Paying Bills Online

You want to catch up with an old friend. Do you take the time to post a letter? No, you email them. Do you drive to your local library to do research? Again, no. You jump on the internet. Do you step outside to determine the weather? Of course not. You log on to Weather.com. So why do you still balance a physical checkbook, and pay your bills through the US mail?

That question was directed at those of you who don't pay their bills online. For those of you that do, congratulations. Welcome to the future. You've joined an elite corps of individuals who understand that the digital frontier isn't something to be feared, but to be embraced and harnessed for the good of your free time. Why spend a half hour or more paying bills? That may have been good enough for the Dark Ages, but so was the plague, and one third of the population of Europe died as a result. I'd say the risk of plague is far more troublesome than the slim chance that some malfeasant might get a hold of your bank account information.

I've always had a tough time keeping tabs on bills. Even when I have the money to pay them I often lose track of them and end up late. So for me, the ease of online payment is a necessity. But it's beneficial for anyone. I have all my payees set up in Quicken. When I get a bill all I need to do is launch the program, pull up a virtual check, pick the right payee from the payee list, punch in the amount and hit send. Done. Bill's paid.

If I were a little more responsible it would always be that easy, but sometimes I have to sort out the previous month's bill, so it gets a little trickier. But at least I don't have to worry about writing a check, buying a stamp, and posting the bill.

This risks anymore are minimal. And if you pay bills electronically through your bank like I do, instead of through each individual payee, the risk is nearly nil. So there's really no downside, other than the fact that you need a computer and the smallest bit of online savvy. Even if you don't have a money management program like Quicken, you can participate. Most banks offer online bill payment through their website interface. All done through secure, encrypted transactions.

Minuscule risks. Big rewards. Zero rat-borne illnesses. Online bill payment is the bees knees.

Photo Sharing

Online photo sharing is one of those novelties of modern life I think many of us take for granted. I was just going through pictures from my brother-in-law John's recent trip to Holland and Italy (there are some great shots there, John, by the way) and it got me thinking about my picture taking experiences in Europe back in 2001. I was on the continent for three and a half weeks, starting in Copenhagen, Denmark, making stops in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, and Seville, ending finally in Grenada, Spain, taking the continent from top to bottom.

Needless to say I took a ton of pictures. I thought. By my standards of the day, using an old film-based SLR. I probably shot 16 or 17 rolls of film, which was all I could afford. At 24 exposures per roll I guess I shot somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pictures. A gargantuan amount for me at the time, pitiful by digital standards. For comparison, Kate and I recently spent a week in Sedona, Arizona, and we easily shot five times as many pictures in less than a third of the time.

But at the time 400 pictures was a lot. There was the initial film costs to consider and then the developing, which, for 400 pictures was a lot more than I wanted to spend. I bought a couple physical albums as well, and spent days organizing my prints, placing and labeling them in the albums to save from forgetting names and places. That way I'd both have the photos for years and would be able to easily (again, easy by the standards of the day) share my photos with friends and family.

What a lengthy, arduous process! Which is why I say that online photo sharing is a real boon to shutterbugs everywhere. The difference in process is like night and day, and it's fascinating how, in probably less than five or six years, photography has radically shifted.

Now Kate and I, and the rest of the free world, take thousands of free pictures with our digital cameras, no developing required, and with a few simple keystrokes upload them so that everyone we know can see them, share them with other friends, and get prints made for themselves if they wanted. Imagine what I would have had to do eight years ago to get a print made for a friend: Take my albums to them, let them pick out the image they wanted, find the negatives, take them to a photo shop, get the print made, pick it up, and then either mail it or hand deliver the final image. Lots of steps. Lots of time. Needless to say I'm the only one that has copies of my Europe pictures.

But already multiple people have images from our Arizona trip. Most were gifts from us, but one or two ordered them from our online share site. I think that's so cool. Even the gift prints were easier to procure than they've ever been. Log on, pick the shots, order the sizes. Done. What's great about digital photography is the magic of waste. With nearly limitless potential for free shots, you can snap away with abandon. The more pictures you take, the more likely you'll wind up with some really nice shots, some of which you might not have taken if you were rationing film-based pictures, like I did in Europe. And then, unlike with film, at least consumer film, you can "develop" only the images you really want, instead of the entire roll.

