Last January, when Steve Jobs introduced Keynote and iDVD 3 at the Macworld keynote, I wrote about how bored I was when he spent what seemed an interminable amount of time showing off the new themes in the two programs.

Flash forward five months: Yesterday, for the first time I used Keynote and iDVD 3. And what have I spent nearly every free moment on the Mac doing? That’s right: playing with themes. And showing them to anyone in range.

It turns out Steve was right, after all. Themes are cool.

I discovered this with Google today, when Laura called because she was stuck in traffic, and it appears incredibly useful. It shows all the current traffic “incidents” reported to the CHP (choose your location from the pop-up in the upper left), and lets you track their status. Everything the CHP dispatcher knows, you know.

In this case, it appears there was a “UPS TK VS BLK HOND OR MAZD.” Ouch. At 5:20, they got a tow truck and “ALL LANES OPEN”, although “TOW STUCK IN TRAFFIC” as of 5:41, so that doesn’t sound good. Also, I notice yet another accident at 92 and 35 at 5:36, and I can only hope Laura has gotten over the hill by now.

My brother’s coming into town tonight, and we’re supposed to have dinner with him and my aunt, so I’m hoping not to be too late…

Last week, I accidentally mistook the digital camera’s USB cable for my Palm’s travel charger, and so now I have no way to charge my PDA. Both the cradle and the travel charger are packed in boxes, either still on the truck or in a storage warehouse somewhere. Either way, I won’t see them for weeks. This is unfortunate, as my Palm was low on battery before we left, and now refuses to turn on entirely.

It seemed like it should be simple enough to purchase a replacement charger, but it seems that stores no longer carry parts for the Palm V. I’ve visited a myriad of computer and electronics stores, but all I can find are power adapters for the “Palm Universal Connector” on the newer Palm models. A salesperson at Fry’s claimed that the Palm V-specific products were discontinued two months ago. I’m not sure if a Fry’s salesperson is a particularly reliable source, but they certainly didn’t have any in the aisles, and the Palm Store doesn’t list them either.

I’m guessing there are still some third-party chargers available from online stores, and I could probably get a real Palm V cradle on eBay, but at this point I’m not sure if it’s worth it. My Palm’s memory is almost certainly gone by this point, so I wouldn’t have any access to my contacts, schedules, games, etc… until the movers show up with my iMac (which has the HotSynced backup). So maybe I should just go handheld-less for the next few weeks. Or take this as an omen that it’s time for a brand-new Tungsten.

I just got back from a trip to the local Office Depot to buy some CD-Rs so I can back up data for the upcoming move. The total came to $8.60. I handed the cashier a $20 bill. What followed was one of the more entertaining checkout scenes I have ever witnessed. I was being attended by a trainee, although an experienced employee was supervising her. The trainee accidentally hit the “enter” button on the register instead of the “$20” button, and so the register assumed I had paid the exact amount, and did not compute the change. The supervisor knew exactly what to do: “Just give him the change. It’s $14.40.”

Those of you playing along at home will realize, as did the trainee, that her math was a little suspect. “No, I think it’s $13.40,” she said. The supervisor got a calculator. Not believing its answer, she got out a piece of paper and pencil. Finally, after the calculator had given the same answer about three times, they decided to accept its wisdom, and the trainee counted out $11.60. At this point, they had to call over the manager to re-open the cash drawer so they could exchange one of the quarters for a nickel.

I shudder to think what would have happened were there long division involved.

From The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler:

Then it was really hot. The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants….I stood up and peeled off my coat and got a handkerchief out and mopped my face and neck and the backs of my wrists. St. Louis in August had nothing on that place.

I first read that a little over a year ago, a few months before I was about to move to St. Louis. The fact that I would soon be in the place (and month) that Chandler had chosen to compare on its heat and humidity scared me. A lot.

I’ve grown accustomed to St. Louis weather now at least a dozen times. I never stay acclimated for long. As Laura’s father put it the other day, “if you don’t like the weather in St. Louis, just wait a little while.” The unfortunate corollary is that if you do like the weather in St. Louis, it won’t last long. I grew up on the San Francisco coast, where it is permanently 65&#176 and cloudy. It’s not so much the extreme temperatures I can’t stand so much as that my body reacts very poorly to change of climate.

Today’s example: We went out for dinner. All day, up to and including when we went into the restaurant, it had been warm and sunny. The sky was blue^† and it was a relatively nice day. I was wearing a thin T-shirt. Half an hour later, when we emerged from the restaurant, the sky was gray, and the air was filled with raindrops the size of small poodles. To this moment, I have no idea where the rain came from. Laura claims this is normal, but it’s completely against my idea of how rain works. Where I come from, if it’s going to rain, the sky clouds over, it gets dark, it gets misty, begins to drizzle, and eventually raindrops appear. You’ve got at least three or four hours notice.

Laura says the rain was inevitable given the humidity today. I guess the theory is that the air fills up with water, and eventually the water forms drops and then falls on you and makes you wet? I guess I can understand that, but it still doesn’t seem right. Although I’m sad to be leaving St. Louis, I am a little bit glad not to have to spend a whole summer here.

According to iTunes, I’ve played this song 72 times since I bought it on Friday. It lists only three songs I’ve listened to more often, and I’ve had those since iTunes 3 introduced the listen count feature last July. Not only that, but I can still hear the lyrics. That’s pretty unusual for me: After a half-dozen listens in a row, my brain usually begins to filter out a song, so that even if I concentrate, I can no longer hold on to the words for more than a few phrases. I’ve only had Poodle Hat for a few weeks, for example, and I already can no longer hear the words to most of the tracks. This is especially annoying for artists like Weird Al, whose main attraction is the lyrics.

This is the second song I’ve bought from the iTunes Music Store. What’s worth telling about this story (the first song was one I’d heard part of on the radio, and bought so I could hear the whole thing; it turns out I don’t actually like it that much) is that I’d never heard of this song, or even the album, before I found it on the Music Store. I like Gordon Lightfoot, of course, and I was looking at his albums because of that. I found this song, however, entirely by looking through the album listings and listening to the 30-second previews. I liked what I heard on this song well enough to pay 99¢ for it, and it seems to have worked out pretty well. I’m pleased.

Since we’re leaving at the end of the month, Laura and I have been spending the past few weeks doing all the things that we’ve been meaning to do in St. Louis since we got here. Last night, we went to Sonic Drive-In. This is, admittedly, not an attraction particular to St. Louis, but they don’t have them in the Bay Area, and I’ve been wanting to try it ever since I first saw one while driving through Texas last summer. I suspected that the experience and the food would not live up to the expectation, and I was right. I was especially amused by the limeade: “Made with real limes” apparently means “artificially-flavored citrus soda to which we toss in a few hunks of real lime to satisfy truth-in-advertising laws without actually adding any real lime juice.”

Today, we were going to the zoo or perhaps go biking again, or visit Six Flags or the Transportation Museum. All of which require only that it not rain. Of course, it is raining. Bah.