Gone Fishin'?

Unfortunately, it looks as if TOP will not update for a few days. I'm going to Michigan to visit my cousin. I had hoped to update the site from my iPad, from the road. I should have gotten started working out the bugs earlier, though, because when I tried to make it work last night, I couldn't. Too late to troubleshoot now; and I assume I'll have no luck doing so once I'm away from the Mothership (the iMac, a.k.a. TOP World HQ).

Did you know they make tiny computers you can carry around? Word. They fold up like a book and are no larger than a thick fashion magazine. Well, an annual issue. They are called lapdogs or something like that—something with "lap" in it, and nothing to do with reindeer herders or Amish families. I will have to query the Financial Dept. to see if the enterprise can invest in a Remote Unit—now that the kid's in college, I can travel.

Theoretically.

I am actually not good at traveling. Not good at all. My father loved to plan trips, and did a great job of it—he called himself "The Tour Director." I suspect that I'm the sort who needs a tour director...and I probably would be even if I hadn't assumed the role of one of the tour-directed throughout childhood.

For instance, this morning, getting ready to go, I lost my socks. I laid out clean socks last night, and this morning I had them in my hand, and then they were gone. I looked all over. Yes, even in the microwave. No socks. So I had to go down in the basement where the laundry machines are and scrounge for another clean pair. And then when I sat down here to write this—well, the socks are sitting on top of the phone. Why is that? How did they get there? I'm sure I have no idea. I must be involved, in some way.

All that took ten minutes and cut into the time needed to consume my Kona. I'm now at T minus sixteen minutes and probably won't make it out of the garage on schedule. Luckily, I have planned some slop time to account for such distractions. I am disorganized, but I am experienced at being disorganized.

You can imagine what it would be like when I travel. Passport? What? I once missed a plane in the Boston airport and had to wait six hours for the next one—which I then missed because I had forgotten to reset my watch to local time. That, in a nutshell, is what it is like when I travel.

I would need a companion. A competent companion.

The NEX-6 with its adequately sharp lens is in the Billingham 225 (which has no lapdog slot, by the way, a shortcoming). I have cards, the charger, and an extra battery, and am idly wondering what item necessary for successful photography I could have forgotten; I'll discover what it is as soon as I am no longer able to retrieve it.

Lee Friedlander published a book (a book! I forgot to pack the Kindle!) about a sculptor, whose name I cannot retrieve from the mainframe at present, who had to be accompanied whenever he left his house. The reason was that he would take whatever turn in the road looked the most interesting or beautiful, until he was thoroughly lost and had no hope of finding his way back home. Someone had to go with him whenever he went anywhere or he would disappear for days on end.

I can relate.

Sorry to leave you abruptly like this, but, like herpes, MacArthur, Springtime, and the rains, I shall return.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Comments

[Andrew Kirk]

You are in rare form today, Mike. Flat out hilarious. You looked in the microwave, oh my.

[Tony Roberts]

Jay Maisel once said that he took his best photos when he got lost. So worry not your travel planning, Mike, or lack thereof. Just...get lost. LOL

[KeithB]

It is no fun being the Tour Guide, Mike. When the family - who showed no interest in planning the trip - starts complaining about your choices, it becomes a thankless task very quickly.

[Marten Collins]

Now that posting made me grin - thanks!

[Jonas Yip]

there's an iPad app called "Posts" which will let you manage your blog(s) from the iPad, so you don't have to rely on the potentially fiddly browser-based editor.

[Blake]

Sounds like a MacBook Air is what you need.

[hugh crawford]

The quantum tunneling sock problem is well known

http://www.trygve.com/ueparity.html

http://www.laundry-alternative.com/index.php/blog/laundry-a-quantum-mechanical-approach

More generally though you have the same problem that I have, which is a problem with the wave function collapse.

From Wikepedia
"In quantum mechanics, wave function collapse is the phenomenon in which a wave function—initially in a superposition of several eigenstates—appears to reduce to a single eigenstate after interaction with an observer."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse

The problem is that when the observer ( you and me for instance ) is aware that observation causes the collapse , the wave function stubbornly refuses to collapse until another observer comes along to make us look like idiots.

[Roberto]

So what? You looked in the microwave? I always do!

[Michael Steinbach]

Heck with the kindle, just download the kindle app to your iPad!

[Jack]

Springtime does not return, it never even arrives.
Your socks return.

[- et -]

Mike looked for his socks in the microwave in case he had put them there to dry out . . .

:-)

- Tom -

[Joe Kashi]

Toshiba's Protege' series notebooks are very fast and light, with a good keyboard and nice 13.3" screen. They have WiFi and are not much larger, physically, than an iPad yet are a full-sized and quite power Windows 8 computer for as little as $800 when on sale. These are a very nice alternative to a less-functional iPad and also run Lightroom adequately.

[Robert Roaldi]

What's so funny about looking in the microwave?

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

he would take whatever turn in the road looked the most interesting or beautiful, until he was thoroughly lost...

