Coffee and phones and T-shirts (with pics!)
I donated some platelets with the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center on New Year's Eve. For my trouble, they gave me a ten dollar gift card to H-E-B and this nifty T-shirt:
Later in the week, I went to that very grocery chain and decided to spend my gift card on something unexpected: A coffee machine. I don't generally drink coffee, but sometimes I need a little pick-me-up in the morning. For this, I will often drink a soda like Coke or Dr. Pepper, but I'm trying to cut down on sugar and hate the taste of diet sodas. The solution? Coffee with sucralose (yellow stuff) or saccharine (pink stuff).
I do expect, however, that I will be using this device more for making hot tea than coffee.
Based on this chart, which I originally saw in a neighborhood coffee house, I think the way I take my coffee has an official name. Rather than cafe au lait, which uses scalded milk, or a latte, which uses steamed milk, I apparently drink a "New York cup," which is at least as much cold milk as it is hot coffee.
Lastly, yesterday I got a smartphone. I planned on making the switch when 2014 arrived, and here we are. It arrived.
I often find myself in need of instantly taking some higher-detail pictures than my old phone was able to. All of the pictures in this blog post, in fact, have been taken with that very phone.
Wait... Is it taking a selfie?
This thing isn't self-aware, is it?
In addition, I had to keep constantly deleting old text messages and pictures to make room for the receipt of new ones. It was kind of a hassle. Plus, I have an on-board navigator for road trips that with hopefully get me lost a lot less often than printed maps.
Seriously, I don't remember taking that photo. Did it do that by itself?
No, I didn't. Stop worrying.
I must admit that the non-necessary amenities are quite useful, too. I can post pictures to Facebook instantly. (No Instagram, though - I don't need hipster Polaroid filters to document things in a place where my students can bug me.) Voice command searches are a pretty useful little toy. Speaking of fun toys, I expect lots of entertainment from my Marvel Augmented Reality app, too.
I mean, really... My phone isn't going to kill or enslave me, is it?
Just be nice to me and you'll be spared in the robot uprising.
Oh, okay. Wait a minute... WHAT?!