For starters, of all the past packages of Sun Chips, the color of this bag is the least appealing I’ve ever seen. It’s a drab shade of brown and doesn’t visually persuade me to pick it up.

Then there’s the typo. “Sundried” tells me it’s a haphazard assortment of different kinds of tomatoes. Dear Sun Chips makers, it should be “Sun-dried Tomato.”

But then when looking at the ingredients, one has to wonder why “Monterey Jack and Sundried Tomato” was even chosen as the flavor name in the first place. Unless I’m mistaken, product ingredients are always listed such that the ingredient that has the greatest proportion of the entire product is listed first, and then other ingredients are listed in order of their overall proportion. In other words, there is less of the last-listed ingredient than there is of any other ingredient. So lets look at the ingredients of this new Sun Chips product:

So, what are we consuming here:

• whole corn
• sunflower oil
• whole wheat
• whole oat flour
• rice flour
• monterey jack and sun dried tomato seasoning (note different, but still lacking hyphenated spelling)
• sugar
• corn bran
• natural flavor
• corn maltodextrin

Okay, there’s various corn, wheat, flour, and oil to make up the chips themselves, and some seasoning for the flavor. But then there’s the whole list of what makes up the seasoning:

• buttermilk
• salt
• corn maltodextrin
• tomato powder (note, not “sun dried” tomato powder)
• sugar
• cheddar cheese (cheddar??)
• whey
• spices (um, parsley is an herb, not a spice)
• garlic powder
• onion powder
• cream
• skim milk powder
• citric acid
• oh there’s the monterey jack cheese
• mozzarella cheese
• and there finally is the sun dried tomato powder
• natural sun dried tomato flavor
• blue cheese
• paprika

If I’m right that the later ingredients are less in quantity than the earlier ingredients, there’s more cheddar in this product than monterey jack, and with the addition of mozzarella and blue cheeses, it’s not impossible that there could be more of all other types of cheese than monterey jack alone. And what’s with the “sun dried” variety of tomato being down at the end?

From what I can tell, some marketer was simply hell-bent on naming this product as monterey jack and sundried tomato, regardless of the ingredients.

Assuming you’ve even read this far into my little soapbox, I’ll suggest you set all of that aside and consider the one last fact that trumps everything I’ve typed to this point: the flavor was boring, so no, I won’t be buying these again. I’m hoping the Garden Salsa flavor doesn’t disappear forever from Subway!

One of our intimate times together while dating provoked me to ask Lee one evening, “Can you imagine being monotonous—after all, this is ME we’re talking about?” What I meant to ask was: Can you imagine being in a monogamous relationship? I wanted to be sure he could see himself be faithful to me—and only me—something I wasn’t sure previous relationships had afforded me; and after hearing him say he’d have been OK in his previous relationship never being married—just as long as he was with her—concerned me. So, I brought up what I saw to be a legitimate question.

Imagine my shock when he started laughing almost hysterically at me. “Be monotonous…with you? NOT POSSIBLE!” My heart must’ve sunk ten feet. He couldn’t imagine being with only me. And if that were the case, that meant no future for us—no point in dating either.

The look on his face held humor, but grew serious when he observed the solemn look that must’ve been on mine. He was so with me in that moment, I couldn’t understand how someone who got me so completely couldn’t imagine being with only me. Why wasn’t I enough?

Instead of childishly withdrawing, I dared to ask, “Why isn’t that possible?”

“Because nothing is boring with you, my dear!” he answered.

Now I was really confused. “So, you’d rather be bored the rest of your life?”

“No. And I’m not gonna hafta be. I have you.”

About this time, a light bulb came on in my head and I fumbled to push Lee away from me and retrieve my iPhone.

“What’s wrong?” Lee watched me dumb-founded. “Is it something I said?”

“No. I think it’s something I said.” I flipped through the apps until I found the dictionary. Discovering my mistake, I laughed like crazy until tears fell. Poor Lee was bewildered.

Taking in my amusement, he finally asked, “Are you going to share it with me?”

Regaining my composure, I relived the past several minutes, cluing him in on what I had really meant to say. “See? Nothing will ever be monotonous with you,” he laughed, “and for reasons such as this!”

He then assured me that he, too, believes in MONOGOMOUS relationships and that he found whom he wanted to be monogamous with—forever.

In the end, we both agreed: Monogamy does NOT equal monotony!

