White House Visit Snafu
This past Saturday while visiting DC we had a confirmed reservation to tour the White House. The plans were made in advance and we had the confirmation number. Our scheduled tour time was 8:30am. We showed up around 7:45a (cuz I’m just anal that way). We got up to the podium (ya, seriously… that’s all they have… no gate, desk, computer, etc.). The girl looks through the hard-copy list (it might have even been printed on a dot-matrix printer) and our names aren’t on it. She checks our IDs and calls a guy over (he couldn’t have been over 23 years old — I’m gonna call him Skippy). Skippy proceeds to make a cell-phone call with our IDs and confirmation number in hand. He goes over to a bird-bath (I’m serious) and sets all the stuff down on his little workstation the government has so graciously provided for both him and the pigeons! He comes back to us and hands us back our IDs and tells us he’s awaiting an email… yes, an email on his blackberry, cuz they ain’t got a computer anywhere in site… and Lord knows how secure sending our social security numbers over 3g is.
In the meantime, more 8:30 people show up (we were the first — did I mention I’m anal?). More missing names. The girl is really starting to get panicky. So they start making a little corral for us to “graze” in while we wait. Soon the corral is full of 8:30 attendees. A security guard shows up on his Schwinn, also a little panicked that some of us are outside the corral. He instructs us all to back up while they extend the size of the corral. By this time, all 8:30 tour people are directed to the corral, whether they are on the list or not. I can see they suspect a terrorist plot. Some “Jihad Joe” infiltrated the computer system, sabotaged the 8:30 list, in hopes that they’d just let us all go through. But haha… they are smarter than that. Instead, Skippy is going to take each of our IDs individually and process us 1 by 1. Shouldn’t take more than say… SEVERAL HOURS.
Lucky for us… we were already being processed by the finely tuned line-processing team. Our names were called moments later and we were able to proceed. We mosey up to security gate #2. Showed our IDs. Oh crap… were not on the list. I say “Ummmm… we are part of the mixed up 8:30 list”. The guys walks over and finds the sheet over paper with our 3 names on it. Whew! We’re in by 9:00a.
What happened to the rest of the 8:30 group? We ran into one of them later at the White House visitors center. They were all asked to come back in a few hours. Not sure if any of them got to take the tour or not. We were lucky! The whole time I had to hold in my laughter. It was true poetry in motion. The epitome of our government at work. It would truly make a hilarious scene in a movie. Adam Sandler… feel free to steal this for your “Happy Gilmore: President Elect” movie.
What would have topped this all off? Jay was SO EXHAUSTED from standing he almost sat down on a 200 year old chair in the Red Room. OMG that would have been hilarious if it would have shattered. Luckily I caught him in mid-squat, even before the Secret Service did.
Want to see more of our trip? (BTW… no cameras allowed at the White House, so we didn’t get any pics)
Day 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=260050&id=705579767&l=c956220bbe
Day 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=260054&id=705579767&l=adb4b6c7f7
Day 3: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=260059&id=705579767&l=6bb51e60b2
My First Podcast
Check out my interview on The Portable Podcast. Thanks guys! You’ve been a great help to indie developers.
Is Texting Harmful?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately. I’ve observed kids (and adults) that are SO attached to their devices that they kind of lose site of the reality around them. I know I’ve experience this with my iPad. Is that a bad thing? The person IS interacting with someone (or something), just through a different medium. But that’s different than eye-to-eye interaction. It’s hard to build intimacy through a text message isn’t it? Plus isn’t it rude to be with someone else and dividing your attention between them and your offline conversation? I’ve been at family gatherings where the kids are so busy texting that they aren’t interacting with each other. That’s sad from the way I remember being raised and having so much fun with my cousins, etc. I try to never respond to my phone during dinner, a movie, or time with family.
For me text messaging is great because it allows me and my girlfriend to interact throughout the day without interfering with each others schedules. She can text me back when she’s not busy with a student and if I’m busy in a “train of thought” at work I can ignore the text for a little bit and respond later. It’s not a distraction for us because we limit the interruptions to maybe a dozen or so a day. But what happens to your brain when you are constantly texting and feel the need to immediately respond? Is your brain rewired to always respond to the stimuli and you feel the impulse to do something about it? How does this affect your real-world interactions? Plus… what about all the time lost? I know that after I’ve spent too much (unproductive) time on the computer or my iPad (playing “We Rule”) I feel kind of depressed. Like… wow… I just wasted all that time and I could have been hiking, playing guitar, or working in the yard.
