Tikkabik

Two comments popped out at me while watching Thursday night's debate between Bush and Kerry:

"It is hard to go from a tyranny to a democracy..."

Hopefully American voters can do something about that in November.

It was also ironic to hear the former governor of Texas say, "It is hard to go from some place where people ... are executed to where they are free."

Texas has executed more death row prisoners than any other state in the nation. And Kerry's home state of Massachusetts has no death penalty statute.

Posted by flargh at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So we brought Max in to the vet today to have a skin problem checked out. We'll get the lab results next week, but while he was there the doctor weighed him.

Now, Max has never been a svelte kitty ever since we got him. He was fifteen pounds at his first checkup back in February. But he's seventeen and a half pounds now.

So Max has been put on a crash diet -- only a 1/2 cup of food a day, and a special low-carb mix that we can only get through the vet at that.

It's yet another example of how pets and their owners sometimes uncannily resemble each other.

Posted by flargh at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

... allergies -- more specifically, an allergy to birch tree pollen, and birch trees are all over my neighborhood. Along with allergies to dust mites (Robert is allergic to them as well) and cats (it's pretty mild, compared to the other two). That's the verdict after my first round of tests with our allergist. I go back tomorrow to be poked again to find out what sort of foods I'm allergic to. Then he'll prescribe something that will hopefully help me stop waking up every day and sneezing my ass off for a half an hour.

Posted by flargh at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm really kinda sad about this. The local news is reporting on how the regional Wonder Bread bakery started being demolished today to make way for a high-end expansion to the local mall. It was a six-acre facility that, at its peak, produced half a million loaves of bread a day, though it's been shuttered since 1999.

I went there once when I was a kid, on a field trip either for school or Cub Scouts, I honestly can't remember what for specifically. But it was awe-inspiring to a kid and a future carb-addict -- a huge, automated factory where raw materials would be seemingly magically into bread. And the smell was great. Wonder Bread is crap, obviously, but when you're eight, you don't know the difference.

Posted by flargh at 06:15 PM | Permalink

(Via Gizmodo)

I've found my next car, for when I win the lottery. The forward half of the fuselage of a 727-100 should be sufficient room for the whole family to stretch out with no calls of "He's touching me" or "Emme won't stop kicking my chair!"

I'm still gonna need a grocery getter and something to haul loads to the transfer station (dump) occasionally, though, so I think I'll pick up one of these too.

Posted by flargh at 11:07 AM | Permalink

Yay. Finally the Tonight Show will be watchable again. And Conan will be on early enough that I can watch him every once in a while.

Posted by flargh at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back on the 17th I last talked about MT-Blacklist, the software this site is now using to keep down the volume of blog spam. At the time, it had been running for about 17 hours, and had already caught 66 messages.

Well, it's been a week and a half. As of this writing, MT-Blacklist has blocked 718 messages and has actively moderated 302 (with a handful of exceptions, all those have been added to the blacklist too.

Well worth it, imo.

Posted by flargh at 09:20 PM | Permalink

My days with AT&T are numbered. I just couldn't pass up a two-for-one deal at Verizon Wireless that netted Bonnie and me a pair of LG VX6000's for $100 total, both sharing a family plan that's only like $8 more than the two plans we have now, with 100 more minutes a month to boot to split between us. Number portability has been nationwide since early this year, so we'll get to keep our numbers too.

The VX6000 is a nice phone -- a buddy of mine has one and let me use it in a dead spot that my shitty AT&T phone would just not work in at all, and I got a crystal clear connection. It's got almost all the features I was looking for except for Bluetooth, which I had really counted on as a reliable way to get data like contact info into my phone. I barely use my Nokia 3360's address book because I just can't bear to retype all the crap I've already put into Address Book. But there aren't any really outstanding deals on Bluetooth phones at the moment, so I've decided to put it off. I'm also pretty sure that phones with that technology are going to turn over some big improvements in the next twelve months, so I think it'll pay to wait -- besides, I have a Bluetooth PDA now, so I can carry my numbers with me if re-inputting them is that much of a hassle.

Turns out some enterprising developers have written an application called BitPim that works with VX6000's and a few other models, and supports the Mac. I'll need a data cable which I can get for short money from Radio Shack, but I should eventually be good to go. Phones are supposed to be here by the end of the week the latest. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'd considered a new AT&T GSM plan, but neither they nor Cingular have particularly good customer service reputations, their TDMA service has been nothing short of miserable, and I am just not anxious to jump into another contract with them.

Sprint is out of the question -- spotty service in this area, lousy deals, and unimpressive phones for the most part.

