The One Company Everyone Should Interview With: Amazon

I have been at the job search for a month or so now and I thought I would share how things are going. While it can be an ego boost to have quite a few companies reach out and ask you to interview with them, it is more depressing to have them come back and say they are not moving forward with bringing you onboard. As I am more interested in finding the right opportunity than just landing a job, I thought I would share some tips I am learning during my own job search. My first tip is that everyone should try to get an interview with Amazon.

Why Amazon? Well they have a very formal job interview process that requires you to do a lot of homework before what they call the "Interview Loop." That homework helps with the interview process with other companies. It forces you to put your job-related stories in a format that flows well and highlights your career.

This morning I had an interview with a very interesting company. I think I did a great job sharing information because of my interview with Amazon. I may not get either job but I do feel significantly more prepared for future interviews. I'm sure you will too.

Two-Factor Authentication

A few days ago I received an e-mail from my credit card company asking if I had made a certain charge. I had not and so they cancelled my card and overnighted me a new one. In the 30 years I have had that credit card, I had never had a single fraudulent charge. Unfortunately the e-mail I received was the second such e-mail in about a month's time. That means someone used my card a month ago and somehow received my new credit card number and pertinent information to do the same thing again. How do I know it was the same person or organization? Well both fraudulent charges were to the same company, which is more than a coincidence. Fortunately my credit card company caught the theft and I didn't have to worry about disputing the charge.

I find it very interesting that a credit card I have had for 30+ years suddenly became compromised. It had me concerned about all of my other financial interests. After all if someone could get my credit card number so easily, what about my other cards or my bank account. The first thing I did was to enable two-factor authentication for all of my online financial accounts. That means that even if someone is able to break my fairly complicated password, they won't be able to get into my accounts unless they also manage to steal my mobile phone.

Two-factor authentication relies on two methods of verifying you are who you say you are. The first locked door is your password. The second locked door is associated with a physical device such as your phone or computer. When I log into my bank account, I can't complete logging in until I provide a very temporary unique code that has been sent to one of my phones. Should I get a notification on my phone that I didn't initiate, I can immediately lock my account before anything nefarious happens.

With online theft happening more and more, I highly suggest setting up two-factor authentication for all of your online financial access. This includes banks, credit cards, brokerage accounts, and any other account that has access to your money. While it is not foolproof, it is another layer of protection that could save you some serious heartache.

Opening Day at Alta

Today is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it is fitting that I should post about one thing I am thankful for: opening day at Alta ski resort. This morning my wife and I awoke at 7am and quickly got ready so we could head up for the morning celebration. We arrived at 8am and I quickly got ready. I left my wife in the warm car while I stood in the cold line and saved us places close to the front. Eventually my wife joined me followed shortly by our youngest daughter who is a ski instructor at the resort. Today is her day off and so she got to ski with us.

So what does opening day have to do with computers and technology? As usual, not a single thing. Well there is the point I could make about how we got 3 inches of fresh snow this morning and I could have looked up that information on the Internet before getting in the car. The funny thing though is that I would have made the trip anyways. While it is the first day of lift-serviced skiing, it is my 16th day this season and so I had a really good idea of what the conditions would be like. I didn't need to waste my time looking them up.

Hopefully you too have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Perhaps your item is even much more meaningful than mine. I sure hope so as there are many things I am thankful for. I just chose to list this one today.

Poor Sound Playing DVD on PS5

Friday night my wife and I sat down to watch a DVD with a guest and had to do some troubleshooting with my surround-sound system. The father of a friend from work was driving his motor home from Calgary to Phoenix. He had planned to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot but I offered to let him park it at our house and sleep in one of our guest bedrooms. The weather is a bit cold and while I'm sure he had a nice bed in the RV, running water and heat would be nice too. He accepted and joined us for our Friday-night movie.

