Missing Items from the Tech Museum

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As most of you know, the new Tech Museum (www.thetech.org) just opened in San Jose and it's a pretty cool place, but if they REALLY wanted to capture life in Silicon Valley, they should have included some of the following:

1. The Unreasonable Expectation Work Week Simulator: Ever wonder what it's like to work 80 hours a week? You can now experience blurry vision, diminished reaction time, the health effects of eating nothing but Doritos, and the heart-racing excitement of Jolt Cola addiction with the Unreasonable Expectation Work Week Simulator! Hey, who are those strangers claiming to be your family? They're just part of the mysteries you'll experience at the Tech Museum!

2. The "Find Help At Fry's" Cyber-Challenge: Don your Virtual Reality goggles and take a tour in the Valley's favorite electronics chain! Your challenge: find someone who can help you. It's not as easy as it sounds, though. If you do find someone, you still have to somehow get them to make eye contact! And once you get help, the challenge isn't over! You still have to avoid the "Let me get my manager" monster, endure the perpetual "Humans as Cattle" cash register corral, and make it past the paranoid door Nazi without getting a body cavity search! Youch!

3. The Valley Fair Mall Parking Space Scavenger Hunt: Your mission: get in our car simulator and find parking at the Valley's most congested mall! Extra points for finding a space within a one-mile radius of the mall itself. Next year we hope to make this scavenger hunt even more challenging when we violate the laws of conservation of mass with the addition of the Town and Country Monument to Bad City Management!

4. "Sell or Die"!: Kids will learn valuable lessons playing this interactive game designing and marketing superior, technically-advanced products that fill a niche and meet a need. But wait! The fun is just starting! It's time to play "Sell or Die"! Kids get to choose whether they will let themselves be bought out by the "innovative" Microsoft, or whether they will resist the urge and have their products undersold by Microsoft's inferior competing products! The fun is in seeing how long you can last in the face of unfair marketing practices. The last player to go bankrupt paying their legal bills wins! Extra points for kids who survive long enough to testify in front of the Justice Department!

5. Mr. Jobs' Wild Ride: Get in your Apple Stock Rocket and experience the wildest roller coaster ride of your life! Just when you think the Rocket is about to hit a wall, swerve wildly and unexpectedly to one side and avoid certain death (for now)! And the best part is, your fate is completely in the hands of one all-powerful and unpredictable hippy-turned-power-player-turned-exile-turned-interim-CEO-for-life! And look out! The Larry Ellison Hot Wind Machine will try to blow you off course! You'll lose your lunch on abrupt policy changes, and scream your lungs out as you freefall on the final Mac Clone Maker Betrayal Drop of Death! Riders can then regain their composure looking at the:

6. San Jose Mercury News Wall of Premature Apple Obituaries: Get up close and personal with Valley history by reading over 15 years of stories lamenting the imminent death of everyone's favorite fruit company! With all that circling, don't buzzards ever get dizzy?

7. The Silicon Valley Virtual Commute Race Course: You have two hours to go 15 miles! Think you can do it? Well, buckle yourself into our simulator and give it a try! The Tech Museum offers several race courses to choose from: Try the "880 Endurance Course"! Hey! You finally made it past the Winchester Mystery Puddle at The Alameda on-ramp, and you're finally up to 25 mph! You'll make Brokaw Road in no time. But look out! 101 merges into 880 AND the freeway goes down to two lanes AT THE SAME TIME! Who designed this nutty course? Or try the "17 Face Off of Doom"! You're behind one truck in the right lane going 21 mph. The truck in the left lane is going 20.5 mph! Calculate how many hours it will be before you can pass both trucks! Or try the 680 "Trail of Tears"! You've got to make it from Pleasanton to Fremont with only one full tank of gas! Sound easy? Don't forget the inept Caltrans contractors who block off lanes for no reason at all!




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