T-Mobile was a consideration; they offer the SideKick II, which is an awfully intriguing piece of kit, but I decided against it based on the high cost of entry -- $250, plus the relatively high cost of the plan, combine with the fact that there are some features I just wouldn't use. T-Mobile also has some mind-bogglingly good deals through Amazon, but almost all of them require you to lay out a whole bunch of cash before getting -- in some cases -- an even larger chunk of cash back. Maybe I'm foolish, but reducing short-term cash flow like that just irritated the hell out of me. Besides, T-Mobile's coverage in this particular geographical region ain't the best.

Posted by flargh at 04:06 PM | Permalink

So I make my living by reporting on breaking Mac news. From day to day, much of my day is spent writing news articles about recently announced products and new technology. There's one thing that makes me grind my teeth about this job: It seems PR people and Web staff can rarely coordinate their efforts.

Almost without fail, every time a press release comes across my desk announcing a new product, I'll visit the Web site and find ... well, nothing. Either the only link I'll find is to an obsolete product the new one replaces, or nothing at all. It's become the exception, rather than the rule, to find that a PR department and their Web staff has actually been able to coordinate a timed announcement so the Web site is updated at the same time as when the PR hits the wire.

Practically anyone worth their salt in this business runs their site using a content management system, and the vast majority of these feature some sort of delay publishing system that allows you to stage an updated page internally and make it "live" at an appointed date and time. So I don't see any excuse for why these Web sites should lag hours or, more often than not, days, after the product is released, except that there's little communication between PR and Web staff, or absolutely no desire to seem organized.

That's why you see more and more stories posted with a disclaimer that reads "As we went to press with this article the company hadn't updated its site with information on the product." I don't want people to think that we're dropping the ball here.

Posted by flargh at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Apropos of absolutely nothing.

To a Mouse On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plough

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Th need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow mortal!

Posted by flargh at 06:07 PM | Permalink

Bonnie and I have been looking for ways to better organize our upstairs bathroom. The only real shortcoming of the house we live in is that the bathrooms are rather small and the upstairs one is entirely lacking in closet space. So when we were in Target yesterday Bonnie spied an étagère for $10. That's a shelf with bins on it, and this one is designed to stand on the floor but fit over a toilet tank. "Assembly required."

So we got it home and I started to put it together. Assembly is something of an understatement -- the blasted thing comes with a tube of white glue, wood dowels, and three different kinds of screws (flathead and philips-head alike). I had to stop on the first step, however, because one of the two side panels for the thing had its dowel-holes drilled wrong. There are supposed to be two pairs of dowel-holes drilled on the back side of the left and right panels, to accommodate cross-braces that run across the back. The holes are drilled correctly on the left panel, but on the right panel, they're drilled on the front and the back, rendering the entire assembly useless.

Target, to its credit, wanted to make good by just swapping out the defective part, but they don't have any more of them in stock, and because of the way their stocking is handled, they can't definitively tell me when they'll get any more in. So I have no choice but to box the whole thing back up and bring it in to them for a refund.

Made in China, in case anyone was curious. Hopefully I'll have better luck with the storage cabinet (Fabrique au Canada) I bought there yesterday.

Posted by flargh at 12:31 PM | Permalink

Bob's Power Mac G4 is in my shop temporarily; I've bought a new LCD panel for it as his olde crufty CRT has flaked out, but it hasn't arrived yet. BestBuy.com had an absolutely amazing deal on a 14-inch LCD with native 1024 x 768 resolution for $149 -- it's only has a d-sub connector on it, but it'll do nicely. The G4 has a Radeon 8500 card in it, so it could handle a DVI display, but DVI-equipped flat panels are so much more money I just decided it wasn't worth it.

Anyway, it struck me as I was looking at it that Bob's "digital audio"-era Power Mac G4 uses the same RAM as my Quicksilver-era dual 1GHz model: Both are configured with 512MB of PC133 RAM. Since Bob's machine is out of commission for a few days, I absconded with the 512MB DIMM in his machine and installed it in mine. I'm amazed at what a difference it makes.

It's a simple thing, and it's been obvious to me for a while that I'd underpowered the Quicksilver by not upgrading it before now with more RAM. Playing memory-hungry games, for example, I'd often hear the hard drive chittering away as it managed swap space. But seeing, as they say, is believing, and I'm just astounded at how much faster the Mac is to boot, launch software and perform other tasks that it was starting to lag with.

So now I'm planning on buying two new DIMMs -- I'll stick 'em both in Bob's machine. Pricewatch.com has SMKSuperstore.com listed as selling generic 512MB DIMMs for less than $40 each. The specs seem to match what Apple requires, and the feedback for this vendor is generally positive -- anyone have any idea if these will work okay for sure? That's almost half what the cheapest vendor on DealRAM.com is selling them for.

Posted by flargh at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Truth is stranger than fiction. This is a real tech note posted to Apple's KnowledgeBase Web site.

I wonder how long it will be before someone sues Apple for failing to remind them to breathe while moving their iMac G5.

