It’s a big day for our server, anyway. Engadget used my photo of the Samsung charging station at LAX (part of this post) in one of today’s stories. I’d like to think that someone at Engadget is tracking my blog, but I think we need to chalk this up to Google Image Search. :.)

Phone charging stations are fairly new in the United States.

Seen in Los Angeles International Airport:

Free phone charging station, provided by Samsung. Note the added advertisement for the high-end Blackjack device. BYOC (Bring Your Own Charger).

Seen in SEA-TAC International Airport:

This one demands payment. I like ChargeCarte’s expansion into this market, though. It works well with a company providing luggage cart rentals (although I resent having to pay for a luggage cart, and preferentially choose to fly into airports where they are provided free). Also note that the ChargeCarte station doesn’t require that you have your own charger with you; you can look for a charge plug that fits your device. (What was said here about lack of standardization in the mobile industry still applies.)

Here’s a charging station designed to include little lockers, so that you can leave the phone while you go do something else. Provided as a freebie (tokens distributed at the booth desk) at Mobile World Congress last month.

Seen in Barcelona:

Seen Los Angeles:

Pretty funny, huh? You have to look closely to be sure there isn’t actually a golf ball half-way through the rear windshield.

Some thoughts on a visit to Disneyland:

Traffic Control. Disneyland and Walmart share a factor in their success: the marriage of a great idea with great execution… and a fiercely efficient processing system. Walmart in storing, tracking and moving merchandise, and Disneyland in crowd control. Grandma and Grandpa took the family to Disneyland today, and the people management is striking.

Over the last thirty years (my conscious memory history of Disneyland), the numbers of people coming through the park has increased vastly. When I was a child, waiting time for the popular rides (E-ticket rides) was sometimes as much as 30 minutes in the summer peak season, Today, waits exceed 90 minutes on a busy day. That’s a really long time to spend standing in line. At an average 1 hour per ride, you might only get on 10 or 12 rides in a very long and exhausting day, with no stops for meals or parades.

(Today was a weekday in off-season, albeit a sunny warm day before the December holidays, so not the quietest day of the year, but pretty close. Waits were about 15-25 minutes for the popular rides, although one brand new ride — the refurbished submarine ride, now Nemo-branded — had a wait of over an hour.)

It occurs to me that with the numbers of people coming through, it may make sense to let lines accumulate a little. It provides a holding zone for large quantities of people at any given time, easing traffic pressure in the open areas. (Those open areas, incidentally, are at capacity now, even on a quiet day like today, so getting people off the street must be critical.)

Disneyland made a lot of investment about 10 years ago in waiting zone design. Rides of that era (StarTours, Indiana Jones, the refurbished Autopia, even Big Thunder Mountain) have well-designed lines with video entertainment, animated mannequins (animatronics), and themed architecture/landscaping. It’s a notable contrast to the rides installed 20+ years ago (Space Mountain, Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted House), where you just plain wait in line.

Changes I’ve noticed in 30 years:

• Striking continued use of old technologies, mostly successfully, although not always (Small World is falling to pieces, and the dioramas of the Grand Canyon seen from the Railroad are shabbier than ever).
• Conversion of the old parking lot to a new (and mostly unvisited) theme park a couple of years ago means that parking is now in a dull and depressing concrete structure. Welcome to Disneyland! Please pony up $11 parking. It just doesn’t have the excitement of the old system, where you saw flags and banners waving, the monorail overhead and Cinderella’s castle in the distance drawing you in. Now you see a parking structure like the one at the mall, only bigger.

• Fast Pass
• Lines extending outside the buildings
• Signs informing of wait times
• Cross-branding of rides (Astroid Blaster, Nemo submarine, Indiana Jones)
• Less brilliant use of color in landscaping
• Less-clean bathrooms
• Fewer Disney characters on the street
• Dull paint on garbage cans
• No visible street cleaning staff
• Noticeable wear and tear on paint and cementwork
• Toontown and concert stage — both generally shunned, in part because of their awful location in the farthest corner of the park, with a single entrance/exit to the area.

Do these changes and deterioration reflect a cutback on the very high maintenance standards?

Overall, for the first time in all my visits to Disneyland, I felt a definite dullness of the patina, a lack of the brilliance and shine of the experience. It’s a pity.