I do want to utilize is blog space more often—so it’s now up to me to get back to keeping a more open mind about the kinds of things I want to write about.

Before the fall, the lens behaved as I would expect it. I could zoom in for a telephoto shot of an object, focus on that object, then come back to a wide angle shot with the focus ring not changing, and the image would still be in focus. Ditto in reverse.

After the fall, this is no longer the case. Vis:

The top left photo was focused manually at wide angle. The top right photo shows the result from zooming to full telephoto with the focus ring completely unchanged. Likewise, the bottom left photo is manually focused with a telephoto shot, and the bottom right photo retains that same focus after pulling back to wide angle.

Nikon received the lens and “repaired” it for $145.63. The invoice indicates replacing three roller/guide rings, a rubber ring, a lens element, lens FPC, then a general check and clean.

Alas, upon return, I find nothing different about its behavior. The above photos were taken today after the lens had been returned.

Tech reps very loosely implied that this is normal behavior, but I call foul because the lens could maintain focus throughout the zoom range prior to the accident. There was also an implication that perhaps the problem is the D90 camera, but since the focus issue does not appear on the D90 when I use an older Tamron lens, and the focus issue does appear when I put the Nikon lens on an older D100 camera, evidence points solidly toward damage with the lens.

I’m pestering Nikon to do one of two things: take the lens back with pre-paid postage and try again, or refund the amount I paid because nothing is different about the lens’ operation—in other words, it feels as though they “repaired” a nonexistent problem.

I don’t mind if the result of working with Nikon is that the damage caused cannot be repaired and the lens must be replaced, but I’m not going to pay $145.63 for work on a lens and still have to buy a new lens.

Any thoughts?

P.S. for those technically inclined, you can click through the above thumbnails to the original JPG files with EXIF data intact.

For many years, my practice has been to create a unique e-mail alias for every company with which I e-mail regularly or need an address for a registration. Presently, there are nearly 150 address aliases defined.

The result of this effort is that I get practically no spam to my personal e-mail address, and when I do, it’s a pretty sure guarantee that I know who instigated.

It’s been many months—probably more than a year—since I’ve received any spam at all to any of my e-mail aliases. Yesterday, one came to an alias I had created for AppZapper, a utility that aids in removing preferences, caches, libraries, and more when uninstalling an application. Giving AppZapper the benefit of the doubt, I e-mailed to inform them that I didn’t appreciate my address being sold off for spam lists, but that if that didn’t happen, they may need to investigate a compromise in their database security.

The reply I got was essentially, “We don’t do that,” as in, they claim to not sell off e-mail lists.

Continuing to give them the benefit of the doubt, I responded to say they should investigate the breach since they do not sell e-mail lists, and I provided the complete source code of the e-mail and header.

The next reply from AppZapper was advice to contact my ISP (more correctly, my domain host), suggesting that the compromise is there. BZZZT. Wrong answer.

Seriously, I ask you: Spam arrives to a single e-mail alias among nearly 150 that have gone spam-free for a number of years. If a compromise of access to the database is the reason, where do you think that compromise occurred?

No, AppZapper, if the compromise was with my domain host, it is quite certain I’d be receiving spam to many of my e-mail aliases—not just the one for your product. Because of this dodge, I no longer believe a compromise is the explanation. If it were, you’d be willing to investigate and resolve the breach. By dodging the issue and blindly claiming it’s the fault of my domain host, I’m simply convinced that you do, in fact, avail e-mail lists to spammers.

Consequently, AppZapper will no longer live on my computers and any relevant venue I’m part of will hear about the shenanigans.

Moreover, a trusted friend has further reason to believe AppZapper has limited ethical standards. Apparently, AppZapper chose the Camino web browser as a sample application in its demonstrations for application removal. As a result, many users who don’t quite understand what’s going on are following the example and, expectedly, losing all their web site bookmarks. My friend, who is on the Camino development team, says they have repeatedly asked AppZapper to stop using them as an example, especially since AppZapper never asked permission in the first place. The requests have essentially fallen on deaf ears, and Camino support is getting the fallout of distraught users who’ve lost their bookmarks, caused by activities suggested by AppZapper. My friend’s supposition: “They’re probably assuming that we don’t have the legal resources to put up a fight if it comes to that. ‘Hey, let’s pick on an open-source example.’”