For the past week or so, I have been trying to watch the 2004 version of Flight of the Phoenix. This seemed like a very appropriate movie as my friend's dad is a pilot and was headed to Phoenix on his road trip. We put the DVD into the PS5 and jumped past all of the previews. When the movie started, the speakers sounded like I had blown one of them. I knew they were fine as we have been watching a lot of movies lately. To double-check, I switched the receiver from the PS5 to a radio station and the audio came out clear. Therefore I knew it was a problem with the PS5.

Not wanting to play around too long and troubleshoot the problem, I quickly moved the disk to the PS4 and the sound had no issues. We watched the movie and my friend's dad really appreciated the audio. The powered subwoofer created a very unique experience for him, especially in that movie.

The next day, I wanted to figure out if there is a perpetual problem with DVD's playing on the PS5 and so I took the time to troubleshoot the issue. After all, if there is a problem, I could always reach out to my buddy that works on the CODECs for the PlayStation consoles and log a bug even though I no longer work there.

When I am done using my PS5, I always put it in standby mode. That allows any updates to automatically download and install. The first thing I tried is powering off the PS5 and then restarting it. I put in the DVD and it played fine. I wish I had known that the previous evening but now I do. Should you find the sound not working correctly in a movie you are playing on your PS5, just restart the device and see if the problem goes away. If not, then it is a different problem than mine.

Performance Improvement

One of the fundamental lessons I learned in my days as an Electrical Engineering student is the order that performance improvements should be addressed. Always work on the largest problem first. This is really counterintuitive as people will throw out minor improvements because they are easily seen and understood. Unfortunately the improvements may be so minor that they are imperceptible. Let's look at some examples.

Recently I drove a car from San Mateo, California to Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a great example of performance as you always want to minimize the amount of time spent in the car. There are a number of variables you can play with to decrease the amount of time the trip takes. First off is which route you will take. Interstate 80 is the fastest route but is sometimes closed because of snow. You also have how fast you go. You can drive the speed limit or try to go above it. That introduces a few more variables like gas mileage and the risk of getting pulled over to receive a warning or speeding citation. The faster you drive, the more you will have to stop for gas. Don't forget that you may require additional stops to use the restroom or get food.

Thinking of the driving example, most people will point out that you can save time by combining food and restroom breaks with fuel stops. During my recent trip, I stopped for an hour to sleep and that could have been avoided by leaving earlier in the day. Leaving earlier would have also helped with the gridlock traffic I encountered leaving the Bay Area. Ultimately though, that all had very little effect on the overall drive. The best performance gains on a long trip like that are going to be solved by changing the speed of the trip from 80 miles per hour, the legal speed limit for most of the trip in Nevada and Utah, to 500 miles per hour which is how fast you can make the trip in a commercial plane. That is how I got to San Mateo in the first place and if I didn't have to bring a lot of stuff they don't allow on airplanes, it is how I would have gone home.

Another example of performance improvement I saw came in the form of a National Geographic article. It described how to save water while doing dishes. In many parts of the world, water is a scarce resource. In other parts it falls from the sky in large quantities. The article encouraged everyone to avoid rinsing your dishes before placing them in the dishwasher. No offense National Geographic but if you have a dishwasher, there are significantly better ways to save water. Taking a shorter shower is a good start. Better yet is to water your lawn only when necessary. Not rinsing your dishes saves about 2 gallons of water. Taking a shorter shower will save more than the 2 gallons of water. Watering your lawn only when necessary will save hundreds of gallons of water. In other words, stop worrying about 2 gallons and worry about 100 gallons. Once everyone gets that down, you can worry about smaller amounts.

So what does this have to do with computers? A lot actually. If you find yourself looking to improve performance, look at the system as a whole. Break down the tasks and their various times to complete. If task A takes minutes and task B takes seconds, focus on task A. Don't worry about B as it doesn't really matter until you can get task A into the seconds range.

AirPlay: Sharing Your Screen on Your Television

My wife and I had a rare moment last night with some unscheduled time. Rather than waste it, I told her I would teach her something new. In the end, I learned something new.

Lately my wife has been waking up early to exercise before heading off to the law firm where she works. As it is early in the morning, she likes to log in on her computer and exercise with some pre-made videos that she pays an annual fee to access. A few days ago she asked how she can connect her computer to our large television. Last night I figured I would show her.