Update, Dec. 22, 2007:

It seems as though the people on the outside of the Disneyland parking lot aren’t too happy about it, either.

Trust. You’ve gotta have it.

A striking (and amusing) example cropped up at a very elegant affair hosted at a winery north of Los Angeles. Adjacent to the dining area were two bathrooms, both clearly marked for men and women. Both door locks were of the type you might have at home, with a button inset in the door handle. When the button is depressed, the door is locked from the outside. When you turn the handle from the inside, the lock pops open. There was no indication on the outside of the door as to whether the door was locked or not.

This provided a great exercise in trust:

The person outside the bathroom had no way of knowing whether the bathroom was vacant or occupied (to use the airline terminology), other than by trying the door to see if it opened. He needed to trust that the occupant had locked the door successfully, and also to trust that the lock was reliable.

The person inside the bathroom had to have absolute faith in the feedback of the handle’s button (that a depressed button would always mean that the door was successfully locked), and in the reliability of the lock to keep out the visitor who would inevitably try the door at the worst possible moment.

Co-ed facilities helped add spice to the game (and helped ensure that no-one spent a moment more time than was necessary in there).

Well, it has been a full week since the last posts went up to this blog. Lots of background activity continued, as I jotted down notes and collected items of interest, but nothing actually got posted. The lesson: WiFi isn’t good enough, you need to have a cellular laptop card. I took a vow before leaving Los Angeles this week that I would have one by the time I returned. Never again do I wish to deal with the massive frustrations of non-access!

“Keep looking up. Don’t look down or you’ll get afraid.”

We took the kids to AdventurePlex, a fantastic indoor/outdoor safe play zone in Manhattan Beach. The highlight was the rock climbing installation in the side yard. For some of the kids, it was a cinch to zip up the walls (at least, the easier ones). For others, each step was a challenge, and we could see them literally shaking as they clung to the side of the building. My brother- and sister-in-law (back-seat climbers) shouted encouragement from below: “Keep looking up! Don’t look down or you’ll get afraid!”

The Talmud teaches: A scene of weeping that will take place in the end of days is described by the Prophet Zecharia (12:12). One of the Sages interprets this as a reference to the slaughtering by Hashem of the Yetzer Hara (Evil Inclination) as both the righteous and the wicked look on.

To the righteous this inciter to evil appears as a huge mountain, while to the wicked he seems like a thin hair. Both groups weep at the sight. The righteous weep as they recall the anguish they experienced in overcoming this force of evil and they wonder how they were able to conquer such a formidable mountain. The wicked weep as they wonder why they were unable to overcome such a thin hair. (Succah 52a; as explained on the  Ohr Somayach website)

I was reminded of this teaching as I greeted the children below the wall, and showed them how far they had reached, and compared it to their previous attempts.

Those who succeed in climbing the mountain — i.e., the righteous — will say, “How did we ever climb the mountain?” And the wicked will weep, “Why didn’t I ascend? It was so easy.”

If you set your sights high, you achieve astonishing heights by climbing one small step at a time. Looking up a step at a time from below, it doesn’t look so hard, and you will be surprised by how far you are able to go. On the other hand, if you look down, it’s overwhelming. Your body has a visceral reaction to the height and the potential for failure. You freeze. You’re scared. You come down. Then you look back up and wonder, “Is that all? Why did I let that frighten me?” But your turn is over.

I can say about the most important accomplishments in my life (or projects-in-progress) that had I known (or had I thought too much about) all that would be required for successful implementation, I probably wouldn’t have started. You have to just set your goal, take it one step at a time, and never look down.

Aah, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. My office away from home. I’m back in California, and that means no more hip burnt Seattle beans for me, just the homey, relaxed, work-conducive and kosher Coffee Bean. This branch on Ocean Park isn’t actually my favorite for kicking back (other branches have outdoor fireplaces and less traffic noise), but it does have a good variety of seating choices: four big slumpy leather chairs, lots of tables with the standard wicker-style chairs indoor and out, and two big country-kitchen wood tables with power sockets below (my favorite spots). The staff is friendly, the light perfect, the parking only somewhat exorbitant.

It’s one of the things I miss when traveling on the East coast…