"Tue": I would change cell phones

I kind of loathe actually talking on the phone. We’ve discussed that before. The weird thing is I do enjoy owning a cell phone. It’s cool to send people little messages, listen to music, take pictures, read the news, or various other things all with this little hunk of plastic and metal. But being the greedy, unsatisfied, fallen being that I am, I always want it to do more. I’m living in an age as Arthur Clarke said “where technology has become virtually indistinguishable from magic”, but sometimes I think we need more magic. Not just more magic, smarter magic. I was reading an article earlier in the week about how with the iphone you can take a picture and then using the phone’s GPS capabilities stamp that picture with the coordinates of where it was taken. So when you upload it to the internet, your pictures can show up on a map based on where you took them. Conversely if you want to see an area of town, you can look it up on the picture map and see all the pictures that were taken by people in that area of town. Honestly it seems like a pretty cool idea, and I’m not sure why it took so long for someone to figure out that you could do that with a phone attached to a camera.

So here’s a few other ideas features I would want added to my cell phone:

Credit/Debit Card

This one is actually happening…well, it’s happening everywhere but the U.S anyway. Instead of having to carry around all those credit cards, and then trying to figure out how to use every variation of the credit card machines, why not just touch your phone to the credit card machine and punch in a code. That’s it! Your done! The phone could even tell you right then and there how much you had left in your checking account, or how much you owed to VISA. Even better what if you could transfer the money phone to phone. If you lose that bet with your friend; you can pay up instantly. It would save friendships.

TV Remote

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to find the TV remote. Usually because someone you live with didn’t put it back. Well most everyone has a cell phone, why not just allow those to also operate the TV? You could even personalize and assign your favorite channels to buttons like speed dial. It could be a topic of conversation, “so what channels is your phone set to…..The discovery channel!? Me Too!..Let’s talk about that.”

Garage door opener

I’ve never actually owned a garage door opener, but I’m guessing it’s pretty awesome. Even more awesome though would be not having that ugly, gray block weighing down your sunvisor. I’m sure there’s some security issues to work through, but still, cell phones should be able to handle this.

Car Keys

While we’re talking about cars, why can’t cell phones start cars? They have those little key dongles that start cars that have been around since 1992 yet you’re telling me a cell phone couldn’t just take care of this and free up valuable space in your pocket? Also you could start the car from inside your house that way the A/C already has it nice and cool by the time you make it out to your car.

Translator

One of the weird features on my phone is that it will read my text messages to me if I ask it. I’m not really sure why I’d ever do that, except if I was blind or maybe driving. I can also tell my phone to do things like “call so and so” and it seems to understand most of the time. So if the phone can understand speech and it can read text, why can’t it translate a language? You say something in German to my phone, and my phone explains in English what you said. It would be like a crude version of the Rosetta Stone or the Babel Fish from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, minus the awkward worm inside your skull.

Video Phones

Honestly, I kind of thought that there was absolutely no difference between talking to someone on the phone and talking to someone on a video phone (or video chat). But after using skype a couple times let me tell you, there is. The non-verbal stuff is so huge. So most cell phones these days have video cameras included, I feel like the face to face conversations are really just a few months away.

Projector

How cool would it be once they have the camera thing figured out to be able to throw that video onto a nearby wall? I’m not talking about a building-sized, theatre image or anything, just maybe 9 inches onto the chair in front of you, the wall next to you, or the person you’re standing behind. You could pull up videos you’ve recorded on your phone and project them for your friends to see, instead of doing that awkward crowding around the 2” screen and pretending like you can see what’s going on.

Multiplayer games

If you have tetris…And I have tetris…why can’t we play each other in tetris? Or Nertz, battleship, jeopardy, pool, miniature golf, etc. These things are communication devices, that play games, yet I can only play games by myself. Why is that?

