Nine of us had the opportunity to attend the MITX Awards last Wednesday, an award ceremony honoring the top multimedia vendors and designers in Massachusetts. A data management system Six Red Marbles built for Harcourt Achieve in the English Language Learner area was nominated as a finalist. Although we didn’t win this year it was a great event with inspirational products and a lot of laughs at a decent comedian who hosted.
Another election rolls around and each year I find myself getting the same type of voting booth anxiety. It has nothing to do with the election, but more the school gymnasium environment with the unstable little voting tables you need to hide in while you fill out the card. I think even the "address checkin" line bugs me. It’s always too slow and somehow it takes 3 people to check off and verify your address both at the entrance and exit.
There’s something so archaic about how we vote, that I’m somehow I’m afraid I’ll mess up somewhere along the way. Did I get in the right precinct line? Am I on their list? Are they going to hand me a pencil. I hate pencils. Don’t mind sketching with pencils but I don’t want to fill in bubbles with pencils. Did I read the directions right? Do I understand the questions on the back? Where in the world is the technology for voting? Last month Wired ran an article about building a better voting machine but it will be a while before we see real use of technology.
I actually thought I made it through the whole process thinking it was a piece of cake tonight…no line, they got my address right with only 1 person checking and 1 person handing me the form, filled out the ballots correctly, double checked it all, went to the address checkout line fine, and thought I was free…until…I came to the machine that eats the voting ballot. I put it in and it spit mine back out with a bunch of red symbols. Oh great. The older gentleman manning the machine said "Oh you did something wrong!" Doh! I almost made it without screwing up something. He looked and realized that I did fill the bubbles out correctly as indicated by the red marks, but I put it in the wrong way. Upside down. Foiled again. Another year. Proud to vote, but I never leave the school gymnasium feeling very smart. To top it off, no bakesale outside the doors.
So I guess I’m not the only loser whose cell phone ended up submerged in some form of liquid, beverage, pool, or puddle. A few months ago one of my cats scared himself on the coffee table and skidded like they do on cartoons with paws flailing over paws. He knocked my cell phone up in the air where it twirled in slow motion flipping over itself until it darted into a bowl of water on the floor. Unfortunately the bowl of water was salt water, yup NaCl. Nice. Boring story compared to what other phones have gone through with their dunks into martinis, toilets, Gatorade, and washing machines. Here’s a few tricks to reviving your phone.
http://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Wet-Cell-Phone
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/cell-phones/save-your-wet-cell-phone-211623.php