And then share them as far and as wide as possible. There can never be too much good photography in the world.

The smart Car

In August of '01 I took a 3 1/2 week long trip across Europe, starting in Copenhagen, Denmark, and finishing in Grenada, Spain. It was during my stay in Amsterdam, the second city I visited, where I first saw a smart Car. It was love at first sight. For me, at least. The vehicle's emotions were very hard to read.


Smart Gmbh, the company that originally produced the smart, was a partnership of Daimler and Swatch. Apparently the car was Swatch's idea, not Daimler's. The former approached the latter about production and distribution. Swatch's original concept was to create a vehicle under 250 cm in length, short enough to fit "nose-in" to what would normally be a parallel parking spot. The idea was to enable three smart cars to park where one standard vehicle would normally fit.

The model that I first saw, the Fortwo, pictured at the top, was also designed to be extremely fuel-efficient, safe (on European roads), and affordable. Playing to its younger target demographic, the Fortwo was easily customizable, sporting snap-off exchangable colored plastic body panels. A hybrid engine was planned, but never implemented.

After our torrid, if one-sided love affair was sparked, I was hooked. I wanted to own one so badly, but importing into the US meant costly shipping fees, and extensive customization to meet U.S. road requirements. All I could do was sit drearily at home, watching the uninteresting U.S. street legal cars buzz past my window, and fantasize about that bright day in the future when either the U.S. was annexed by Germany, or Smart rekenoodled their cars for the U.S. market.


Thankfully the latter (and not the former) has arrived, as I'm sure anyone with eyes and a brain is aware of. The new smart Fortwo is a bit longer than the original (8.8 feet as opposed to 8.2 feet), and considerably heavier, but still all smart. The interchangeable exterior panels are still there (I'm pretty sure), and the interior is just as mod as the original. It's now rated as having the highest fuel efficiency of any vehicle in its class (hybrids aren't included in this), and it gets very high safety ratings.

Plus the price is right, starting at under $12,000. Unfortunately, my original infatuation has been tempered by pragmatism. Not that the car itself wouldn't fulfill my vehicular needs. It's just that my Civic is nearly paid off, and the thought of living without a car payment is extremely sexy. Sexier than that smart little vixen, much to my chagrin.

One day though.

Good Beer. Really Good Beer.

I like beer.  Beer with personality.  Beer that's not afraid to claim its heritage.  Give me something dark, rich and meaty over anything associated with football and being a real American any day.  I don't want bubbly water with real beer flavor added.  If I'm going to drink a beer I want those empty calories to be meaningful.  I'm not drinking it because I'm thirsty.  I want real flavor.  I want an experience.  I want the type of beer you drink, not because you're thirsty, but because you're hungry.

The short list of favorite varieties would consist of Bocks, Doppelbocks, Stouts, Brown Ales, Porters, Dunkels, Pumpkin Ales, Winter Ales, Hefeweizens and other assorted wheat brews.  That's just what I can think of.  I'm sure there's more that I'm missing.  Give me a Newcastle, a Lancaster Milk Stout, or a Shiner Bock anytime and I'm happy.  I once brewed (the only beer I ever brewed) a Banana Brown Ale that was pretty delicious.  

I don't do this anymore because it became more of a torture than a pastime, but I used to love going through all the high-priced specialty beers you find shelves and shelves of at decent liquor stores.  I can't bring myself to pay $12 for a single beer except on very special occasions.  Which I have done, though rarely, and had some wonderful beers.  I had a beer in France made by the Amsterdam Brewery Company called the Maximator.  A bock with an alcohol content of 11.6%.  Wow!  Talk about a heady drink.

It warms my cockles to know there is so much beer out there I haven't tried yet.  It's like a liquid candy store for grownups, where all the sugar has fermented into cold (and warm) alcoholic bliss.