My usual method for connecting a computer to our TV is to use an HDMI cable and plug it into our receiver. There is a nice HDMI outlet on the front of the receiver which makes it very simple. I grabbed a cable that connects to her laptop only to discover it wouldn't work. I had a cable with a display output that fit her MacBook Air. That is not the same as an HDMI cable so it didn't work with the receiver.

Interestingly enough, the solution was staring me right in the face, literally. There is a sticker on my receiver that says it is capable of AirPlay. I had never used it before but knew it is used to transfer computer displays to televisions. I turned on the receiver and television. Then I went into my wife's System Preferences on her computer. There I selected "Displays." In the bottom-left corner is a pull-down list that says: "AirPlay Display:" with a selection of "Off." I opened the pull-down list and saw my receiver listed by its model number. I selected it and was given a 4-digit code from the television to enter on the computer. Once I entered it, the computer display was mirrored on the television.

As AirPlay is from Apple, I looked on my iPhone and saw that I could transfer the display from my phone to the TV. That got me excited. I hoped I could play games from my phone on a larger screen. Unfortunately that is not the case. I can display photos or play videos on my television from the phone but not use the TV as a second screen.

This morning my wife got up and headed down to the TV room to do her morning exercise. Normally I can keep sleeping and not notice she is down there early in the morning. The high-end surround sound system woke me right up. I'm glad she figured it out.

Preferred Device for Video Conferencing

I have quite a few computers available to me at home. Currently I am posting this blog using my desktop computer. I also have a Chromebook that I keep near the kitchen. Sadly I no longer have my laptop since I have left Sony PlayStation. They made me give that back. I am reluctant to purchase a new one for myself as I am actively interviewing and will let my new employer get one for me. I am tempted, however, to go get one and then give it to my wife once I start the new gig. My reason for doing so? I am attending a lot of video conferences and my device of choice is a good laptop.

I have a great camera set up on my desktop computer. It does a great job but has one fatal flaw: where do I put it? My desktop computer is connected to a 43-inch 4K monitor. If I put the camera below the monitor, it looks straight up my nose. If I put it on top of the monitor, you can see a huge reflection from my bald head. If I put it to either side, it looks like I am staring off and not paying attention to anyone in the video conference. Basically there is no good place for the camera. That doesn't keep me from using it though. In case you are wondering, I have gone for the up-the-nose look.

I have used my Chromebook for a few video conferences but it is really under powered. I keep getting popups from the various video conferencing software saying that I need to shutdown other applications. The sad thing is that I don't have anything else running. I have thought about upgrading the Chromebook but the choices make it very confusing. A high-end Chromebook is more than a cheap refurbished laptop which will do a lot more.

I suppose I could use a mobile phone as well but the reality is that I loved using my laptop for video conference calls. If I didn't want to take the call in my office, I could bring it to the living room. When I was in Hawaii, I even took a few calls from the Lanai. I didn't even have to use a fake backdrop.

Fortunately my wife really does need a new laptop. Christmas is coming too. Do you think it is bad if I get a laptop for a month and then put it under the tree as a gift for my wife? I should probably add some jewelry there too.

Video Game Review: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Before the pandemic started, I had my buddy that used to work at Electronic Arts (EA) purchase me a copy of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for the PlayStation 4. I then payed him back the $20 for the game and brought it home. My youngest son found the unopened copy of the game and asked if he could borrow it. I was finishing up another game at the time and so I loaned it to him. Naturally he redeemed the code inside for the extra goodies and ended up paying me for the game while he kept it for about a year. He then loaned it to my older son who played it for quite awhile.

With not being able to go to the office to get another copy for myself, I was feeling a bit left out. Then my oldest son let me know the game was on sale at the PlayStation store for about the same price as my friend could get it for me. Naturally I jumped on the store and picked up an electronic copy to download. I just finished playing it and am glad I finally got the chance to run through the game.