Then again, some may question if it’s a waste of time. Is FaceBook a waste of time? Isn’t it a good tool for interacting with someone? Or is it just NOISE that we otherwise wouldn’t be “wrapped up” in? I know I’ve spent many hours typing responses to messages that ultimately I really don’t care about and I probably wouldn’t have interacted with this person anyway. In fact I recently “pruned” my FaceBook list to prevent just this kind of wasted time.
So… give me your thoughts. I want to hear from those of us that grew up in the generation where we played outside and some dirt and a stick was sufficient entertainment to those who need constant entertainment and stimuli. Of course, I don’t want you wasting too much time. So make it quick! 
Back From Christmas Cruise
Here’s our photos from the Christmas cruise we took.
Part 1 (Miami, Samana, St. Thomas)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=185053&id=705579767&l=240e8cd01a
Miami - Arrived on Friday (18th) afternoon, checked in to hotel (right across from beach) and then walked Ocean Drive and had a fantastic dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the beach. Next morning, took a stroll along the beach, had breakfast overlooking the ocean, and then packed up and head to the Port of Miami and boarded ship. Jane caught a cold and so we retired to bed early that night.
Samana - went kayaking and cave exploring.
St. Thomas - went into town for a “little” bit of shopping, then went snorkeling and saw a shipwreck and lots of fish and corral.
Part 2 (Tortola/Virgin Gorda, Stirrup Cay (Xmas), scenes from the ship)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=185063&id=705579767&l=91b345334f
Tortola - Went to the baths of Virgin Gorda and enjoyed the beach (rough waves). Returned and went into city. Nothing special there, so only spent 30 or so minutes looking around.
Stirrup Cay (Christmas Day) - Enjoyed relaxing on the beach. Doug was a little under the weather, but Jane enjoyed dancing to the band.
Scenes from the ship - I put all the ship pictures at the end. These are various pictures taken throughout the cruise. Wish we had taken more. Beautiful ship. Wonderful room with our own private balcony and super-sized bathroom (relative to what you usually get on a ship). Every night they made a towel animal for us and left it on the bed. Fun!
We had a great time, but missed being with family on Christmas.
Jiggle Balls: Spikes! is released
Jiggle Balls: Spikes! is now in the App Store. WooHoo! It’s been a long time coming, but I’m pretty happy with it. Surf over to www.funkyvisions.com for details.
CodeMash 2010
Funky Visions (that’s me) is going to be at CodeMash 2010 in Sandusky, Ohio from Jan 13-15. If you’d like to meet up to discuss iPhone development, let me know. Waterslides here I come!
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated
Apparently word around town was everyone thought I was dead.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/dispatch/obituary.aspx?n=douglas-e-davis&pid=133385754
This guy worked at OCLC at one point. The whole “Davis” / “Davies” confusion I guess.
Geocaching
Today I picked up a Garmin GPS handheld unit (picture to the left — cheapy $90 one). I’ve been reading about geocaching and thought it would be fun to pick a target each weekend and go find it. For those of you that don’t know what geocaching is, here’s the wikipedia definition:
Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a “game of high-tech hide and seek”, sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking.
I signed up for an account on geocaching.com and have picked a few targets to try this weekend. I’ll let ya know how it goes.
I Cashed Mine!
I got a check for$27.68 the other day as part of a lawsuit settlement. I know a few other people got one as well. They were suspicious. Mine’s already cashed. Did you get one? Know why?
Check out the link:
Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto
I went to this
http://feh.osu.edu/competition.htm
tonight. Quite fun! My girlfriend’s son was participating. Lessons learned… don’t change your environment on the last day of testing. They had a robot built that was working great and they had been downloading the software via one of the campus machines. Today, all the sudden it started misbehaving? Why? Not sure, but they started using one of their own personal laptops and the thinking is one of the libraries in their environment that it downloaded to the robot was outta synch. Their robot stalled after driving forward about 2 inches (the GPS data got all whacked). We were sorry to see that happen, since his robot had performed quite well in the preliminaries.
I use to participate in a Lego Robotics League with a bunch of guys at AOL. I kind of miss those days. We had some great competitions and some great innovation. Sometimes I wish I had gone into robotics, since whenever I play with it, I seem to do pretty well and really enjoy it.