Traveling By Train

I've actually traveled very little by train (I'm not counting subway systems) but I've loved every second.  In the States the only trips I've taken were between Maryland and New York, twice maybe.  Most of my experiences came during my Europe trip, which I mentioned briefly in yesterday's entry.  There I got a very good taste.  I rode a normal passenger car train from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, and then a high-speed train from there to Paris.  Watching the olive fields which stretched out to infinity meander by on my way from Madrid to Grenada was breathtaking.  But my favorite trip by far was from Paris to Madrid.  It's a long trip to begin with, made longer by the fact that the train winds through the Pyrenees.  So I got a sleeping compartment on a night train.

It was a novel experience, for sure.  It was the first time that I'd gone to sleep, in a bed, while traveling, waking up at my destination.  I can't think of a better way to travel.  I was going to have to sleep, and accomplish nothing anyway.  Why not get my eight hours while traveling?  Plus, I'm not sure I've ever slept more soundly.  The sound and motion of a car makes me drowsy.  Even more so a train.  It's sort of like being enveloped in a sonic security blanket.  If I could create a bed system for the home that replicated that entire experience, I'm sure I'd be a wealthy, and lazy guy.

I think there's a certain romanticism that travels with trains.  Even the super-fast, super-modern bullet trains still share in that mystique.  Nothing beats sitting at the window, watching the countryside evolve as you draw closer to your destination.  You get a sense of involvement with your surroundings that's lacking in air travel.  At 35,000 feet, you're about as far removed as you can be.  And who really wants to be involved with their surroundings on a Greyhound bus.  On a train you can connect with your travel in a visceral way, watching it happen in real time, cities giving way to towns and villages, to countryside and mountains, and back again.  But, given that trains often traverse stretches of land not accessible to other means of transport, you're removed just enough from reality to feel that you're doing something special.  Involved with, but slightly apart from the world.

I love it.  If I had the time I'd take a train ride out west.  To no place in particular.  Just from one train station to another.  The traveling could itself be the vacation.  Or at least a value-added benefit, as opposed to just a means to an end.

Digital Cameras

I know there are a lot of purists out there, people who lament the ground lost from film cameras.  You know who you are.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that position.  Film has an aesthetic and emotional resonance that digital, in its cold 1, 0, 1, 0 perfection, can't match.  But...

Digital technology easily bests film in most other areas.  The resolution on high-end cameras is now larger than 35 mm. film.  And there's no upper limit.  We're limited more in our printing and reproduction capabilities than in image capture.  A 30 megapixel consumer point and shoot can't be too far off.

Digital images can be manipulated much easier than physical negatives.  Programs like Photoshop do everything an artist would normally do in a darkroom, plus a gargantuan amount more.  Granted, physical negatives can be scanned for manipulation digitally, but there's an inherent quality compromise.  Better to capture digitally from the beginning.

Getting prints made is so much easier with digital files.  Instead of having to either develop your images yourself, or drop the film of at a processing center, you can print your images at home.  Or digitally transmit them to a processing center of your choice.  This creates competition, because we aren't limited anymore to just our local processing centers.

Sharing images is clearly much easier as well, with the plethora of online photo sharing sites.

But the real benefit of no film is...no film!  It's expensive, and therefore limiting.  I went on a three week trek across Europe back in 2001, and I took along a relatively simple old film camera.  With only 24 exposures per roll I had to be very choosy about what scenes I captured.  I think in all I shot about 15 rolls of film.  If you figure (and I have no idea if these figures are accurate) six dollars per roll to purchase them, and then eight dollars to process them, you're looking at a grand total of $210.  That's 58 cents per print.  Today you can get prints online for as low as 6 cents per print.  And you're only paying for the images you actually print.  The other thousand images you have sitting on your hard drive didn't cost you a thing.

I can only imagine what images I missed because I didn't have the latitude then that a digital camera would afford me now.  I probably would have come home with many thousands of images instead just the 360 I did.  Of course volume is no substitute for talent...it's anyone's guess if any of those missed images would have been any good.