Jedi Fallen Order is an open-world adventure game which is a genre I really like to play. It is not nearly as complex as Horizon Zero Dawn or any of the recent Far Cry games. While there are some puzzles to solve and plenty of combat, it doesn't have all of the complex gathering and crafting. You have some echos and collectibles to find but they are minor parts of the story, unlike in other games.

If you are a fan of the Star Wars movies, you will love this game. It takes place just before the original Star Wars movie and has a pretty interesting story line that adds insight into saga. You also get to explore some of the planets in the Star Wars universe. It took me about 70 hours to complete the game and I played it on my PlayStation 5 even though it was created for the PS4.

The game has an ESRB rating of T for Teen due to some mild language and violence. After all, you do run around with a light sabre slicing droids, storm troopers, and creatures in half. I would have no problem letting my grand kids watch while I play this game. The fact that you don't have a complex crafting system also makes it easier for younger audiences should they wish to play.

I found the game to be very enjoyable and recommend it to anyone that is a fan of the Star Wars movies. Towards the end, it did get to be a bit redundant but less so than many other games I have played. There is still a lot I can do should I wish to platinum the game (get every single trophy or achievement) but I also have a lot of other games that I am interested in playing. I paid about $20 for the game and feel you get a lot of entertainment for that price.

Grandma Got Lost Again

Last month I posted about how Grandma lost her way to her daughter's house. Well it happened again. This time we were able to track her and call her to help get her home much more quickly. Here's more to the story.

One problem with living with family is that you will eventually upset each other. There is a reason kids grow up and leave home. When it comes time for a parent to move in with a child, it will be stressful. Well Grandma got caught eating a brownie at her daughter's house before dinner and her daughter gave her the you'll-spoil-your-dinner speech. This offended Grandma and she jumped in her car and drove off. The next morning she showed up at my house. I knew she had to return to her daughter's in a week for a doctor's appointment and so my wife and I welcomed her into our home for a limited stay.

I used the visit to see how Grandma is doing with her new phone and other technological devices in her life. It didn't take long to realize that Grandma doesn't know how to use her new smartphone. She doesn't even know how to answer it. She claims it won't let her answer a call when she is driving. While this is a feature I wish all phones would adopt without hands-free car integration, the reality is that she just isn't familiar enough with her new phone. So lesson number one was to help her get more familiar with her phone.

I also asked Grandma to explain how she got lost on that fated drive back to her daughter's. Of course she didn't really have a good explanation. I explained to her that she just needed to stay on the freeway and not take any exits until she got close to home. That sounds pretty easy, right? I actually explained it in much more detail to help ensure the same problem wouldn't happen again. I felt pretty confident in my explanation and was sure she would drive right home.

Saturday morning arrived and Grandma jumped in her car to head back to her daughter's. About an hour later, my wife used the "Find my Phone" app to locate Grandma. Contrary to all my directions, Grandma exited the freeway she was supposed to stay on and headed off on the wrong way. I couldn't believe it. My wife gave her a call but it went unanswered. Fortunately Grandma's daughter was also watching and managed to get her on the phone. Grandma added 45 minutes to her drive but eventually made her way home.

Smartphones are great tools. They can be used to prevent driving mistakes, provided you are using them to help you navigate to your destination. They can also be used to fix that mistake if someone is watching you and can call you to provide correction. Unfortunately this all relies on the user being able to use said smartphone. Grandma still needs help.

Getting the Most out of my PlayStation 5

When I first got my PlayStation 5, I kept it on my desk in my home office as I used it for work. Now that I am no longer working for Sony Interactive Entertainment, I have moved it into my theater room. I now have it connected to my brand-new 85-inch television. Unfortunately it was not as simple as plugging it into my TV as I had to also connect it to my surround-sound system.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of refresh rates and why 120 frames per second or Hz is significant for the latest televisions. I want to preserve the high refresh rate from my PlayStation 5 and that just isn't possible if I plug it into my current television receiver which is then connected to the TV. My receiver only supports 60 Hz at 4K and I do not want to spend money replacing it right now. I probably will in the future but for now I want to keep using it. So how do I keep the high video quality and also keep the high sound quality?

