Geekiness

Oh man, it’s been a long time since I’ve written something. I wish I could say that I was working away at my goal of reading as close to 100 books as possible for 2010 (which looks like I’ll be lucky if I even get to 50…eesh) but, well…I wasn’t.

Unfortunately, I whittled away my time and somehow a few weeks passed.

Today, as I was making my way home, I decided to hammer out a blog post because of a 12-year-old child prodigy.

A co-worker of mine sent the TED talk video to me, and I was struck by how confident she was in her presentation. She spoke with an aura of maturity and moved with confidence. Her speech was inspirational and hopeful with a bit of jest interwoven.

In short, I kind of resented her. Just a little bit. Of course, I ended up reconciling my deep-rooted envy (Or is it jealousy? I can never remember…I do believe it’s envy) with the thought that she still hasn’t hit the angst-ridden era of puberty yet. Yes, I am that vindictive. No, I’m not proud of it.  And okay, okay, I admit, I’m just being an extra dash of vindictive for the sake of being humorous.

And yes, I just called myself out on it.

Anyway, getting to my point (believe it or not, there is one): despite the fact that I felt all my inadequacies of intellect and success bubble to the surface a bit, it did occur to me that I’m not passionate enough about anything to become a SUPERB at it. In fact, when I think about it a little more, money and attention tend to be the main factors in a lot of things that I pursue. I tend to entertain ideas about certain careers for the money. I dream about achieving successes for the recognition. Even when I think back on the dreams I had as a little girl of becoming a journalist or an Olympic figure skater — it was all because I wanted the attention and a good (*cough* VERY GOOD *cough*) life.

Despite this rather depressing revelation, a part of me is hopeful. After all, don’t people say (I don’t know who these “people” are, per se, just the general “people” that most use when grasping at vague cliches) that recognizing your problems is the first step?

Or is that acceptance?

At any rate, I guess what I gathered from the video was this: stop being normal and boring! Don’t just think outside the box, make a train out of it - make it a fort! Take it an shape it however you want.

In essence, as my favorite book The Little Prince says:

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

And all it took was a 12-year-old girl to remind me to be a kid again.

Now I don’t feel so bad about my love for Disney and Harry Potter. HA.

If you’re a bargain travel hunter like me, you’ve probably scoured different sites like sidestep.com or subscribe to newsletters like AirFareWatchDog. Since I usually try to plan my trips ahead in advance, a predictive site like Farecast.com (now Bing Travel) is also a tool in my arsenal when I’m on the price prowl.

In a way, I feel like a crazed stockbroker watching ticket prices go up and down, crossing my fingers and whispering silent prayers to the Digital Airline Gods for a great deal - then I attack the screen silently shouting “BUY BUY BUY!” when the site tells me prices are more than likely about to increase.

Of course, airlines are battling each other in cost cutting wars helps a lot too. It’s interesting to see what happens after places like Southwest announce their cheap-as-it-can-get deals, and watch the flurry of other places follow suit.

A recent bargain that has caught a lot of attention is JetBlue’s All You Can Jet Pass. I remember reading about it and my instinctive reaction was to reach for my mouse and click purchase. Although the pragmatic side of my brain jumped off the couch and stopped this transaction (it’s not like I have the vacation days to afford this), I was quite impressed by this bold and interesting move.

It seems, at least for now, that the campaign worked: passes sold out early. According to the social media site Mashable, “JetBlue officials attribute Twitter with the success saying, ‘Twitter really drove this in so many ways.’ JetBlue’s tweet about the promotion propelled the campaign to go viral. Bryan Baldwin, a JetBlue spokesman, is quoted as saying, ‘Within minutes (of the Tweet), we could see the response start to trickle in…We were just watching the hits come in on Twitter. They were coming in by the dozens. It really got its jumpstart in the social media world.’”

Interesting. Not only was a unique campaign idea instantly viral, but it was viral because of word-of-tweet. On the surface, it seems like a great success. I’m curious about the financial returns for this all you can fly model — but even more interested in seeing what other airlines tweet back.  After all, Virgin America and Google already took to the skies with an interesting Twitter campaign.  Are the other airlines working on something behind the scenes as well?  For their sake, I hope so…and for ours, I hope it includes more great deals.