Active Listener mode

I kind of feel like the world of people that have cell phones could be separated into 2 groups, the people who need to call their friends and unload for 30+ minutes, and the people who receive calls from friends who need to unload. I would probably fall into the latter. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part we receivers do enjoy that you call us to share your life, but it can be tough trying to remain “in” the conversation enough to keep encouraging you on with the “oh yea?……..uh-huh…….yep…….mmmm……really?......oooo..”. I feel like maybe we could just create maybe a 60 second loop of that, and then when we get a call that has the feeling of being a doozy, could just turn on that the Active Listener Mode and a remix of that 60 second clip would play……while we listen of course, but just without the pressure of reassuring the caller every 7 seconds that we are indeed still enthralled.

Vibrate schedule

It’s possible some phones already have this, I don’t really do that much research for these things. I have a pretty set schedule, and I’m tired of trying to remember to turn the phone to silent/vibrate, then remember to turn it back on. The phone has a clock, why can’t it just remember to do this itself? Sundays, I’m going to need to be on vibrate from 9-10:30. Monday, Wednesday, Fridays from 10:45-noon, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to noon. That seems pretty easy to me. The phone should know that schedule and be able to set itself accordingly.

Some of these ideas I’ll admit probably could use a little more time in the oven. But maybe some of them are already way past due. To be honest I’m not really sure which are which but it probably won’t be too long till we’re laughing at the idea of carrying around those “humongous primitive blocks of plastic” which will just make this list even more entertaining and ridiculous. Which kind of fits the part-time goal of this blog.

Mon:I like QuikTrip

There’s some stores or restaurants that just reach the elusive Target greatness. They come off classy, they remain inexpensive enough for a college student, and they're likeable enough that you’ll go out of your way to visit that store instead of the other guy. I would have to say that somehow QuikTrip has managed to capture that greatness. Well to me anyway.

It’s hard to believe but I realize there’s a few folks out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, they’re wondering “what is this—Quiktrip?” I’m just sorry you’re going have to have to settle for this shoddy explanation and won’t be able to see for yourself. Quiktrip is a convenience store/gas station but that really doesn’t do it justice. It’s the next evolution in gas stations for a variety of reasons.

First of all the food at Quiktrip is not just OK, it’s usually amazing. Have you ever had a donut from this place? The maple bars are something like 14 inches long. 14 inches! They have fresh sandwiches that make fast food look cheap and extremely unhealthy by comparison. But in the event you’re into that sort of thing, or maybe it’s been a long night and you're craving something jack-in-the-Box-esque they also have $1 Taquito’s (admittedly they take some getting used to so don’t go crazy with them your first time out) or stuffed breadsticks, and of course the convenience store staple, the hot dog. None of it is old either, You’ll never walk in there and see that mystery slim jim looking sausage rolling around on the hot dog roller like you would usually see at a normal place.

You can’t talk about the food without also talking about the drinks. When they first opened in my area, they gave everyone who came in a free mug and free refills on that mug for a month (who says you can't buy love?). Some places that would be kind of cool, but really how many cups of bad coffee or watered down coke can you enjoy. At QT though, there’s like 8 different types of good coffee not including the hot Chai tea, Hot Chocolate, or Cappuccino. Then there’s the cold stuff, your usual array of soda’s and lemonade, but also something called the black cherry smoothie. I’m not totally sure how it qualifies for smoothie status because I’m pretty sure there’s no fruit in it, in fact it tastes pretty much like a cherry kool-aid slush, which is basically what every kid grows up wishing those self righteous Icee’s were; Kool-aid slushes. It's nice to see the dream finally realized.

The employees are amazing too. I’m not really sure where they find these people, but they rival the folks who work at Starbucks for friendliness and employees of In and Out for competency. They're like a super-hybrid. I’ve sat there and watched a guy named Zach work 2 registers simultaneously to check out a line of 9 people while making sure to say hello and have a quick chat with all of them. true story. If I ever need to hire someone for anything I’m just going to go down to QT and headhunt there.