I can't take full credit for this as my oldest son helped me figure it out. The solution is to use the audio return channel or eARC HDMI output from the television. The high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has been around for over 15 years and has evolved to allow for various scenarios like this. When I set up my PlayStation 5, I plugged it directly into my new television using one of it's two HDMI 2.1 interfaces. The second is used to connect the TV to the receiver. Now what happens is the picture and sound are sent to the television from the PS5. The sound is then sent back to the receiver for that shake-the-neighbors experience. HDMI works both ways so that any devices connected to the receiver use that same HDMI interface into the television.

One would think that with a PS5 I wouldn't need to connect any other device. It streams video, has a DVD drive, a Blu-ray drive, and can play 4K Blu-ray disks. I also have a PS4 Pro connected to a PlayStation VR as well as an old VHS video cassette player, from Sony, of course. The moment you connect your PS VR to your PS4, you lose the ability to play games in 4K without having to swap cables. Rather than deal with that, I just kept my PS4 Pro and use it with my PS VR. I also use it to play video games with my grandson and keep a healthy mix of age-appropriate games loaded on it. As for the VHS tapes, their quality is really horrible even with 4K upscaling. You never know when you may need to watch an old video though.

My son and I connected everything and then started watching Return of the Jedi on Disney+. While we enjoy the movie, we wanted to make sure the sound and picture were in sync. After all, nothing ruins the experience of a movie when you hear an explosion before you see it. The lip movement not matching the dialog can also be really annoying, which is why I prefer subtitles to dubbing for non-English movies. Fortunately both the TV and the receiver have mechanisms for delaying one or the other. In my case, the sound led the picture. I went into the receiver settings and added a 10ms delay. That improved things somewhat but wasn't perfect. I upped the delay to 20ms and everything synced perfectly. If it had been the other way around and the picture led the sound, I would have added the delay to the television.

Once we got the timing worked out on the PS5, I had to go in and check it on the PS4 and VHS cassette player. The PS4 is in sync but there is a 20ms delay on the VHS. I can turn off the delay setting in the receiver when I play video tapes to solve that problem. As I doubt I will watch a lot of VHS tapes, I'm fine not worrying about it. I can probably set custom parameters for each device and save them to the receiver but am fine with how things are set up now.

Should you find yourself with a new PS5 and an older receiver, just connect it directly to the television. Then use eARC to pull in your surround-sound receiver. You may have to adjust some settings but once you get it set up, you will be amazed at the quality.

The Importance of Television Refresh Rates

My new 85-inch television is awesome! Friday night we got everything configured correctly and then watched the latest version of the movie Dune. Having read the book and also having met Frank Herbert when I was very young, I am always interested in any movie about it. I have to say that this movie did not disappoint. It is very methodical in the storytelling and does a great job sticking to the book, at least as how I remember it. Should you wish to see the movie on HBO Max like I did, make sure you see it on a really large 4K television and also have an awesome sound system. I don't think my subwoofer has had that much of a workout since I bought it many years ago. If your house isn't rattling, your sound isn't loud enough.

One of the things that makes my television so great is its high refresh rate. Understanding the importance of refresh rate is very important to know why I setup my home theater system the way I did. So let's begin.

In the early days of movie making, industry pioneers discovered that the human eye sees pictures in motion at 24 frames per second. That means if you are shown a series of pictures at less than 24 per second, they will look like individual pictures. If you are shown at 24 or higher, it will look like smooth motion. Up until recently, all movies have stuck to the 24 frames per second refresh rate.

When television came along it used alternating current for power which, in the United States, is regulated at 60 Hertz or cycles per second. Rather than come up with complex circuitry to match the movie frame rate of 24, the engineers just divided frequency of the input power by 2 and set the television frame rate to 30. Besides 30 is more than 24 and shouldn't be noticeable to the viewer right? For the most part, that is true but it does create some difficulties when encoding a movie to be shown on television.

