Colin's Blog » Travelling

BlackBerry Annoyance…

Colin Carmichael — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:40:13 +0000

I love my BlackBerry. It paid for itself today when our our booth display went AWOL in Oklahoma City and I had to be in constant contact with the office to get things sorted out. I did discover one little annoying thing, though...

I don't have everyone's office extension memorized - I hardly ever call the office and I have an extension list pinned to the wall right above my office phone. Plus, if I ever have to call in to the office, we have this really handy system that lets the caller punch in the first few letters of the name of the person they are trying to reach, and it give you a list to choose from. Pretty slick. Unless you are calling from a BlackBerry! The BlackBerry, you see, does not have a standard phone keypad. Instead, the 'numbers' are alternate keys on a standard QWERTY keypad. So when I was trying to get hold of someone in the office today, I had no idea which numbers corresponded to the letters I needed. I seemed to remember that '1' has no numbers, so I could figure out in my head that keys 2-4 were 'abc', 'def', 'ghi' beyond that, mentally chunking the alphabet fell apart... which was unfortunate since I really needed an 'r'! (Sounds like Wheel of Fortune - can I buy a vowel?)

Anyway, just a case where one useful piece of technology (the office directory) is made less useful by a newer technology (the BlackBerry). Or, a case where a new technology is not designed to be useful with older technology. You choose.

RV Parking at OKC?

Colin Carmichael — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:30:35 +0000

I'm travelling again next week, this time to Oklahoma City. Since the timelines around our departure are kinda tight, I thought I'd see just how far the airport is from our hotel.

The last driving instruction is as follows:

Bear right at Guy Fuller Dr and head toward Covered Shuttle Parking/Truck Parking/RV Parking - go 0.5 mi

RV Parking? Really? Does that seem odd to anyone else?

Home for the weekend

Colin Carmichael — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 21:45:26 +0000

It's been nice to be home for a couple days - and I have a couple more before I head off to Denver. Hangin' out with A & H today, and JDH's 2nd birthday party tomorrow. Play couple hockey games on Monday, and then it's off to the airport again. Ah well.