AppZapper is an AppFailure.

I appreciate as much as anyone else the mentality of not being wasteful, but you’re being less green with all those plastic food service gloves you plow through during the day than by dumping out a portion of a batch of iced tea when you close at night!

Cheers!

I can’t really say what was going through my mind that day. I’d pretty much only be able to say I kind of mentally shut down. Suffice to say, it was all we could do to make the best of the rest of my family’s vacation, even down to our return home. Flights were only just barely starting to get going again. We had tried to make a reservation. Within an hour after doing so, we were informed that it had been cancelled and we’d have to try again. I think something similar happened again the next time we tried.

So, between the reservation challenges, and knowing how awful airports would be even if we’d managed to make a reservation, we gave up and decided to rent a one-way vehicle to drive back home. This decision is the source of two positives I got out of the whole 9/11 experience.

For one, we drove through several states I’d never before visited, so having to drive let me see some of this country of ours, including a stop at Mount Rushmore—certainly an appropriate stop to make, considering the circumstances. Another positive was that I got to visit my friend Andy at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is the only time I ever saw him at that location before he moved to Kentucky.

Never forget.

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows

so we love

less well

so low
so level

wolves evolve

Before I get into it, I’ll acknowledge that for those of us who’d previously paid the Apple Tax for QuickTime Pro luckily still have the previous QuickTime Player application. It’s been moved to the Utilities folder—and thanks to someone at Apple who had the presence of mind to allow it to retain all its functionality.

As for the new QuickTime Player, I have numerous observations of behavior and gotchas. As much as Apple might have you believe that the new version folds in all the features that were available in QuickTime Pro, I most heartily assure you it’s only a half-baked effort:

1. Definitely the least important of my list, but what purpose does it serve to have jumped the version number of QuickTime Player from 7 to 10, banning versions 8 and 9 to presumably never see the light of day?
2. No preferences? Anywhere? Both the app preferences and System Preference pane for QuickTime are gone?
3. JKL editing is gone. This is the function that lets the J, K, and L keys act as the “shuttle” portion of video jog/shuttle control. In QuickTime Player 7 Pro, the L key plays forward and J key plays backward. The K key stops playback. Successive presses of the J or L keys will play increasingly faster in the current direction: 2x, 4x, etc. In addition, If playing forward at 2X and the J key is pressed once, playback slows to 1X.
4. Command+Left and Right arrows sort of serve as JKL editing now, but using them immediately starts at 2X playback. I find no way to play backward at 1X.
5. Also, use of Command+Left and Right doesn’t exist in Trim mode where it would be most useful.
6. I and O keyboard shortcuts to mark In and Out points for trimming are gone.
7. The playhead in Trim mode has no counter associated with it and you cannot drag it.
8. It is now impossible to find edit points based on the audio track since JKL editing is gone and Command+Left and Right arrows are mostly useless. In QuickTime Player 7 Pro, I have often swashed forward and backward in a small region of time to find an edit point just ahead of where someone starts talking, for example, hitting the I key to mark that spot as an In point when the playhead is where I want to start.
9. There was a trick of clicking the counter to switch to frame numbers instead of time. That’s gone in the new QuickTime Player.
10. The Information window is still the same but the Movie Properties and A/V Controls windows are gone.

There’s probably lots more that I’m not thinking about at this time, but will be sure to turn up soon. All I can say is, it’s clear that QuickTime Player 10 SHOULD NOT be regarded as a replacement for version 7 of QuickTime Player Pro, and those of us who used those features should keep our collective fingers crossed and drink plenty of the Kool-Aid that even if we have to use a different player application, Apple will not drop any possibility of using the features in any way, shape, or form in QuickTime.

I seem to recall this bug in Twitterrific 1.x for iPhone, and then it was fixed, and now it’s back in 2.0. When I post a photo to TwitPic, the accompanying tweet text needs to become the caption, and it currently does not.

This is actually intentional. In order to set the caption with your tweet text, the tweet has to go through the photo posting service rather than through Twitter. However, we’ve found that many of the photo posting services fail regularly – if this happened when you were posting a photo, this would cause your tweet not to appear on Twitter at all. So to make sure your tweet reaches Twitter we send it directly there rather than through the photo service. So while this doesn’t let you set the caption, it does give your tweet a better chance of reaching Twitter.