Now let's add video games and computers to the mix. The original home computer monitors were just televisions. As higher-end graphics cards and monitors emerged, 30 frames per second was no longer the best picture you could get. Kids raised on television could tell the difference between 30 frames per second and 60. Given about 5 minutes watching the two different signals, most people can and they prefer the higher frame rate. It actually turns into an advantage for those playing video games and so console makers started increasing frame rates. The current generation of video game consoles like the PlayStation 5, support 120 frames per second.

That higher frame rate comes in handy for video enhancements. My old 3D television used the higher frame rate to show the left-eye image followed by the right-eye image in the next frame. The glasses you wear block the right-eye image in the left eye and the left-eye image in the right. So even though the TV is showing the movie at 60 frames per second, you are only seeing the movie at 30 frames per second. If you want to see the movie at 60 frames per second, the TV needs to bump up to 120 Hz.

There is also another very important reason for having higher frame rates. While working on the PlayStation VR, we discovered that virtual reality glasses need to have the highest frame rate possible. VR allows you to move your head around and a low frame rate introduces lag into the picture. If you move your head slightly, the image doesn't quite match with what you see in real life. This induces motion sickness. We knew we were getting the right frame rates when we could do a short demo to a room full of executives and nobody threw up.

High frame rates are now very important at amusement parks. A few years ago, I attended a developer's conference put on by Sony PlayStation. One night we rented out the Hogwarts section of Universal Studios in the Los Angeles area. With only a few hundred people in the park, we had no lines and could ride the Hogwart's Castle ride over and over. If you have never been on it, it is a giant VR ride coupled with a roller coaster. Unfortunately they use a very low frame rate and most people are rather sick after the first go around. I rode it 3 times in a row and came very close to blowing chunks. I don't normally get motion sick as I am a sailor and have even sailed a boat from Hawaii to California through 2 hurricanes. When I get sick, that is bad. Several other coworkers were not so lucky and spent part of the night hunched over garbage cans clearing their stomachs.

Television frame rates keep getting higher and higher and there is a reason for it. As we enhance our entertainment experiences more and more, our televisions will need to keep up. Now if we can just get our high-end amusement parks to keep up, we won't find ourselves with motion sickness.

Time For a New Television

Monday was my last day working at Sony PlayStation and I wanted to maximize my discount on Sony items before I left. So on Monday last week I ordered a new 85-inch 4K television. It arrived today. My previous one was only 60 inches and so I am now doing a lot of rearranging to make room for the new toy. Getting a much larger television requires a lot of work.

I waited around this morning for the television to arrive. Once it did, I just moved it into the house so I could plan out the next course of events. My old TV stand fit the 60-inch model perfectly but won't work for the 85-incher. I did an online search and found a stand that I liked at Ikea for a reasonable price. I drove down there and picked it up. Then I brought it home and put it in my home theater room and waited for some help to arrive before assembling it.

My oldest son came over after work and we moved the old TV into my bedroom so it is out of the way. Then we removed the old stand so we could build the new one. The build process went amazingly fast as we made sure to follow the instructions carefully. That is the trick behind assembling Ikea furniture: carefully following the instructions. Next we put the new television on the stand. Boy is 85 inches a lot of screen real-estate. It took awhile to plug in the PS4, the PS5, and the audio system. Once we had everything put together we tested it by logging into Disney+ on the PS5 and watching the first 8 minutes of "Return of the Jedi" in 4K.

There are still a few bugs to work out but I will take care of that tomorrow. My PS5 runs 4K video at 120 frames per second but my audio receiver can't handle that. To get around the shortcoming, we connected the PS5 directly to the TV and then run the sound back to the receiver. There is a bit of a delay between the picture and the sound but it should be fairly easy to fix with some setting adjustments. I'll work on that tomorrow.

So far I am very impressed with the new television. For the past few years I have felt that my 60-inch TV has gotten too small. I also like the added definition of 4K as the picture looks incredible. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the old stuff. Let me rephrase that: I need to figure out how to make my old television fit in my bedroom without upsetting my wife or buying any  more furniture. I'll be sure to report on the outcome.

