Eclectical Engineering

I really don’t care for chain restaurants. Whenever I’m traveling on business (which turns out to be quite a lot just now), I paradoxically tend to feel more at home in a neighborhood joint I’ve never heard of, than in a local branch of some Humongous Food Chain. It isn’t that the food is bad at chain restaurants — likely as not, it is just fine (or at least not septic) — it’s rather the tense and creepy atmosphere, some sort of admixture of déjà vu (on my part) and smugness (on the part of the staff). It can all be summed up in a question that the wait staffs in such places seem to be trained to ask: (more…)

There are a lot of people around these parts who are now wearing headsets for their cell phones. And no, not the small, discreet wired jobs, but the big ovoid Bluetooth-powered wireless ear leeches that look like something that The Borg tried to pop-rivet onto Jean-Luc Picard.

Yes, I suppose that wireless headsets are probably safer than wired ones (no wires to snag, although one wonders about the offsetting danger from “junk band” UHF radio waves being drilled into one’s brain at point-blank range). Yet, these things somehow disturb me at a rather visceral level, and I’m not the only one. I’ve figured out that this may be due to uncertainty as to how to act around people wearing these things — that is, the lack of a protocol. (more…)