Please, someone tell me which one of us is crazy—me or the person who answered the support e-mail. Of course the text would not make it to Twitter if the photo upload failed! When someone uploads a photo to a service like TwitPic, pretty much the entire point of the Twitter post is to notify followers about the new picture. If the picture somehow fails to upload, the Tweet would be pointless because it would reference a picture that no one would be able to see.

Dear Iconfactory, please restore the the behavior of a corresponding Twitter post becoming the caption for a TwitPic upload (and any other photo service, where applicable).

The opinion to which I refer is: I loathe the fact that formatting e-mail in HTML (a.k.a. Rich Text) instead of plain text is far more prevalent than it should be. And I don’t even fault the majority of us who do the e-mailing. I fault e-mail application developers who now make HTML/Rich Text formatting the default.

STOP THAT!

The most common purpose of an e-mail is to send a few thoughts in written form to another person. Period. Plain text is all anyone needs for just about all their e-mailing needs.

There are many reasons to stick with plain text. For one, it’s more compatible across all e-mail systems. HTML/Rich Text is an interpreted and rendered format. It’s not as simple as just typing a few characters. Some sort of tag is used to apply some sort of styling to all the text, and it’s in those tags that problems can occur if one e-mail application represents a particular tag differently than another e-mail application. The result: what the sender sees is not necessarily what the recipient will get.

Second reason: bad ju-ju can live in those formatting codes. Never mind that virus scripts can work their way into that code—do you know how spammers usually know that you’ve opened (even if you didn’t read, but at least opened) their e-mail? They include a link to a graphic—maybe even just an invisible single-pixel graphic. The URL path to that graphic is coded so that every spam e-mail has a unique number. If the e-mail is opened, usually the e-mail application will call out to the internet to pull in that graphic so it displays in the e-mail message. Because the URL to that graphic is unique in every message, the spammers then know that the e-mail address associated with that URL number is a valid address because their server registers that the graphic was requested.

This is why I always use the option in e-mail applications to never automatically download images from remote servers. Entourage (and many other applications) includes a link that I can use to download the images later if I determine the e-mail is from a trusted source. But even for trusted sources, the e-mail message will look bad, with broken image link icons, when I first open it.

Third reason: size. I just sent three sample e-mails to myself, all with the exact same text. There was a header line, then there was several lines of repeating asdf asdf asdf asdf…

In the text-only e-mail, this message weighed in at 1.6 kilobytes. Switching to HTML formatting, the exact same text without a single change to formatting went up to 2.65 kilobytes. In the third sample e-mail, I still left the actual text alone, but I italicized one of the several lines of repeating “asdf” characters, and on the header line of text where I typed that it was a test e-mail, I boldfaced it, enlarged the size, and changed the typeface. Other than these style changes, I did nothing to the actual text. The third sample e-mail went up a little more, to 2.76 kilobytes.

Okay, yes. This is tiny. Why am I complaining about 2-3 kilobytes as opposed to 1.6? Because this is a very lightweight example. The content was very short and was was only comprised of text content. E-mails of more typical length will grow considerably larger. And, don’t forget all those silly e-mail themes that e-mail clients provide which throw backgrounds, colored graphical headers, etc. throughout the message. There’s also the many people who think it’s nice to have a graphic scan of their handwritten signature in the e-mail.

As a result, the e-mail file size begins to grow seemingly exponentially. It suddenly takes a few dozen kilobytes instead of just a 3-4 kilobytes to let me know that a meeting has been rescheduled for a half hour later in the day. Multiply this by the dozens and dozens of e-mails I process every day, and—well, let me just say that I have a cap on the maximum amount I can store in my work e-mail account, and I constantly have to purge the big stuff out of the Sent and Deleted Items folders.

People have been all abuzz about the Twitter notification e-mails that inform users of new followers. Twitter, for the love of Pete, please give an option to go back to text-only e-mails. The old text-only notifications were about 2 or 2.5 kilobytes. The new HTML-formatted e-mails that not only contain links to remote graphics (which show as broken image link icons since I don’t auto-retrieve them) but also has several graphics embedded in the e-mail are now 7-8 kilobytes.

