Winter in the Park

The Menu in the Men's Room

So, I'm sitting in the men's room, doing what one does when one sits in the men's room, when, from the stall next to mine, I hear it:

Rattle. Rattle rattle rattle. Crinkle. *Munch.*

Yes. Yes, dear reader. That's the unmistakeable sound of someone opening a snack pack, rummaging around in the back for a cookie, and eating it … while sitting on the throne.

Surely not, I thought. No one does that. These are civilized people. Professional people. People I might shake hands with later in the day. We don't engage in simultaneous input and output. No. Never. I must have misheard --

-- and then, it happens: the gentleman in the stall next to mine drops a Keebler Fudge Stripe cookie.

It smacks the floor, fudge side down. It shatters into three large and several smaller fragments.

There is a long pause.

And then:

Rattle. Rattle rattle rattle. Crinkle. *Munch.*

Telling this tale to friends and family has launched a debate about acceptable proximity between treats and toilets. I am firmly in the "Separate But Equal" camp, insisting that the world is a better place when eating and elimination are mutually exclusive activities. What's more, I don't want to eat anything that's passed through a door labeled "Men's" or "Women's."

Less fastidious friends confess they have, on occasion, snagged a to-go box from a cafeteria and carried it with them into the loo. (At least they left it on the lavatory, and didn't dive into their caesar salad while sitting in the stall.) Others insist there's nothing wrong with carrying coffee, tea, or other hot beverages into the restroom. (And some, under promise of anonymity, confessed they sip from their travel mug while standing at the urinal.)

Oddly (to me, at least), ladies are more forgiving of the practice of feeling peckish in the pitstop. But, as some have pointed out, their world is very different from mine, as ladies' rooms are apparently outfitted with couches. And banquettes. And bouquets. And string quartets.

Having these amenities in the men's room wouldn't sway me a bit. I don't even like to rinse out my coffee mug in the restroom sink. There's something about coming out of the restroom with a warm, steaming cup that just turns me off.

No, eating in the men's room is not for me. I don't think I can be convinced otherwise. But if I should ever deign to dine while doing my business, you may rest assured of one thing:

I will not be eating anything called a "fudge stripe."

Stopping by Lowes on a Winter Evening

Belk at Phipps Plaza Holds Crappy 0% Off Sale

According to the manufacturer's factory-printed tag, these men's button-down dress shirts are an "every day value" at Belk for just $24.97 each. Today, during Belk's 50% off sale, you'd think you could pick one up for about $12.50, right?

Wrong. Because some time before the 50% sale started, Belk employees used pricing guns to double the price of the shirts to fifty bucks. So now, today's 50% off sale price … is yesterday's every day value price.

They're not bad shirts, even at $24.97. But after discovering the scam, I just didn't feel good about giving Belk my money anymore … so I gave them 100% off of what I had planned to spend today and took my business elsewhere.

Alfred App Finds Restaurants You'll Love

I'm addicted to "discovery apps" -- software that learns what you love, then recommends new options based on your preferences.

So I was delighted to come across Alfred, an app from CleverSense. Alfred learns about the restaurants you like in your neighborhood: where you like to go for breakfast, for brunch, for lunch, for dinner, for coffee and dessert. Then, based on those preferences, Alfred recommends nearby restaurants wherever you are: at home or on the road.

Especially when traveling, I use UrbanSpoon and TripAdvisor to discover great restaurants all the time. But both neither UrbanSpoon nor TripAdvisor actually make recommendations based on *my* preferences; instead, they rank eateries based on the preferences of everyone who bothers to vote.

And while the wisdom of The Crowd can be useful -- especially if you have nothing else to go on -- it can also be flawed. In the suburbs, for example, The Crowd is apt to rank McDonald's as a great diner or Pizza Hut as fine Italian restaurant. And that's ultimately the problem with ranking apps: systems that average together the votes of average diners tend to point to average results.

Alfred is different, in that his recommendations are, at least in theory, based on your preferences -- the specific experiences you *personally* enjoy. I spent a little time training him (telling him about restaurants we go to on a regular basis), and in minutes, Alfred was recommending places within a mile or two of our house I'd either forgotten about (Tin Lizzy), avoided (Mojito), or never even heard of (Cafe 640?!?).

It's easy to get excited about recommendations before they're road-tested, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to depend on Alfred to answer "What's for dinner?" If you do the same, let me know how things go.

Sunrise, My House, Today.

