It’s that time again. My 2010 MacBook Pro has run its course and is falling down on a few key metrics:

• SATA Bus Speed: I can’t run the latest SSD technology because it doesn’t support SATA III
• Memory limit: It maxes out at 8GB of RAM
• Poor Display Tech: The screen is extremely low resolution

So, my next system will be nothing less than silly, and I expect it to last at least three years:

1. A 2012 Model 15″ MacBook Pro with an 8-core i7 processor at 2.4 Ghz
2. 1 GB of video memory
3. 16 Gigabytes of system memory
4. A 512GB OCZ Octane SATA III SSD, sporting 6Gb/s
5. The high-res display @ 1680 x 1050 pixels

Yes, I think this will do nicely.

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America is wide open and trusting. This shouldn’t change.

The idea of stopping terrorist attacks from occurring is simply asinine in this light, as it’s just too easy to walk into a mall and cause havoc.

The message to terrorists (also heard by the American people) should not be,

We’ll stop people from setting off bombs in malls.

…but rather,

It’s easy to set off a bomb in a mall. So what. If you do you’ll kill fewer people than died that day from car accidents — in a single large state. We’re not afraid. We’re American. We won’t panic and we’ll simply hunt you down and kill you.

Put things in perspective. Don’t overreact. Obesity and alcoholism make Bin Laden look silly by comparison.

Sure, we still stay vigilant. We still look for suspicious activity. We still report things that might be dangerous. And we build that defensive eye into our education system. But we don’t open our legs to fear by considering an attack to be proof that our security has failed.

Us being attacked isn’t a failure. A mall bomb or seven, or an airplane or two going down on the same day: we should consider these extremely annoying and grounds for an asswhoopin’ — not evidence of the weakness of our country.

We should plan on this happening. Expect it. And not flinch when it does.

This is how we increase our security — by collectively controlling our response to attack and putting an end to pretending it won’t ever happen.

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I think a lot about customer service. Or, what I really mean is that I get angry a lot about customer service.

I’m not speaking of the declining competence of tech support for a phone or Internet service, but more about things like restaurants or coffee shops, i.e. places that are supposed to be providing an experience.

And perhaps that’s just it. I think that if you care enough to hire people to create a logo, and put up signs, and promote your brand, then you should care about the impressions given off by the people representing you.

Basically, for a top-end experience, the people you interface with should exemplify that experience. For a coffee shop, it should be someone who’s an expert in coffee, drinks coffee, loves coffee, and is associated with “coffee culture” — whatever that means.

Reading comes to mind. Traveling. Stimulating conversation. Books. Mystery. Curiosity. Study. Learning. Etc.

This is just my wordcloud associated with coffee. So when I go into a so-called “coffee shop” and find people who are uneducated, don’t know the difference between dark and light roast, can’t tell me what kind of coffee they enjoy because they don’t, etc. — that’s a poor experience.

And it’s the same for any industry.

Restaurants. In any restaurant that expects to be considered high-end, I would like to be served by those who embody the culture of the place. Language. Dress. Mannerisms. Etiquette. Protocol. Etc.

I don’t want to be served high-end Italian food by some Midwesterner with no passport. I expect to hear Italian and see the signs of a high-end wait staff. I also want the customers to conform to that standard via dress code, noise level, etc.

It’s the same for any kind of high-end experience because we’re not just there for one component. The ambiance magnifies or detracts from the overall experience. Hot Dogs. Mexican Food. Thai. Italian.

And not just food. There are other types of services that need to understand this as well.

It’s not as if there aren’t many who do — there are. But I wish more people understood why it bothers me when they don’t.

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A while back I posted about having experiences through books. I was thinking again about this today and was imagining a rock-climbing experience.

I myself have never been rock climbing, but I have a feeling of it from a few things. I do, however, remember reading The Eiger Sanction in my teens, and watching several films and shows about it.

What I find interesting is that if I had climbed some mountains I might have some additional input, but it wouldn’t necessarily be that much different. Good writing about something can instill many of the same sensations as doing the action yourself.

More importantly, these experiences would largely blend together over time. It just becomes a nebulous “understanding” of rock climbing — with the lines between what I read about and what I actually did becoming increasingly blurry. As an example, many people have reported recalling something and not being sure whether it happened or if they dreamed it.

I was thinking about this in terms of an is_real attribute to a memory — or the came_from_book attribute — similar to how computers store metadata. It’s as if a source type gets stored with a memory as it gets written. These seem to naturally mix to some degree, but it’s interesting to think of mixing them on purpose, or the repercussions of having an ailment which does so unpredictably.

So, ultimately, how different is a memory that happened and a memory that you “remember” from another input type, e.g. from a book, or a film, or a story told? Aren’t they all simply representations of experiences? And if the metadata gets mixed (like witnesses of crimes hearing other accounts and telling their story and actually changing their own memories as a result).

It’d be a good foundation for a short sci-fi story, if nothing else.

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