Once again, I realize this is still tiny amounts, relatively speaking, and I’m going to get people telling me, “So what? Can it, will ya?” Fine. But if the size rationale means nothing to you, my first two rationales should do a bit better. Yes, there are some times where an HTML-formatted message is useful—and I have been known to use them in certain cases. Most commonly, I’ll use HTML formatting when editing an article that someone sent to me via e-mail. Text that I ask to have removed, I’ll change to red color, but leave it in place so the other person sees what text I asked to remove. Text that I want added, I’ll type in green. But, the times when HTML formatting is useful is generally the exception—not the rule.

My hope is that you’ll realize plain text is most adequate for the majority of your e-mail and that you’ll change your e-mail application to default using plain text, manually switching to HTML formatting on an individual message basis, as needed.

My query is whether anyone has had any experience doing this and might be able to lend a hand, if needed.

Either way, once I finally get it done, the old URL will eventually be phased out. But I’m not publishing the new URL until I get things working.

Let’s define a text message, shall we?

From here on out, I’m going to assume we all know what SMS means. It stands for Short Message Service and is also known as a text message. So, I can now use “SMS” throughout the rest of this post, right? Good.

SMS is essentially the barrel-scraped lowest common denominator when it comes to resources required of a cellular carrier to support. The entire service is a holdout from texting pagers that people carried before cell phones got inexpensive enough for most people to carry. So, you may ask, how little a hit on resources do SMS texts take?

In terms of computers, a single character (such as the letter A) occupies one byte of space. Not one kilobyte—one byte! A kilobyte is enough to hold 1,000 bytes (characters). For the sake of simplicity, let’s not bother with the 1,024-byte math. It doesn’t matter for the purposes of my point.

So, how big is a text message?

Best I can tell, SMS has a 160-character maximum. Assuming that’s true, a single SMS would be 160 bytes. There’s certainly some overhead to that—you’d need at least an additional 20 bytes for the two 10-digit phone numbers involved: sender and recipient.

If that overhead is kept at a minimum, a single SMS would conceivably be less than 200 bytes, and I won’t even touch on whether or not the data is compressed or the fact that most text messages don’t use the maximum number of characters.

Assuming my supposition is remotely accurate, it means that a fully loaded SMS requires one-fifth of a kilobyte—or five texts per kilobyte. Scaling this up, since 1,000 kilobytes make up a megabyte, you get 5,000 texts per megabyte!

I’ll put a little more perspective on this. A typical MP3 audio file, such as a song, often weighs in approximately one megabyte per minute. In other words, the same amount of bandwidth a three-minute MP3 song would occupy is enough to carry 15,000 text messages!

Hey, I’ll give the cellular carriers a huge benefit of the doubt. I certainly know virtually nothing of the details for this, but suppose I took for granted that these carriers have to factor a minimum packet size. In other words, no packet of information (such as a single SMS) can be smaller than the minimum. Maybe that minimum is one kilobyte. On some hard drives I’ve used, I seem to recall the minimum packet size was four kilobytes. So let’s run with that.

To make a tiny packet of information (again, such as a single SMS) meet the minimum packet size, that packet will have irrelevant padding (such as, but not exclusively, zero-value bytes) added to it. Assuming a four-kilobyte packet, we’re talking more than three and a half kilobytes of padding on top of that 200-byte text message. Making an allowance for this hefty amount of padding is good for my illustration because it allows for a lot more overhead beyond the 200 bytes that may have to accompany a single SMS—something about which I’m admittedly uninformed.

So if a single SMS now requires a whopping four kilobytes, that’s still in the neighborhood of 250 text messages per megabyte or 750 in the space of that three-minute MP3 audio file.

Okay, Lee, we get it. What’s your point?

All I’m trying to say is the same thing many people before me have said. The amount of strain a single SMS puts on a cellular network can be likened to the amount of strain a single drop of water puts on a gallon bucket. Most people could never measure it! Why, then, does it cost more to communicate the same amount of information via SMS as it does to make a phone call.

Comparing SMS to smart phone data

To further illustrate how ludicrous this is, consider that most smart phones, such as the Apple iPhone, are offered with an unlimited data plan. You pay the monthly data fee, such as $20 or $30 as it is for the first- and second-generation iPhones, respectively, and you can potentially transfer hundreds of megabytes (or more) in and out of your smart phone. Apple even specifically capitalizes on this. Thanks to the iTunes Store being available on the phone, you can instantly snag multi-megabyte songs, iPhone applications which range widely in amount of data downloaded, etc.

