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Utah trip notes

Am sitting here in a residence in in Provo, Utah, trying to get some work done.  Am frustrated by the seriously poor quality I was getting from the “high-speed internet” they advertise… once I realized that their high-speed box doesn’t seem to be working at all, and I’m actually working from the echoes of the wireless in the lobby, I’m a little more forgiving of the speed of connection.  In a while I’ll go to the front desk and ask them to look into the wired connection so I can get some programming done this afternoon.  And I’ll go out and explore and take pictures of mountains or something while waiting. They can come in and make the bed and give me fresh shampoo while I’m gone.

We flew into Salt Lake City on Sunday and decided to explore downtown for a while.  Not only was it Palm Sunday (I think?) but it was also the day when the Mormons have their big inter-something conference day.  So there were swarms of people around Temple Square including people who’d obviously flown into SLC just for this.  And there were …protesters, I guess?… around the outside of the Temple shouting really amusing stuff, trying to convert the Mormons to whatever their own brand of religion is.  One particularly entertaining guy was shouting about how the religious books used by the LDS church are not the true word of G*d; instead they should be reading the King James version. I was smirking as I thought about all the stories of the politics and social engineering that went into the King James translation (it’s hard to think of a case of more biased translation).  Meanwhile K was muttering things like “you’re not a REAL believer unless you read the Bible in the original Greek and Aramaic!” 

‘Cause, you know, after being a social outcast throughout junior high school because I was not Mormon, I have my issues with the church.  At the same time, though, I think it’s just goofy when people who are strong believers in one form of Xianity go out and try to convert other people whose religion also professes Xianity.  Or even others whose belief system is monotheistic at all.  I mean, wouldn’t it seem more fruitful to bring those non-religious sinners into the fold, rather than messing with those who are already believers, just of a different flavor?  Isn’t Jesus quoted in the New Testament as saying that all gods are really the one G*d, so all believers are really worshipping the same entity?

Anyway, the whole thing had a sort of festival atmosphere with visitors spread out having picnics on the Temple lawns, the Tabernacle choir was being broadcast outdoors for those who weren’t lucky enough to get inside seating, there were ticket scalpers and the aforementioned stump-post preachers and so on.  I rather enjoyed the whole spectacle.  We had a nice conversation with an older gentleman who is finishing up a year-long service mission at the Temple; he is missing his home in northern Idaho and seemed to enjoy telling us all about it.  Then we headed over to the Olympic park on the west side of downtown (which didn’t exist two decades ago, which would be the last time I was in SLC), had some pizza, and headed up to Logan. 

In Logan we caught up with old friends from school (who were our overnight hosts) and Monday we explored the Utah State campus a bit before K’s talk.  Then headed back through the pass in the late afternoon.  We were headed straight through to Provo on the south side of SLC, but hit rush hour traffic going through the city.  So branched off the highway to explore the neighborhood I lived in when I was a kid.

It was a little weird because I had no trouble finding big landmarks (like the schools and parks) but when we got to my actual neighborhood, nothing looked familiar and we drove in circles for a while trying to figure out where we were going.  Two problems – first, they’ve done a ton of development and so what I remember as barren ridges, covered in scrub oak and honeysuckle, are now manicured neighborhoods.  There are a ton of new streets that just weren’t there before, so when I tried to retrace the way to the house from the starting point of the school, I got lost.  “Take the second street after the school”, for example, no longer worked because there’s new streets in the way.  The other problem was that I never really knew the neighborhood from the POV of a driver.  Eventually found the house by just parking the car and walking around and suddenly, it was easy to find my way.

Once I actually found the house I had an unexpected treat… the people who live there now are about to put the place on the market and so when the owner saw us standing on the curb looking at the place, she assumed we were home shoppers (psychic ones, apparently, since the house isn’t currently on the market) and invited us in.  I explained our real goals and she was very excited, taking us through the house and asking us about how it used to be.  So in exchange for sharing what I knew of the house’s history, I got to look around and see what it looks like now.  Dad will be pleased to know that several of his big improvements have been preserved and expanded on… We were running low on time after the tour so didn’t go try to meet any of the neighbors although the across-the-street neighbors are still there.  Their oldest daughter, who I remember as a toddler, is now an adult with a toddler of her own.  No doubt pictures would’ve been fun but by that time I’d presumed enough on K’s patience.

