Friday, November 19, 2004, 8:28am
Friday, November 19, 2004, 8:28am
This will have to be short. Once again I’ve nearly killed the laptop battery overnight. The reasons are different but the results the same.
William is again the conductor at the back of the train. He’s a phantom compared to the ebullient Norm, who would roll through here joking and wishing everybody a good morning. I really can’t complain since it’s not the job of any conductor to entertain or banter with the passengers and William clearly inspires quiet confidence in his role of railroad shepherd.
The snow is gone and in its place I feel an April-like spring day. The impending doom of winter has abated for the moment with soft wispy clouds and warm yellow sunlight. The ground is wet with dew, not crusted in frost, and it almost feels warm enough to go without a coat.
With the laptop battery indicating its own imminent doom, I have time for one last comment…
This morning a guy in the seat ahead wears a device that wraps around the back of his right ear with a plastic stem protruding from under his earlobe pointing in the general direction of his mouth. My guess here is a Bluetooth wireless headset – or ear-set as the case may be. With nothing plugging into his ear, a small transducer must be inducing audio directly through the bone structure near his ear – a cool idea. The only design flaw is the blinking blue LED well out of view of the user. It doesn’t draw much battery power to run that LED, but I can imagine a carload of people wearing these things like tacky Christmas tree ornaments and how annoying that could become.