Clearly, data plans take a far bigger hit on cellular network infrastructure than text messaging does. Yet, without a monthly SMS plan in place, you’re charged, typically, 20 cents for every one you send or receive. If you translate that price to data service, depending whether you consider a single SMS as 200 bytes or four kilobytes, the cost is now anywhere between $50 to $1,000 per megabyte! Even if you consider the packages instead of a la carte pricing, assuming AT&T’s 1,500 texts for $10 plan, that ranges between $1.66 to $30 per megabyte. Even at only $1.66, given the way smart phones can chomp through data, that’s a lot more than I’d want to pay each month for the data! But that’s what we would be charged if data were billed at the same rates as text messaging.

Are you starting to see how idiotic SMS pricing is?

All of the big is a huge digression from what is really on my mind. Time to completely shift gears.

I want to send texts inexpensively to Canada

On AT&T (and probably many other carriers), multiply the a la carte SMS rate by 2.5 to send a text to Canada—50 cents vs. 20. This is in addition to whatever flat rate you pay, if any, for a domestic SMS plan.

Funny: it wouldn’t matter if a web page I accessed was hosted in the States or in Lithuania, the flat rate for data access remains the same.

Up until now, I’ve been considering (more like contributing) the $20 flat monthly fee for AT&T’s package to get 100 text messages outside the States—specifically, in my case, to Canada. The reason I probably won’t do that, after all, is those 100 texts would be $50 if I paid a la carte, and I probably wouldn’t use all 100 any given month. In other words, paying individually probably would cost me in the same ballpark as the flat monthly fee.

No definitive answers

Before I did the math and realized AT&T’s international SMS plan is really not all the great a deal, there was one aspect about the package that I wanted to confirm, and no one was able to definitively tell me. What I wanted to know was, how would the incoming texts from Canada be regarded once I added the international plan?

When a domestic SMS plan is purchased, texts, including incoming, are counted against your monthly allotment. My allotment is unlimited, but it wouldn’t matter if I did have a limit. My point here is that I don’t pay for individual incoming texts—they are deducted from my allotment, unlimited or otherwise. Fortunately, even if the incoming text is from Canada, it still is simply counted against the allotment. For me, it means a person in Canada can text me all they want and I am not charged any differently. (At the moment, I return texts by using the e-mail gateway. Inconvenient, but free.)

The thing that AT&T is apparently incapable of telling me is, if I add the international package, do incoming texts from Canada continue counting against my regular (unlimited, in my case) SMS plan, or do they suddenly start counting against the 100 international package? If the latter is true, I’d suddenly be paying AT&T for the privilege of only being able to receive 100 texts from Canada instead of unlimited like now, minus however many texts I send up to Canada!

I’m not sure which I find more nuts—the idea that paying more money might result in fewer free incoming texts from Canada, or the fact that AT&T is either incapable or unwilling to tell me which scenario would happen.

No lie, the last answer I got after calling on different occasions was advice to go ahead and add the plan and see how the incoming texts are handled on my next statement. The representative said she put a notation on my account about my question with the vague promise that the international SMS fee for that month would be refunded if I was unsatisfied (meaning incoming texts counted against the 100).

BZZZZZZ. Wrong answer.

The person who texts me from Canada uses a Blackberry 8830 World Edition and has unlimited texts both in and out of Canada. I don’t know the rate for that, but I understand it’s pretty affordable and, if it were offered by AT&T for iPhone users, I’d be on it in a second. As it is now, this person sends me a text, and I use the e-mail gateway to reply. This means the person in Canada can’t directly reply to my message because it originated from Telus’ e-mail gateway server and not my phone number. In short, it means both of us are basically setting up a new message each time rather than easily hitting “reply” to the previous incoming SMS.

Like I said earlier, it’s inconvenient, but it’s free, and it’s what I’ll keep doing until I find a better way. Yes, I am, indeed, considering utilizing Twitter and private messages, but this is someone who really doesn’t want to maintain a Twitter account. I haven’t abandoned this as an option yet, but I’m not holding my breath.

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded:

“Rome? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty. You’re crazy to go to Rome. So, how are you getting there?”

“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”

“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser.” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late.

So, where are you staying in Rome?”

“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome’s Tiber River called Teste.”

“Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump, the worst hotel in the city! The rooms are small, the service is surly, and they’re overpriced.

So, whatcha’ doing when you get there?”

“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and we hope to see the Pope.”

