This morning I had disconcerting experience of trying to figure out which goldish-grey metalflake Ford Contour-shitbox was mine. Sometime in a future post I will try to convey the magnitude of my loathing of the Ford Contour-shitbox. But this post is meant to be a more positive parable.
I have been travelling for corporate crap at least a couple years now. This is not the first time I have lost my car in a sea of identical cars. This is, however, the first time that I looked at the keychain. In the three years I have been a card carrying hertz number one gold member I have never really looked at the keychain. There on the fourth line down, in some lousy dot matrix text was the license plate of the car. Problem solved.
All this time I have been carrying the low tech equivalent of a smart card with all this useful info on it.


Checking into a hotel.
"sir would you please put the make, model, color, and license plate on the form?"

"It's four degrees above zero, not countinq the wind chill. Do I really have to?"

"Only if you still want it here in the morning"

There is useful knowledge everywhere. The trick is knowing it when you need it.