, everything so I was shocked when my phone made noise and started vibrating! I had no idea what an Amber Alert was, so I Googled it (as you do) and realised that it was the US Emergency Warning system. I had heard of it, but never connected what it was until I read about how it worked.

I hope they find the child that was abducted - that’s a horrible thing and not unique to America. It happens the world over and it’s terrible.

The also disturbing part for me upon reflection was the lack of movement, lack of concern, lack of any real detectable reaction from the locals in the restaurant.

I study control system, human interfaces in my job and there’s a field of study that focuses on desensitisation of people to repetitive alarm inputs. How often must people be getting these alerts to have that reaction - i.e. no reaction? I looked it up. In 2018 there were 200 Amber Alerts issued nationwide averaging about one every two days. According to the Amber Alert website, as of April 2019 957 children had been rescued specifically because of an Amber Alert since the program began in 2006. Of course that’s an amazing result but I can’t get past the reactions of the locals.

Systems like this will fade in effectiveness with the passage of time, it’s inevitable. In the meantime I just hope that people don’t treat them like a nuisance EMail alert, and pay attention.

PS: I looked for a vehicle matching the description in the car park and on the drive back to the hotel. I did not see it.

USA Fast Food Part One

I used to have a dangerous weight problem, and failing other weight loss methods over years I had weight loss surgery. It’s been hard and I’m not even sure I recommend it, but it was effective enough. So since then keeping my weight under control has been easier but I still need to be careful. If I eat too much it hurts. Physically. Stabbing pains. Ouchie - no no. I generally can’t drink anything until 45 minutes after I’ve eaten so if I have a few sips before I eat that’s the way to go.

That said, I’ve been away from the USA for nearly two decades and with TV being more international, listening to lots of podcasts by Americans and between Twitter and Facebook I’ve heard many references to Fast Food outlets, various restaurants and the like - most of which don’t exist outside of the US.

Hence when over here for a conference I made it my personal mission to try as many as reasonably possible. Without making myself feel ill or enduring searing stomach pains…

I’ll release a full update on the flight back, but for now here’s what I’ve tried and my thoughts on each. Please note: it’s not possible to try every single menu item, it’s a one-hit-one-outlet-one-meal kinda deal, so I’ve asked friends for recommendations and of course, done my best to pick…the following aren’t in order of anything:

• iHOP: International House of Pancakes. Meal: Breakfast, Drink: Black house coffee, Food: Mexican Churro Pancakes; Okay so an odd choice for breakfast but damn these were amazing! The sauce between layers was delicious and over-powered any of the three syrups I tried (Old fashioned, Butter Pecan and Strawberry). Oddly the coffee actually wasn’t too bad. I’d heard horror stories but it was drinkable (black of course, no sweetener or anything)
• Chick-Fil-A: Meal: Lunch, Drink: Freshly squeezed Lemonade, Food: Number 2 Spicy with Waffle-cut Fries; The Waffle Cut fries were a bit bland to be honest, and the Lemonade was really tart and I couldn’t drink it but oh my god, that chicken burger was next-level amazing! My previous favourite KFC chicken burger has been comprehensively pipped for top spot. Truly outstanding!
• Olive Garden: Meal: Dinner, Drink: Diet Coke, Food: Three-sample platter with Lasagne Fritters, Cheese Sticks and Fried Ravioli plus three bread-logs/sticks; Diet Coke is Diet Coke, dunno what to say, the bread sticks are comically huge but very nice - remind me of Sizzler cheesy toast in flavour a bit. All of the items on the sharing platter were amazing. I also love the on-table ordering device where you could order, play games (why?) and pay for your meal or summon people with it. I paid using it and was gleefully delighted despite the fact the waiter was standing right next to me the whole time for moral support. Thanks mate :)
• Cheesecake Factory: Meal: Dessert, Food: 1 Slice of Reece’s Cheesecake Cake, and 1 Slice of Cookies and Cream; Well these will last a few nights because I can’t have more than half in one sitting. They are both amazing and so evil I hate them because I love them. Ugh. Wow.
• Whataburger: Meal: Dinner, Drink: Barq’s Root Beer, Food: Single Whataburger with Onion Rings; Root Beer was from a dispenser but geez the cup is made of styrofoam? And it was huge too and flimsy! That’s a regular size? I’ll ask for extra-small next time. Onion Rings were very nice - not the best I’ve had mind you but I’d say the best from a fast-food outlet. The Burger itself wasn’t that great until I added the Spicy Tomato Sauce and then all was forgiven - I’d put them above McDonalds and Burger King, and worth the effort for sure.
• Newks: Meal: Dinner, Food: 16oz Chilli Bowl Soup, Slice of 6-layer Red Velvet Cake; The chilli was amazing and the cake was very nice, rich and couldn’t finish it unfortunately. Not as nice as Cheesecake Factory. Not even close.