Provo feels surprisingly big and commercial.  I guess it may be the second-largest city in Utah?  Hard to estimate because they don’t do that annexation thing so there’s clusters of separate “cities” that are actually all part of the same metro area.  So Provo is actually the Provo-Orem metro area and you’d have to add their populations to figure out the true mass of humans nearby.  Anyway, I will get more chance to explore later today.

So that’s the current status of the Utah adventure… I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon and then it’s back to the regular grind…

Cooooooool….

I’m going to spend a couple days in northern Utah next week.  I hear it’s still cold in northern Utah. I don’t own shoes that can handle snow, really… 40% chance of snow the day we arrive.

So I stopped by Academy on the way home.  Whole lotta nothin’ in the women’s shoe department.  After all, today’s high was in the mid-eighties, so why would anyone be shopping for winter shoes?

Some cute sandals, though.

So I started browsing more broadly.  And discovered (If I ever knew, I’d forgotten…) I can wear the biggest size in boys shoes.  This was totally cool, because I found these shoes, which should do a great job for the winter weather thing and the price was definitely right…  and, well, there’s some great shoes in the boys section!  Like these.  And these.  These are fun, and these were available in a delightful electric blue color.

I restrained myself to just the shoes I’d come for, but the realization that there’s a whole world of silly shoes out there that are generally pretty cheap… something to reward myself with in the event of some minor victory or other.

Funny.

My trainer said “I was jogging around Rice and I saw someone with a T-shirt that just said ‘Will Rice’ on the front.”

“Yeah?”  I said.

“I thought it was a question.  You know,  ‘Will Rice…?’ so I turned around and jogged backwards to try to see what the punchline was on the back. But the back of the shirt was blank…”

It’s hard to do bicycle crunches when you’re laughing.

exercise addiction?

[info]auspeople

comments that she has to exercise even when feeling bad, because if she doesn’t she’ll just feel worse.

I’m coming to the same conclusion.  Hadn’t missed three workouts in a row in months.  But Thursday PM we went to a play, Fri we went out with friends, and Saturday we got caught up in a project and didn’t get around to working out.

By Sunday morning we were both miserable.  K came in and announced he was going to cancel his gym appointment because he felt so crappy.  I suggested he might be feeling that way because we hadn’t worked out… he reacted with great irritation (not directed at me, just a lot of flouncing about and scowling) but went to the gym.  Came back with a palpably improved aura, apologized for acting like a two-year-old.  Me, after the workout I felt good enough for an afternoon of vigorous yardwork, which I wouldn’t have predicted in the morning.

I haven’t actually found my jeans getting too big on me (congratulations,

[info]la_directora

!) but have noted that I am able to indulge a heartier appetite without the jeans becoming too small…

Hard? Difficult? Scared? Frightened?

So la_directora and drelmo were having a discussion about word usage that made me notice I have some biases about “correct” language.

Given a choice between “This task is hard” and “This task is difficult”, I’d choose the latter.

Given a choice between “He didn’t do it because he was scared” and “He didn’t do it because he was frightened”, I’d choose the latter.

There’s several other similar examples that I’ve noticed recently though they’re not coming to mind right away.

Why do I have these biases?  As drelmo points out, it’s probably not justified by the definitions of the words themselves.  And I don’t generally prefer the long word over the shorter one…

Maybe it’s a specificity thing?  “Hard” has a lot of meanings, difficult has only one.  “Scared” and “Frightened” are about equally precise, though.

Dunno…

Friends

There may be little else that’s special about me, but I have amazing friends.

My friends are strikingly intelligent.  My friends regularly accomplish impressive things.  My friends tell entrancing stories and generate breathtaking art and music and prose.  They are attractive and entertaining and caring and loyal and funny and knowledgable.  And they’re stunningly generous.

I stumble through my life continuously awed, bewildered, and overwhelmingly grateful that I am lucky enough to have such astonishing friends. Without them, my life would be dull.  Grey.  Flat.  Sad.

I’m just sayin’.

TV recs for exercizin’

OK, so I’ve actually been quite good about exercising over the past few months. I do a workout with my trainer twice a week, and average 4 cardio sessions a week.

In order to stay entertained, we (K and I) watch DVDs of TV shows while doing our cardio. Most recently we worked our way through the first couple seasons of the new Doctor Who – unfortunately, that’s gonna run out Real Soon Now as we’re nearly done with second season.  So it’s time to go shopping for other TV.