One of the things that often perks up my ears is when companies do something truly innovative and interactive.  Today, one of the programs that’s really catching attention (and my personal intrigue) is the Day In The Cloud contest with Google and Virgin America.  A scavenger hunt from the air and the ground going on simultaneously? Brilliant!

I did try to go through last night with one of the practice rounds. For anybody who scoffs at the idea that this could be anything but a REAL challenge, I kid you not: you will be licking your mental war wounds.

Not only are they connecting people through their own landing site, they are also connecting people through Twitter and encouraging them to utilize the Google tools and Virgin America wifi (for those lucky ones on the plane today). As the clock ticks down to game time, I can’t wait to see how this will unravel.

Of course, I’ll be participating … even if my ego is going to take a bit of a beating.

Someone sent me a link today and I thought it was pretty interesting: Trapcall, a service that helps unblock blocked numbers.

Most of the time I don’t pick up blocked numbers.  At any rate, this is how Trapcall works - when a call comes in that’s blocked, it’s sent to the Trapcall servers, then unblocked and sent back.  The best part is that the person calling only hears the ringing tone, and doesn’t know that you’re busy digging up their digits.  There are no downloads or anything, and it works on any phone with ALMOST any service.

At first I didn’t think this service would be that important.  After all, I’ve picked up and ignored blocked calls before, and usually I do my sifting through voicemail (as my mom always said, if it’s THAT important then most likely someone will spend ten seconds asking me to call them back). However, it was pointed out to me that sometimes as a safety measure it’s a good thing to always know who is calling.  For example, if you have one of those persistent stalkers, it would make life much easier if you knew exactly which numbers to block.

Ironically, if you’re a Trapcall customer and you want block you number, they offer something called a SpoofCard.  You enter in a PIN and you can alter what someone sees on their Caller ID, as well as change your voice.  Huh.  Sounds like the perfect tool for a stalker, no?

I can’t put my finger on it, but it almost feels like a store that sells pest control and bags of roaches at the same time.

If anybody has tried this, let me know.  I can definitely imagine a million scenarios where Spoof Card can be abused…better hurry up and get your pranking out of the way before they really make this service illegal!

So, as promised, here are a few select photos of my FIRST ever CES. Enjoy!

The HP Booth

HP Firebird

Interviews!

The CNET Booth

Wafer-thin televisions at Panasonic…

Blinging accessories - but not sure how good they are

Back to the Future, anybody?

D-Box gaming chair…

Yet another crazy gaming chair…

The Microsoft Booth was HUGE…

A rather futuristic touchpad…I want one in my studio…

And finally, the view of the strip from the Rio at the Voodoo Lounge…

I hope I can return for CES 2010!

Things get a little crazy at CES, but one of the things that I’ve learned (the hard way, pardon the unintentional pun) is the FLOOR. Although the booths are covered in carpet, being on your feet for 12+ hours takes a toll. A mighty, nasty, blistery toll.

And it’s only the first day. Eep.

I haven’t had a chance to really get my REAL geek on and peek around, but I hope I get a chance later on as the week ramps up and winds down. In the meantime, here are some other little snippets of randomness.

Gadget to help you NOT kill plants

Emotionally unavailable robots (or maybe they’re just missing a battery…hmm…)

Yup.

Today was the first day where things got rolling a bit - people were a flurry all around getting booths ready and media were shooting video.  Although it was a long day of scurrying back and forth (seriously, the strip is RIDDONKULOUSLY long, even more riddonkulous than the made up word that I just used twice) today was considered an easy day compared to the hustle and bustle of tomorrow and the next day.

In the midst of all this I started chatting with a really nice fellow named Ari Burton about Tweetups.  I know most people have heard of Twitter (or vaguely know what it is) but in essence Twitter is where people give their brief update of what is going on.  Lots of people are well know Twitter-ers and sometimes there is a designated time and place where people gather together - hence, the Tweetup (Meetup…GET IT?)

The CES Tweetup will be at the HP booth - verrrry exciting stuff!  In the meantime, I was very fortunate enough to get the privilege of borrowing a flip video camera and run around PepCom to check out some cool things.  I ended up taking a lot of video of … yes, food, a cool ice bar, and fuzzy robots that gave me no love.  Sigh. Also, some really nifty 3D glasses coming from NVIDIA.

Until tomorrow…