The Knoxville Trip

So, I haven't posted in a week - I've been busy! It's not like I can (yet) tell who's actually been here reading and how many people have clicked through my little corner in blogspace. But for those that are interested, I'm on a roadtrip to visit my Grandmother in Tennessee. The drive from Houston, was, well, mostly uninteresting because I did it at night and there was mostly nothing to see. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. I'm heading back either tomorrow or Monday morning, with stops in Atlanta, Georgia, and some place back-water's Alabama to have coffee or something with a cousin.

It's a kin-folk adventure. 'sides, I need to both work on my southern accent if I'm ever to pass as a fake-texan and, I haven't seen these people since my economic collapse began in late 2000. So, it was time.

I took some photo's but left my memory stick adapter in Houston, I'll upload something later.

Observations:

• The xTerra is fun to drive I'm finding. Between the v6 supercharged acceleration I never knew I needed (if only I had lept to the BMW M3 when I had the chance 7 years ago) and the GPS nuvi that is my absolute new favoritist toy.


• No one in any state knows how to drive. It doesn't matter where they are from, where they are going, what kind of vehicle, hold old, gender, orientation, or any other measurable characteristic on which to build a stereotype. There are just a certain percentage of people everywhere that screw up the roads for the rest of us. They need to be sent to FEMA driver's re-education camps


• I think I found some FEMA camps along the I59 in Mississippi, along the "evacuation route", it was a giant field of mobile homes with large, bright lights blaring down on everything. Either that, or it was acres and acres of randomly collected mobile homes & trailers without any real organization.


• Home used to be were the heart was. Now, I have to say, it's where my preferred broadband connection is. Grandma is a card carrying neo-luddite and as such, has neither computer, or nor internet. I tried showing off my powerbook and building an argument for her to get something - for chatting, video chatting with family, genealogy research, news, etc. I got 3/4's through my spiel before she commented on my thinning hair.
  
  Grandma: 01; Topak: Zero
  
  She won this round, but I'm meeting with my uncle & aunt tomorrow to convince them that Windows 98 & ME are evil spam spawn and they should upgrade to a Mac Mini.


• Setting up dial-up access using a Bluetooth enabled Cingular Motorola RAZR is far more painful than it should be, and downloading AOL from pirated, unsecured wireless near the local CompUSA (really guys, you should help your neighbors and not allow unsecured wireless) is much, much faster to just plug a damm cable from the land line in rather than some esoteric pie-in-the-sky wireless "alternative".


• I'm still very annoyed with the lack of support & documentation on making the above work


• Tennessee, while beautiful, is turning into a giant strip mall

That's pretty much it for now. More to come later when I either find more unsecured wireless access, or am blessed with knowledge from on high on how to get this damm cell phone working with it's matching powerbook.