Before moving on part two I’d like to add the following notes:

• I am not a food critic
• Repeat: Not a food critic
• Your taste bud mileage will vary and all tastes are different
• Doubtless there are other options on these menus to try but I can’t try them all in a week
• I look forward to returning home when I’ll have to lose the 10 pounds I’m going to put on this week alone as a result of this :(

Part Two soon…

USA Then and Now

In my last trip to the USA in 2000 I took a lot of photos and have a lot of fond memories. What’s interesting to me in returning some nearly two decades later are some subtle differences that some people mightn’t have noticed if they’d lived through the gradual change.

The mix of Cars is very different

When I visited I recall vividly being dwarfed by large trucks, Dodge RAMs, Chevrolet Silverados and the like, with many Buicks, Chryslers and American cars everywhere. Upon my return my rental car is a Kia, and on the road I see a roughly 50/50 split of US-made vs International (imported) vehicles. I realise that the US motor industry has been struggling in some dimensions but buyers not buying them isn’t a good thing. In Australia our local car manufacturing industry died only a few years ago. It’s now not possible to purchase a vehicle built in Australia. I hope the US doesn’t follow suit and whilst I’m sure it won’t entirely it’s a striking change in two decades and the source of some concern.

There are Fast Food Restaurants Everywhere

Maybe I wasn’t paying as much attention last time but I swear that on every city block on main roads there’s at least one food outlet. It’s also possible my memory of Houston is fuzzy (bound to be after so long) but it’s uncanny to me looking around as I’m driving. There’s no shortage of places to eat and my observation inside is that no one of them individually is particularly busy. Is there an oversupply to the market? Hmm.

OMG The Simpsons (S09E19) Weren’t Kidding About Starbucks

In 2000 I wasn’t drinking coffee, but I knew who Starbucks were. Back then there were 3,500 stores worldwide (okay I looked it up on their website) and today there are 27,340. I mean - holy F@cking Cr@p! In the Simpsons episode Bart is walking through the mall to get his ear pierced and is warned the owner that in 5 minutes it would become a Starbucks so he’d better hurry. As Bart departs, all of the stores were Starbucks including the one he was just inside. So yes obviously that’s an exaggeration, but the conference I’m attending is in Memorial City in Houston and in the Memorial Hospital there’s a Starbucks. There’s one in the Target, one in Macys and one in the dead-center of the mall itself. So that’s four stores in a radius of 750ft (230m)! That’s insane.

Having said all that there’s one thing I do remember about the busier parts of many US cities, of which Houston is no exception.

Concrete is everywhere

In other parts of the world using concrete for roadways such as freeways, highways, city streets and car parks is generally only an affordance spent on freeways due to lower rolling resistance, high load capacity and longer lifetime. It’s just too expensive to put it everywhere! Where I’ve been driving in Houston there’s concrete everywhere. It’s like everything is a shade of light-brownish-grey-concrete colour (I’m not an artist - it’s like concretey-colour), broken up mainly by tress and grass. Of course it’s not wrong exactly it’s just a really expensive way to do business. Then again those car parks won’t need much maintenance for the next thirty years and what’s a pot-hole? Not really an issue with concrete. The freeways also are an absolutely immaculate work of engineering art, with fly-overs, fly-unders and people speeding like heck! (Not me though, but the speed limit clearly isn’t fast enough for most other people I’m finding).

Anyhow it’s all good really. I do love the USA and I feel pretty comfortable here. The only shame is that I’m only here for a week. I am planning a proper holiday with the whole family late next year though, so hopefully I’ll have much longer to explore much further than I could this time around.

John Tackles Blogvember 2019

Flicking through my RSS on the plane to the States and I came across Shawn Blanc’s post about blogging everyday during November. Since I don’t have the time or commitment to finish anything longer than a short story (hence NaNoWriMo never worked for me) then this seems to work. What the heck?

I started by back-publishing two articles that were 70% done and then yesterday wrote about the differences in travelling overseas in the current age vs when I was young.

This qualifies as a meta-post, which I ordinarily detest writing, but alas here we are anyway. The truth is that TechDistortion hasn’t been a regular blog for nearly five years as I’ve spent my time podcasting instead. Sometimes I cross the streams, mostly I don’t. There was a time a while ago where some people were encouraging novel-length podcast episode show notes but thankfully that didn’t last long and it’s not really the same thing. (People don’t read podcasts, they listen to them. Who knew?)

Whether my attempt to tackle “Blogvember,” which is it’s apparent moniker, yields anything of interest to the world at large may be judged by the masses upon its completion.