“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. “You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.

“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great! They’d just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”

“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I know you didn’t get to see the Pope.”

“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”

“Oh, really! What’d he say?”

He said, “Where’d you get the ugly hairdo?”

Today marked my 6th anniversary of blogging. Okay, you may have some cognitive dissonance over the fact that I don’t reliably blog any more ever since getting into Twitter, but the fact that I’m posting a blog entry about the anniversary should help quell any disparagement. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ll ever soon completely give up operating a weblog. I’ve only diminished how often I use it, because of Twitter.

In 2003, my first blog was D.T.P. by Lee. I had just barely managed to set up a Blosxom-powered site in time for the Superbowl which fell on the last weekend in January vs. the first Sunday of February as it does this year. That blog later gave way to The Second Initial, and then to this WordPress engine on ALBj.net which is used just for occasional thoughts that are too lengthy for the confines of a Tweet.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Before I start talking about the case itself, I’ll share a brief tale. I ordered a ZÜCA Pro bag via Amazon.com in mid-December. Ace Photo Digital was to fulfill the order and the estimated range for delivery was between December 17 and 22. The shipment did not arrive on the 22nd and I had to leave that evening because I flew out of Tampa for Alberta early the next morning. For the brief time I was back in Orlando after the Alberta trip, I stopped by my office Saturday night, January 3, and found that the mail room workers had left the box on my chair. I checked the tracking number to see what day it actually arrived, and the UPS site was unable to reveal anything. It seemed the tracking number was invalid. The next day, Sunday, I flew to San Francisco for Macworld, this time with the ZÜCA case. It wasn’t until my return a week later that I called UPS for help. The representative actually managed to figure out the correct tracking number based on my Amazon.com order number, and I learned that Ace Photo Digital did not ship the bag until December 22—the last day of the delivery estimate range—and that it arrived at my office December 29. Ace Photo Digital has not responded to my messages asking for a refund of the expedited shipping I paid for, and I have filed an Amazon A-Z Guarantee claim in the hopes of being refunded the difference.

Update – Jan. 20, 12:30pm: Amazon has processed my claim and I did receive a refund of the difference between standard and expedited shipping.

The shipping experience notwithstanding, as it turned out I probably wouldn’t have been able to use the ZÜCA during my Alberta trip anyway due to the amount of luggage I needed to carry, but traveling with it to San Francisco was a much different story—details to come in just a bit.

I am at a complete loss where I first learned of Zee-Ultimate Carry-All (aka ZÜCA) travel case. Whatever the circumstances where, I was immediately intrigued. I frequently take short trips and loved the idea of a travel case that permitted easy organization of my clothes and was easy to move around. More impressive is that the ZÜCA Pro is specifically designed to fit in the overhead storage bins of most airliners, as well as easily roll through the aisle between seat rows.

Note, the same is not true for the ZÜCA Sport which is intended to meet the needs of a completely different customer. Where the ZÜCA Pro is ideal for short business trips, the ZÜCA Sport dimensions don’t fit all airline storage bins, and instead of the zippered pouches that come with the Pro model which are ideal for storing clothes, the Sport version appears to come with an open space that is well suited for student supplies, sporting gear, or even transporting a small pet—all depending on which insert is fitted into the Sport frame.

(With the above explanation of the two models in mind, I remain puzzled why my case says “SportPro” on the front—opposite side of the open flap in the above photo.)

For my trip to the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, packing everything into just the ZÜCA and my backpack meant, for the very first time, I was able to fly with only carry-on luggage. Considering my luggage didn’t make the connecting flight on my return from Alberta and it didn’t get to me until the next day—barely enough time to wash and re-pack for my San Francisco trip—not having to worry about checked luggage was a thrill.

Yet, getting everything for a full-week trip to fit in just these two bags was a logistical challenge. I managed it, but having done so confirms that the ZÜCA is probably best suited for a trip lasting no more than an extra long weekend—not a full week. Fortunately, long weekend trips are reasonably common for me. Granted, airlines aren’t frequently involved for such trips, but the ZÜCA is a great case regardless what means of transportation is being used.