I can relate too. I am reasonably organized, but only by taking pains, which I do out of anxiety. Sometimes these days my mind is so much in the clouds that I have to stand with the outside door handle in my one hand and my keys in the other, staring blankly until I can decide it's safe to shut the door and go out, having my keys. When you're deep in conversation with Brahma, it's hard to turn away.

[Dave in NM]

"...he would take whatever turn in the road looked the most interesting or beautiful..."

A man after my own heart. I find all my photographs this way.

[M]

Mike,

I have to read this to my wife, who will laugh partly because of the excellent description of your absence-mindedness, but even more because your account will remind her of my own feebleness in losing and finding my way from point A to B.

Have a great trip!
Marty

[Stan B.]

Did ya have to say herpes, really?

[Marty Knapp]

Mike,

Just wrote, but I think I pressed the wrong button. I laughed out loud when I read your account of preparing to leave the house. I had to read it to my wife.... and yes, she laughed too, as much as for your hilarious first-hand account as for the fact that your antics reminded her oh so well of my own!

Have a great trip!

[Marty]

Wait.
Herpes comes back?

[Patrick Perez]

Mike related "—well, the socks are sitting on top of the phone. Why is that? How did they get there? I'm sure I have no idea. I must be involved, in some way."

I think the cause is that you'e been pixilated. If I had to guess the variety, I'd say a brownie.

Patrick Perez

[Robert Gordon]

Welcome to The Mitten.

[William]

The Kindle App for the iPad is excellent and provides full access to you Kinle Library in the Cloud.

Never mind, you have to remember to download the books to your iPad.

[joanlvh]

u can read your kindle items on your iPad! no prob

[TC Lin]

What's wrong with disappearing for days on end? Not disappearing for days on end, I'd think, would be a bigger problem.

[Jim Oleachea]

I agree with Mr. Kirk, hilarious post. "I must be involved, in someway." Priceless...... Oh, and I can definitely relate. I spend a week or two camping, hiking and picture taking in the high desert region of Oregon. (SE corner of the state) I've finally come to the conclusion that I might as well not concern myself too much with forgetting something, because I always do. Usually something fairly important, like the frying pan or all of the eating utensils........ And this is with a list of everything I need.

[Earl Dunbar]

The microwave ... where else would one quickly dry out socks that weren't quite dry? Brilliant!

As for a lapdog, I saved up for a MacBook Air (the only MBA I'll ever have ... ha!) a couple of years ago and have not regretted it for even 1/4000 of a second at f0.95. Seriously, if you do consider getting a lapdog, and presuming you stay in Appleverse (duh,) this is the one to get. Its only "drawback" is that it doesn't have an optical drive, but when you travel, do you REALLY need it?

I have my home network configured so that all my data hog files (read: iTunes library, high rez scans, etc.,) are on a network drive. Hence, the relatively small solid state drive that helps make the MBA so light is not full to bursting. All my iTunes content is synced to an iPod Touch anyway, so there's no loss. And if I want to take some DNG or TIFF files to work on, I can put the select files on a USB stick; Bob's your uncle.

[Francisco]

I can relate. I think the capacity to reevaluate and change plans in the middle of something is a quality ("that path looks nicer, why don't I just walk that one instead"). Life is short, and being able to "fail fast" (opposed to sticking to a bad plan) is a good thing.

With regards to organization and time tables, trouble happens when you marry someone who was raised to moralize 5 minutes delays or the micro-management of socks.

What does a 15 min departure delay actually matter when you are leaving to be out for days?

[Lois Elling]

Thanks for the chuckles! I had to read this to my husband because it sounds just like him when he packs or travels. Have an enjoyable trip and don't think of us who are eagerly awaiting your next post.

[Rod S.]

I'm sure we all, well, most of us, have mornings like that. But you make it sound fun.

I'm now at T minus sixteen minutes ..Mike, I say that, too! Must be our age. And perhaps your Dad.

I read your piece over the phone just now to my girlfriend, who's a psychiatrist (though her daughters refer to her as a psycho-chiatrist). I asked her about your self-diagnosis of involved. She opined that your 'thought form' appears to be somewhat circumstantial. You would be tangential if you never came back to the point, but you do, so therefore you are circumstantial. And that's completely normal!

[Bear.]

It wasn't you Mike, and you were quite right to check the microwave. Socks are a very strange species. During mating season, male and female socks often refuse to be paired together, and one or the other will hide for a considerable period. When they do form couples, they only do so in matched pairs, which then roam together all over the place (which is no doubt what happened to your socks, Mike). Eventually, the female sock becomes pregnant and finds a quiet place to lay her eggs - this is usually in an empty bottom drawer in a laundry or kitchen. She then mysteriously and secretly returns to her mate. When the eggs hatch, the baby socks take their chrysalis form - otherwise known as clothes pegs. When someone removes them from their drawer and places them with other clothes pegs - which may take months or even years - some pegs may suddenly morph into adult socks. (Science does not yet know exactly how this occurs, as it has never been observed or recorded.[1]) Identical adult pairs then find each other - often with human assistance - and the cycle starts again. But sometimes, the new adults will be born alone and without a matching pair. These poor socks are destined to a singular existence in a drawer otherwise full of happy matched pairs, living only in the vain hope of finding a mate but destined by mother nature to eventually die alone.