Skyscrapers at sunrise, from my balcony, made just this morning.

Jawbone Jambox: Portable Wireless Music for Less

A MadeByMark reader asks via email: "The Sonos system you recommended sounds cool, but is pretty expensive. Any alternatives you'd recommend for lower budgets?"

Why, yes: the Jawbone Jambox wireless portable speaker.

Especially if all you want to do is pipe some music from your iPad or iPhone (or some other Bluetooth-enabled* device), the Jawbone is a good choice. Right out of the box, it connected to my iPhone in just a few seconds. And as "Peter" in Seattle notes in his Amazon.com review, for a device about the size of two Wii controllers stacked on top of each other, the volume and depth of sound the Jambox puts out is remarkable.

And because the Jambox is from Jawbone -- the folks who make those tiny, blinking earpieces everyone seems to be wearing these days -- this little boombox is also a serviceable speakerphone. At The Company, we've taken to putting ours in the middle of the office during all-hands conference calls. While you do need to be standing or sitting reasonably close to the Jambox to be heard clearly by callers, the box does an excellent job of broadcasting the callers' voices to the rest of the room.

The Jambox has one of those tiny (3.5 mm) stereo input ports, and, using the included cable, you can connect the speaker to pretty much any sound source with a headphone jack, from your Microsoft Zune (ha ha ha!) to your dad's old pocket-sized FM radio.

The Jawbone Jambox comes in silver, blue, red, and -- my personal favorite -- black diamond. At $185 or so, the Jambox compares very well the $299 Bose SoundLink, which is larger, heavier, and more expensive. Neither is a good choice if your goal is to appreciate the finer details of your music, as both sound a little mushy or tinny to my ear.

But if all you want to do is stream a few tunes to a wireless box at a party (or make your movies or video games sound bigger than they do on the iPad), the Jambox will do just fine. It's small, light, stylish … and because the internal battery lasts eight hours on a single charge, you can carry it out to the patio and annoy the neighbors all night long. (If the battery gives out before you do, you can always plug the Jambox into a wall socket using the included power adapter.)

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*While "Bluetooth" sounds like something you'd get from eating too many grape popsicles, it's actually a way to move information (music, files, whatever) from one box to another without using wires. When you see someone using one of those earpieces with a blinky blue light to make calls on the phone in their pocket, that earpiece is connecting to the phone using Bluetooth technology.

Bluetooth works well, and setting up a Bluetooth connection is usually very easy. Keep in mind, though, it's a short-range technology, and the two devices talking to each other -- like your iPhone and the Jambox, for example -- have to remain pretty close to each other (within about 30 feet) to maintain a stable connection.

Getting Started with Sonos: What to Buy and Why

This past Christmas, Clyde gifted me with the Sonos wireless music system. Now, using my iPad or iPhone as a remote control, I can quickly and easily fill my house with music from my iTunes library. Better yet, because Sonos works with the Spotify subscription music service (and my XM Radio subscription, and my Pandora account), I can pull virtually any song ever published into my home with just a few taps of my finger.

I love Sonos. But the more I talk with people about the system, the more obvious it becomes that Sonos, as a company, isn't doing a very good job of helping potential customers understand what Sonos is, or how it works, or what you need to set it up. While the website does a good job of showcasing the individual pieces of the system, it fails to provide a clear, simple list of what bits you need to buy (or why you need to buy them).

At least two smart friends of mine have gone to www.sonos.com intending to purchase the system, but left without buying it. I'm pretty tech-savvy myself, and I had to invest an hour or two reading articles about and reviews of the system in order to figure out what to put on my Christmas list!

And that's a shame, because the Sonos music system is a great product that I really think most MadeByMark.com readers would enjoy. So, here's my pass at giving you what Sonos hasn't: simple directions telling you what you need to buy ... and why.

The System

To really enjoy Sonos, most poeple are going to need three things:

1) The Bridge. For simplicity's sake, think of the Sonos Bridge as the "antenna" for the Sonos system. It plugs into your home's wireless internet (or wi-fi) router, and makes all the magic possible. (There is a way to use a Sonos speaker without the Bridge, but -- trust me -- you aren't interested in that solution.) Buy the Bridge. It's $49 bucks at Amazon.com.