The overall vibe of the place is just really legit, and safe. In fact most QT’s even have a little sign letting you know that you have now entered a safe place. I always see that and it reminds me of one of those cities that the Israelites could run to if they accidentally killed someone and needed protection from the family of the victim. If I ever wrong someone that badly there’s a good chance you’ll find me at QT relaxing in my “safe place”.

So most of that previous praise for QT was well warranted but I think what I really like about the place is how it took a traditionally shady and frequently questionable thing like the convenience store and made it something that people could be legitimately proud of. They could be proud to work there, or shop there, or even just live near there. They just completely redeemed the idea of a gas station. I’m sure one day students will study how QT stepped up and showed everyone what kind of potential these places had and as a result found a permanent place in communities. As a business student, being able to watch that happen in the real world has been pretty cool and sometimes inspires me to see potential in other traditionally ugly or dirty jobs.

Tuesday: I would change breakfast

Mornings and I don’t get along. I tell myself it some kind of genetic thing, that I’m pre-disposed to being a “night person”. I haven’t found any genetic studies yet that I can point to for validation, but it’s more pleasant than labeling myself as lazy. Morning really has very few activities to call it’s own, but the most prominent would have to be breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day, and some people even say it sets the tone for the day. I’m not one of those people. To me breakfast is a collection of unusual foods, eaten at what any objective outsider would agree, is an unusual time. Throwing back a plate of unfertilized-baby-chicken-kits after getting out of bed has always felt a little out of place to me. Now, I’m not against breakfast as a whole, just its current incarnation. The foods are too weird to be dealing with while you are still waking up, and the emphasis on the importance of the meal seems a little pompous. Like just because it’s the first meal, somehow it can take credit for more of what’s going to happen in your life that day.

All that being said however there are a lot of things I would hate to see go if we altogether abandoned breakfast. I’m a huge fan of the good people at General Mills, Post, and Kellogg’s. I would miss sitting and having a meal in the quietness of morning while people are still waking up, and you can either just munch and read or just munch and think. Most importantly though, I would just be hungry and have trouble focusing on school or work or whatever I’m supposed to be focusing on that morning. So here are a few changes I would make to the traditional, western view of the topic called breakfast.

Give up the title of most important to Lunch
Breakfast doesn’t really prepare you for the day so much as it really helps you recover from last night. Nobody is pointing at the spinach omelette as the key to their success. Food is food, no matter when you eat it. So breakfast needs to stop pretending like there’s some kind of magic going on with any food consumed before 10:30am (the window of time assigned to breakfast by Ronald Mcdonald and friends). Lunch needs to start getting some of the credit it deserves. Not because the food is better, but the whole idea of lunch has just been utilized better. People meet for lunch, they discuss things over lunch, business happens over lunch, pressure free dating happens over lunch, and lunch provides a needed retreat from being neck deep in work or school. Lunch is obviously the most important meal of the day.

Simplicity is bliss
In the spirit of the title of this paragraph, this will be short. Breakfast should be basically a snack; a yogurt, some cereal, a piece of fruit, whatever. All it really needs to be is a stop gap till lunch. Also all these foods are easy to understand even if you haven’t quite woken up yet. This is key to the successful restructuring of breakfast.

Everything else can return at a reasonable time like 9pm
I’m not against eggs, pancakes, and the rest of the IHOP menu. I just think all that has it has it’s place, and that place is around 9pm. By that time, the brain is awake and can fully appreciate the craziness of the omelette, the deliciousness of the bacon, or the fluffiness of the pancake. (that sentence feels weird to me for some reason). People usually get hungry around this time anyway; it’s the perfect stage for the unusual foods that used be part of “team breakfast”.

So in short, breakfast needs to be humbled. Somewhere along the line, someone spent some time stroking its ego and convincing it that people would lose sleep to enjoy it properly. I haven’t seen that to be true. Unless you’re one of those people who goes to bed at 9pm, wakes up at 5am and need something to fill that time for you. Then possibly I can see you being partial to your lone companion in the morning. But for the everybody else, normal people, I hope you see the logic in my argument for altering this bizarre meal.