Which is why you sometimes you lose your socks before they reappear again together, you sometimes only find one sock but not the matching sock until it mysteriously reappears at a later time, and sometimes you have only an unmatched sock that you do not remember ever having purchase but leave with your other sock for years in the vain hope that the matching sock will turn up.

Note [1]: M Y Bearman, S Roberts, et al, A comparative discrepancy in the physiological maturation of clothipegus socki, Human Economics Journal (1998)

[Jock Elliott]

Mike,

For traveling, a Toshiba Ultrabook is the bee's knees. It weighs 2.5 lbs., has a real keyboard, battery life of 8 hours in "eco" mode, and features a 128 gig solid state drive. It's what I bring on assignment and what we use at home when we want to look something up in a hurry. It boots in about 15 seconds.

Cheers, Jock

[Mike Haspert]

Don't worry about the socks. Everyone has had the experience of setting an item down and having it disappear. It's clearly not where you left it. You look elsewhere and when you come back, it is again where it clearly just wasn't. A physicist friend claims this is evidence that you drifted into a parallel universe and back, without realizing it. So, I think you just drifted into one where you had set the socks on the phone.
Are you back yet? (Bwahaha)

[Roger Bradbury]

Finding the original pair of socks just after you've given up looking for them, then finding them as soon as you've got another pair is a known phenomenon.

The best known example is when you have a certain tool which is the only one able to do a certain job. After turning the shed upside down and looking everywhere, you get in or on whichever mode of transport isn't part way through being fixed and go to the shop.

On your return and clutching the new tool, the first thing you spot when you go back in the shed is the old one. Works every time.

[Roger Bradbury]

Twenty years ago I went to Belgium. I was on my 250cc MZ. A group from a town near where I live, all on much faster bikes, went to the same place. They shot past me twice, I stopped and helped a Frenchman and his girlfriend who had broken down, and still got to the campsite three quarters of an hour before they did.

This group, no names mentioned, were famous for their lack of organisation. In Cornwall for the 1999 total eclipse, they headed North to try to avoid the clouds, then turned round and tried going South to The Lizard. On the way, the eclipse happened. I stayed on the campsite and saw it come and go.

[Ed]

Mike it sounds to me that you are an ace traveller but no good at travelling alone. Now travelling alone (especially using any form of public transport) is WORK. It needs maticulas preperation, from socks and lanudry (mr. Bearman I would consider a carrier in standup comedy if I were you)), over tickets, passports, VISA cards, hotel reservations and the rest of the crap. And these days matters are made worse by all sorts of electronic devices that are needed like cellphones or even worse smartphones (which I both do not own since I found out the create more stress then they are able to releave), computers and the works (even the odd digital camera). So I've made a decision, if I travel alone I refuse to use public transport only automobiles and I don't own an automobile. Now that makes travel a joy.....seeing other like you Mike strugle. Strugle with rude check-in clerks who were trained by the same bloke who trained the staff at Colditz. Strugle with overbooked hotels. Or rooms with a view of the local waste disposal facilities instead of the beach. With stolen (or misplaced who will tell) Traveler checks and non functioning ATM cards. With delayed aircrafts and missed connections. With terrorist bomb scares because some bloke (lets call him Mike :)) forgot a suitcase on the train. With wall sockets that refuse to take in even the most international plug you have with you so you have to buy a local international plug in addition to the other international plug to be able to use your Philishave (raison d'etre for the company to exist IMHO), which you then forget a hotel in Amsterdam (in the John and Yoko suite no less). So 22 years ago I made the wise decision that I did not own a car and only wanted to travel by car so I stopped traveling altogether. Except for the odd stressfull short weekend that service only to remind of the soundness of that decision (using a rented car, but lets not get into that pittfall ligned conundrum).

Greets, Ed (and strengt Mike with bit of luck you'll make it back to Waukeesha).

[Andrea]

I heard they also make what is called a "tablet" - it is a thing like an iPad (it is rectangular), but they have way to connect to bluetooth of any device (go figure!), and they have something called "usb port" that let you use your proprietary camera cable to import raw pictures, modify it and export to jpeg, upload with 3g or wifi... all of this with a free app (must be a Canadian thing...).
Tech is a crazy thing, I tell you!

[Andrew Kirk]

Only now, after reading the comments, do I understand that Mike's story is not off-topic for a photographers' forum. The story is about VISION, for which all of us 'otogs ken. My girlfriend once lost a chair inside her house. She couldn't find it for days on end. When she told me about this missing chair, I looked around, and found it in plain sight under a desk. She just couldn't SEE it.