2) The Wireless Speaker. You're probably used to thinking of great sound coming from at least two speakers. With the Sonos system, one speaker is all most people will need to fill an entire room with fantastic sound. Eventually, you'll want one speaker in each room where you listen to music -- but for now, you can do what I've done, and just pick one. (It's powerful enough to fill our whole condo with sound, much to the annoyance of our neighbors, I'm sure.)

If you have a small room, you'll want the the speaker Sonos calls the Play:3 for $299. If you have a very big room, you'll want the Play:5 for $399. (There are other options, but we're keeping this simple, remember?) You can get these in any color you like, as long as you like either white or black.

And, for clarity's sake -- because this has confused many friends of mine -- whichever of these two options you choose, you'll get just one speaker. The Play:3 is a smaller speaker, about the size of a loaf of home-baked bread. The Play:5 is the larger speaker, about the size of a basketball. (Because of the names and the marketing copy on the Sonos website, people think the Play:3 option comes with three individual stand-alone speakers and that the Play:5 options includes five individual stand-alone speakers. This is not the case.)

3) The Sonos Software. Sonos sticks software CDs in every box they ship you. You install this software just once on a computer that's *always on* and *always connected* to your home's wireless network. For most of you, that's going to the the desktop PC or iMac that you rarely touch since you bought that shiny new iPad.

It took me about ten minutes to connect the Bridge to our wireless router (you just plug it in using a simple cable), place and power up my Play:3 speaker in the bedroom (it receives music wirelessly, and you can move it from room to room, if you like, but it has to be plugged into the wall for power), and install my software. Setup was easy, and I was listening to music in seconds.

Playing and Controlling Music

Sonos streams music from your computer to the wireless speaker. Especially if you're an iPod, iPhone, or iPad user, you probably already have a music library on your computer in iTunes. Sonos will find this music. Got a Pandora or Spotify or XM Radio account? You can set those up in the desktop software, and Sonos will stream tunes from your Spotify tracks and playlists or your Pandora or XM stations to the wireless speaker as well.

But part of the magic of a wireless music system is freedom from having to sit at the computer to control your music ... so you'll want to download the Sonos app for your iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. The app transforms your handheld device into a remote control for your Sonos system, making it fast and easy to search for and play any of your music. (If you have more money than sense, Sonos will be happy to sell you a dedicated Sonos remote control for $349. Given that a new iPad sells for $499, I can't imagine that a $350 dedicate remote is flying off the shelves these days.)

Options for Expansion

With one speaker in your favorite room, you're good to go. Once you know and love your Sonos, you have options for expanding the system.

1) One Speaker per Room. Want to fill the whole house with music? Drop one speaker in every room. Once they're in place, you can do some cool stuff:

- Stream one song to all speakers. You can, for example, stream Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" to every speaker while you're cleaning house (yes, yes, I listen to '70's disco tunes while cleaning my house -- you should try it!). As you move from room to room, you won't miss a beat.

- Stream different songs to different speakers. The Sonos system can stream different songs to every single speaker. Take a second. Let that sink in. You could, for example, stream "Hot Stuff" to the kitchen speaker, "I Feel Love" to the bedroom speaker, and "MacArthur Park" to the living room, where there's more room to shake your boo-tay without knocking over the knick-nacks -- all at the same time.

2) Pair speakers. If you're loaded with cash and addicted to huge, broad, rich, highly-separated stereo sound, you *can* put two Sonos speakers in one room and tell Sonos "Make the speaker over here a 'Left' speaker and the speaker over here a 'Right' speaker." Sonos will then send the left stereo channel to one speaker and the right stereo channel to the other.

3) Add other doo-dads. Want to send streaming music to your existing home theater system? You can, with the Sonos:Connect ($349). Got two high-end speakers you can't bear to part with, and wish you could stream music to them? You can, by plugging those speakers into the $499 Sonos Connect:Amp.

In A Nutshell

My advice: start simple. Get a bridge and the Play:3 speaker. Once you're hooked, you can add other speakers any time. Enjoy!

A Favorite Photo from Detroit

My favorite photo from our trip to Detroit is this one, taken from the Canadian border.

It captures the chill of that snowy day. It showcases the view from the river. And, at this distance, it's very hard to tell that almost all of those towering buildings in the city are empty, deserted ruins.

Mark in 2044

On the bus to the airport, I sat by a team of teenage hockey players who were snapping photos of each other, running the picture through an app, and hooting over the results.

A little research led me to AgingBooth, which purports to reveal how you'll look in 2044. I downloaded it and tested it on myself. Accurate? Predictive? Ask me in 30 years.