As the web site indicates, the ZÜCA Sport is only 8¾ pounds. Its combined L+W+H dimension is 42 inches which is within the Federal Aviation Agency’s requirements for carry-on items. The width easily passes between airliner seats, and, when laid on its side, slides perfectly into overhead storage bins. As stated above, I did not have this case during my Alberta trip, but based on how my backpack fit in the overhead bins, I’m pretty sure the ZÜCA would have fit even in the small commuter plane I took from Denver to Edmonton.

Five zippered pouches slide in and out of the main storage space of the case. The pouches are various sizes, designed to accommodate different types of clothes and other items. In addition, there is a one-quart transparent pouch that fits in a netted space at the top of the ZÜCA intended to store toiletries. Simply fill this pouch with containers of shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc. that are 3 ounces or less, and airport security gates shouldn’t give hassle to anyone.

The wheels for rolling the case by means of its 41-inch telescoping handle are, by no means, chintzy pieces of plastic found on most suitcases. These polyurethane wheels look as though they’d give professional inline skate wheels a run for their money. They are also recessed into the design of the case and don’t stick out very far, which means they won’t take up extra room when sliding the case into a narrow storage bin.

One of the coolest and most unexpected features is the design of the aluminum alloy frame. ZÜCA engineers managed to create a frame that keeps the entire case light, yet can support 300 pounds of weight. That means an owner can use it as a seat, and believe me, I did! At two different connecting airports, I made my way to the departing gate and found no empty seats in the waiting area. So I simply collapsed the pull handle and sat right on the ZÜCA. In spite of being made of aluminum metal, it really is not all that uncomfortable, especially when I positioned the case against a wall to use as a back rest. Granted, I wouldn’t want this case to be my seat for the duration of a flight, but for perhaps a half-hour wait to board a plane, no problem.

ZÜCA sells a wide selection of accessories to go along with their cases. If the thought of sitting on the hard metal frame is not appealing, a fitted cushion is available, as well as extra storage pouches and replacement wheel, including wheels with flashing LED lights.

Even though my backpack rested fairly well on top of the ZÜCA and against the handle while dragging behind me when walking, I’m considering looking at the ZÜCA Backpack. I’ll need to do some checking first, but it appears as though it may hold as much (or more) than my current backpack, and is designed to perfectly complement the case. It includes straps that wrap around the telescoping handle and keep the backpack from sliding off. 

Business travelers may be wondering how to store their slacks, shirts, skirts, blouses, etc. in such a confined space without causing a lot of wrinkles. ZÜCA has you covered there. In one of the outside pockets, every case includes an instruction card on how to pack clothing in a way to minimize wrinkles, and I can tell you that it works. The trick is essentially to fold just the sleeves of a shirt back, or fold pants in half once, and no other folds, Then, roll the garment into a tube that lays neatly in one of the pouches. Granted, I did not take any dress clothing on my trip to Macworld, but I was able to fit two pair of jeans plus a tee shirt into the two largest pouches, four more tee shirts in the next size down, and all my other personal items in two small pouches, plus my toiletries in the clear plastic container. ZÜCA specifically recommends wearing whatever you can onto a plane such as dress coats, shoes, etc. However, if I were only traveling for a day or two, I could easily have placed a second pair of shoes into one of the two largest pouches instead of pants.

At $285, the ZÜCA’s price may put it slightly out of reach of a casual traveler, but I can authoritatively confirm that this case can hold as much as mid-range suitcase that may cost just about as much money for a quality brand and possibly not even fit in airline storage bins. Even if you can find a suitcase that is a bit less expensive, the extra cost seems worth while when you factor the ZÜCA’s sit-ability and the possible elimination of ever having to deal with checked (and lost) luggage!

For trips lasting no more than an extended weekend, the ZÜCA Pro gets ALBj.net’s seal of approval. For week-long (or longer) trips, the ZÜCA Pro combined with perhaps one item of checked luggage is a worthy compromise.

ZÜCA Pro

• $285
• Available in Black or Dusty Rose
• Dimensions: 19Hx10Wx13L inches
• Weight: 8.75 pounds
• 41-inch telescoping handle
• Removable, washable, replaceable insert bag is made from water repellent ballistic nylon and coated with water repelling polyurethane.
• Color-coded packing pouches:
  • 2 Red @ 9.5×10.5×5
  • 1 Blue @ 9.5×10.5×3
  • 1 Orange @ 9.5×10.5×2
  • 1 Green @ 9.5x8x3
  • 1 Clear TSA-compliant toiletry bag

http://www.zuca.com/zuca_pro/