home again! notes from a work-cation, a retrospective

I think I’ve decided on the number one useful and interesting thing I will take away from this trip, though unfortunately it is not something I can really impress my boss with.

Thursday morning, as my fellow travel-ee and I were talking about the previous evening, she mentioned she was using her phone to play music. Her sister, she explained to me, told her she didn’t need to buy speakers for the phone, just put it in a bowl to amplify the sound.

Naturally, I had to try this. My phone laughs at the concept of playing music — it’s more a ‘make calls, receive calls, and be grateful I do that much’ kind of device. But I did bring my ipod (it’s a nano, so it needs headphones).

I did not have a bowl either, but you know what my hotel room provided? A coffee maker!

So I put the earbuds in the filter section of the coffee maker, and LIKE MAGIC — room-filling music! SCIENCE! IT IS AMAZING!

(This story looks much weirder in writing, but it totally worked and was awesome.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I refused to use this.

Many of my formative ideas about things that are dangerous came from tv shows, since there was little that was actually dangerous in my life at that time. Two tv shows in particular were very educational: Doctor Who and Star Trek. Which may give some idea as to why the device below (found in about half the bathrooms in the convention center featured in my work-cation) remained steadfastly unused throughout my trip.

That is called, and I am not even kidding, the Dyson Airblade. Apparently, you are supposed to stick your hands in there and it knifes air at you until they are dry. Really, all the warning I needed is right there in the name. Airblade. HECK NO, I said. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME PUT MY HANDS IN THAT. (Suspiciously, all bathrooms equipped with the airblades also had fully stocked paper towel dispensers.) Makes me glad to be back home!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.