Good shows have lots of action and humor and aren’t too dialog-intensive, since the combined sounds of a treadmill and an exercycle tend to drown out TV volume… I tolerate some levels of angst but not as much as, say, the last couple seasons of Buffy… perhaps it’s that I want my angst tempered with humor. We have enjoyed Doctor Who, Smallville, earlier seasons of Buffy, some of Angel…  Other than working out, I watch almost no television, so I’m likely to have never seen any of the shows you recommend.

So…  what should I be ordering to watch next? 

Stuff I can’t say while on call, but wish I could.

The conversation I just had: 
Me:  “Hello, this is Dr (Tubin), answering your page –  I’m covering for Dr (otherdoc) tonight.  What can I help you with?” 
Patient:  “Well, I needed to get ahold of Dr (otherdoc) so I could ask him to input some orders into the system for some labwork to be done Thursday or Friday…” 
Me:  “I’m sorry, I’m unable to take care of that for you right now.  I don’t have access to Dr (otherdoc)’s computer to put in orders.  Why don’t you give his office a call in the morning, so they can take care of this for you?”  
Patient:  “well, could you take a message for Dr (otherdoc)?”

What I actually said was (in falsely regretful tones) “No, I’m sorry, I’m not equipped to do that.  You’ll need to call the office during business hours to handle that issue”. 

What I wanted to say…

“No, I’m a doctor, not a personal message service.”

or

“So, when you run out of toilet paper in the middle of the night, do you call the grocery store manager at home and expect him to get you some?”

or…

“No, I don’t like you enough to be willing to spend any more of my evening helping you with routine business that could’ve been taken care of during ordinary business hours…”

or…

I’m open to suggestions here.  Help me relieve my impotent frustration in a mostly harmless fashion by suggesting some really nicely bitchy things I could’ve said….

Meanwhile I’ll go get on the treadmill and get some use out of all this negative energy.

Marketing

One of the lectures I attended at last weekend’s alumni college was looking at the impact of the internet on consumer behavior – and hence on marketing techniques.

The lecturer (Dr. Paul Dholakia), a marketing professor at the business school, spoke mainly about his research interest in “Emergence Marketing”, a subtle marketing technique in which customer loyalty and satisfaction are increased by inviting more direct participation in the company.  Examples include chatrooms or listserves where users can advise one another, and product development seminars.

He presented some very entertaining and convincing examples.  For example:

EBay, for example, found dramatic increases in activity amongst users who were invited to join an online community.  Even lurkers, who didn’t really participate much in the community, had higher utilization than those who weren’t invited to join. 
The Lego corporation harnessed the strength of adult enthusiasts more directly, by inviting members of a lego enthusiast club to join product development teams. These individuals contributed their time and expertise and even paid their own airfare to fly out to Denmark, with an end result of a product that achieved much better market performance.  This prompted the quote:  “In Billund, Denmark, not only is the customer always right, he’s also a candidate for the R&D team. And he’ll work for small plastic blocks.”
Other companies have learned to benefit from independent activities using their products.  Some might remember the silly video on YouTube, involving Diet Coke and Mentos (or its sequel); the effect of that video on product sales has been examined.  I’m not finding a good reference to support this, but apparently the Mentos spokespeople embraced this independent video, claiming it totally captured the image they want to have for the candy.  Coke, on the other hand, brushed off requests for comment. Later analysis showed Mentos had a big increase in sales after those videos hit the web, in a generally flat market for candy products.  Coke didn’t have any corresponding increase in sales of Diet Coke, although some of that may be because the effect of the video was small compared to the overall size of the Coke market…

Finally, this guy maintained that more traditional marketing techniques, including junk mail and free samples, are on their way out because they’ve been shown not to work. I found that interesting since I haven’t seen any decrease in electronic or traditional junk mail, and because lots of people seem to be convinced that free samples do work…

Emergence marketing is very different from traditional marketing in that it gives the consumer a voice, and the consumer’s input can’t be predicted or controlled ahead of time.  All of which means all the experts in traditional marketing are highly uncomfortable with this new approach.  Me, I found myself immediately thinking about ways we could use it to improve patient loyalty to the clinic while also promoting better health behaviors and educating the patients…

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