Every so often I get a fare where I can show up very quickly. One night I pulled into a Circle K to work on my notes. It was well after 2am, so I was not expecting any fares until people started to wake up at 4am. After a few minutes the computer buzzed with a fare offer: 19yds. I accepted, and noted that I was to go to the Circle K I was already parked at. I pulled over to the door, the passenger got in, and we drove off.
Two weekends ago I was driving north on Scottsdale Rd when I was offered a fare. It said it was "900 yds", but this was based on my position 30 seconds or a minute before. I accepted, waited a few seconds, then looked down and noted that I was to go to the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. I looked up, checked the two lanes to my left to verify they were clear, then snapped left and proceeded to the lobby.
A woman saw me and ran over. The bellman was right behind her, as it was his job to open the taxi's door. The bellman said "I hadn't even finished logging the call..." Usually our scheduling center says 15 minutes, and these people were impressed at my arrival within seconds of their hanging up the phone.
Poll: Have you ever been intentionally misled by Skynet?
The couple was from "Calgary, Alberta" (Canada). I protested, "... but it's not Canadian season yet..." which was good for a laugh. Usually Canadians come when they get tired of the cold, and winter has only just begun. They'd come down for the weekend, and had called for a taxi because they wanted/needed alcohol.
The last passenger I picked up at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort was a professor at a Catholic college, and needed beer for hot tubbing with some female professors who were also at his convention. That was late at night, so we went to the Circle K just up Scottsdale Road.
The Canadians were in the afternoon, so we had more options. I started the meter, said "I need to consult with Skynet," and put 'Liquor' into the Google Maps app. Google suggested the Total Wine just to the North. Then I remembered my favorite taxi supply store, Trader Joe's, which was the same distance to the south.
Trader Joe's is one of my favorite stores while taxi driving because they have free coffee, lemon bars, and european cookies. European bakeries do not contaminate their cookies with rust ("reduced iron"). It is very easy to get too much iron from a full package of cookies that are fortified with rust.
I asked my Canadians if they wanted to go to Trader Joe's. The man asked if they sold single bottles - they do, so we went. They got out, I parked, went inside, grabbed a coffee sample and a box of lemon bars, went back to the car and waited. They emerged with a bottle of wine and a bag of groceries, and were quite pleased with their purchases: "This was $20, and would have cost us $60 in Canada". I asked if they'd ever heard of Pirate Joe's...
The fare (with the wait time) was only $12.xx when we got back to the Resort, but they paid well.
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Speaking of google... The mapping service app on my droid4 has betrayed me several times in the West Valley recently. Every so often it pins the location entirely wrong. I have sent feedback two or three times, but they must not send the screenshot of their service's screw-ups with my comments.
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Following up - k31 posted a comment to my last diary that I meant to respond to.
> nowadays the first thing most ill people do is embrace their illness....
Many of my passengers have found themselves on the medical merry-go-round, where they get opinions, diagnoses, drugs and surgeries and treatments, but no relief. Eventually they give up hope.
> yet they are so many examples of where research and/or willpower allow people to recover from all sorts of internal problems.
Spirit is the blueprint for the physical. The activities of mind sets the patterns that we experience in our lives. For some reason Science (tm) rejects the possibility of spirit. Any medical model which does not incorporate the owner into the treatment of the body will get subpar results.
> Perhaps the point of the story is that if we want like, and life more abundantly, then we really need to change the paradigm from seeking healing outside and daily pushing forwards... take the kingdom of heaven by force, as it were.
I like the 2010 study where iritable bowel syndrome patients were told that the pills the doctor gave them were placebos, and they helped a significant percentage of the patients anyways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#cite_note-Kaptchuk_et_al-4
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