Road Trip in a Ford Escape

Yesterday I boarded a plane and flew to San Francisco where I rented a car and drove to my boat at Coyote Point Marina. As Monday was my last day at Sony, at least for now, I had to clean out my sailboat so I could sell it. I pulled all of the big stuff off the boat and loaded into the back of the rental car and then sold the boat to an old coworker. His one request was that I help put the sails back on the boat so he could start using it on weekends. I obliged and showed him how to get everything set up. I also showed him how to start the engine. Then I got in the car and made the 11-hour drive back to Salt Lake City. The flight was much easier than the drive.

When I made my rental car reservation, I had the option of several rental car companies. Ultimately I settled on Hertz as they had cars available and also the best rate. I set the rental pickup at the airport and then gave myself until 10pm this evening to return the car to the location 2 miles from my house. Talk about convenient.

National has always allowed you to select the car you wanted when you arrive at their lot. This is something Hertz recently started doing and I really appreciated it yesterday. I knew I had a lot of stuff to bring back, including a generator, 2 televisions, and a mountain bike, so I passed on the Ford Mustang. While it would have been a fun car, not everything would have fit. I also wanted something that got great gas mileage as I would be responsible for filling the tank multiple times. Ultimately I settled on a very new Ford Escape. I put the back seats down and the bike fit nicely. Then I just loaded stuff around the bike. The generator rode in the front passenger's seat next to me.

Lately all of the cars I have rented have had key-less starts. You just have the key in the car and press the start button. It is a feature I really like. I also quickly connected the car's sound system to my phone so that I could use all of the hands-free features. It came in handy as I talked with my wife and other family members while driving. That kept some of the boredom at bay. It also had satellite radio that I started using just outside of Lake Tahoe when the traditional radio stations started getting scarce. I began with music but by the end of the drive, I was listening to comedy to help pass the time.

I turned the car back into Hertz this morning and saved myself $50 by not doing it this evening. I have to say that I really enjoyed all of the electronic features in the Ford Escape. Before I connected my phone to the car, its own navigation system did an excellent job routing me and also giving me an ETA into Salt Lake. Of course it didn't take into account the hour nap I would need outside of Elko, Nevada but it did factor in stops for gas and that soft-serve ice cream cone from McDonalds at midnight. Ultimately my favorite feature in the rental car was the fact that I averaged 30 miles per gallon of gas while mostly doing 80 miles per hour (the legal speed limit for most of the trip . . . once you get outside of California). My mother-in-law is looking for a good all-wheel drive car and I highly recommend this one. Full disclosure: I own a Ford F-150 truck and also own 190 shares of Ford stock. While both of these may influence me somewhat, I still liked the car a lot for my California-to-Utah road trip.

Fresh Fruit From Hawaii

One of my favorite things about visiting Hawaii is getting fresh papaya. For some reason, the papayas here on the mainland just are not that great. After eating a particularly bland one here in Utah, my daughter took it upon herself to figure out the difference between mainland papaya and papaya from Hawaii. It turns out the fruit on the mainland is usually "Imperial Papaya" from Mexico and is about the size of an American football. The fruit in Hawaii is actually "Strawberry Papaya" or sometimes known as Hawaiian Papaya and is much smaller. It also tastes a lot better.

The net is that I love Hawaiian papaya and think mainland papaya tastes like earwax. I mentioned this yesterday to some friends and one remarked that he misses Hawaiian-grown pineapples. He even went so far as to say that he would pay a premium for real Hawaiian pineapples. I told him that you can get Hawaiian fruit air freighted to your home. That is what I do when I want real papaya.

For those reading that are willing to spend a little money to get some fresh Hawaiian fruit, my favorite place to get it is: Dole Fruit Hawaii. Every couple of weeks I will get a box and eagerly await its arrival.

One nice thing about the Internet is being able to find such interesting food. If you have a favorite food that you can't find in the usual stores, let me know as I am sure I am not the only one that appreciates tropical fruit during the cold winter months.