Posted by flargh at 08:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If Jeanne keeps tracking the way is now, it's gonna roll over Florida some time this weekend. First time since 1886 that four hurricanes have hit a single state, and last time it was Texas.

My working theory is that it's karmic payback for Florida for bolloxing the 2000 elections. One hurricane for each year we've had to put up with that jackass.

Posted by flargh at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So I gotta vent about something.

I love the Mac. It's how I make my living, I use it for recreation, I really buy into the whole "digital lifestyle" business. Don't own a PC. Yet. But I hate being identified as "a Mac guy." I mean, I am, but i don't wear it on my sleeve. And it's not a religion to me.

"We're Mac people," my wife told my son's computer teacher at an open house tonight. It's like announcing that you're a Moonie. I watched his eyes glaze over as he started jabbering about how Macs were proprietary ever since "OS 5" and are too expensive. And I had to use every ounce of self control to avoid bludgeoning him into submission with the closest PC box as I started shrieking about Darwin, Unix and Open Source.

Left to my own devices, I wouldn't have said a word. But my hand was tipped, see.

Posted by flargh at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So today was our fourth and hopefully final meeting with the orthopedicist who's been treating James since his arm was broken in August. James got a clean bill of health, which I'm very happy about. But of the four times we've visited this particular doctor's office, they twice made us wait hours to be seen. Literally, hours after our scheduled time. This, with a restless and physically active four year old who, until last week, was up to his shoulder in a cast.

So when Bonnie arrived today to be told that James would have to wait twenty minutes to be seen, she wasn't willing to wait, especially in light of our previous experiences. She asked to talk with the office manager, who prompted her to come right in to an exam room. Bonnie still wasn't seen right away, but at least she didn't have to wait another two hours.

As it turns out, a couple of parents of kids in Bob's class arrived at the waiting room as Bonnie was leaving -- they were having their own son's cast removed. And they ended up waiting a couple of hours to see a doctor.

The lesson here, of course, is the old squeaky wheel adage, but it touches upon something else as well -- I've often in the course of the past few years been lectured on the importance of arriving on time and in many cases, on the importance of arriving early for a doctor's appointment, only to be made to wait way past the scheduled time. This appears to be a fairly regular problem with many doctor's offices, and while it's easy to blame managed health care for overburdening doctors, it's also clear that many of them are just really poorly managed themselves. Bonnie and I have had so many arguments with surly and disorganized billing offices for doctors in the past few years, ever since we joined a PPO, that I know it's not coincidence.

For whatever reason, doctors are hiring really lousy help to run their practices for them.

Posted by flargh at 06:08 PM | Permalink

Anyone know what's causing this? So far the Apple support discussion boards have been a big goose egg.

I've got a 17-inch iMac G4, 1GHz model, 256MB RAM. Basically unaltered from the factory. The screen has taken a pinkish hue -- as if it's operating in grayscale, except in pink. Sometimes if you set it to sleep then wake it up, the screen will recast in correct colors. Other times it won't. Sometimes restarting fixes it. Sometimes it doesn't.

I've jiggled the screen and moved the arm to no avail -- I don't think it's a pinched wire or loose video cable of any kind. The iMac is running up-to-date system software and shows no problems with the diagnostic software I have, including Apple's own Hardware Check software.

Posted by flargh at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Somehow I find it ironic that Cat Stevens has become an apparent enemy of the state while Marcel Marceau is free to terrorize Americans at will.

Posted by flargh at 01:33 AM | Permalink

I really thought HP's "tattoo" concept (visible in action on HP's Music Web site) for click-wheel iPods was nifty: A removable, mildly adhesive covering that you could buy either pre-printed or blank, to customize the look of your iPod. Not everyone wants or needs something like this, but it sounded like a clever hack for the kind of folks looking for a bit of customizing. HP promises you can pull them off your iPod without leaving any marks.

After viewing this Web site I'm not so sure anymore.

Posted by flargh at 10:44 AM | Permalink

Actually, video games -- a lot of them -- don't suck. But many of them do. The New York Times recently posted an article explaining some of the basic economics of the business and how that just totally throttles creativity.

If you take this stuff for granted and are involved in the business, there's not a lot new here -- there's no secret that games cost huge money and companies don't want to outlay lots of cash unless they know there's a reasonable ROI around the corner, hence they're conservative and hedge their bets with derivative properties and sequels. But it makes for an interesting read. They talked with American McGee, Alex Seropian, and some others who know of what they speak.

Excerpt:

In the motion picture world, by contrast, "anyone who knows film editing and has $10,000 and a Macintosh can make a movie," said J Allard, corporate vice president at Microsoft. But because of high development costs, "that's not the case in the console game business."

Posted by flargh at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

James came up with this this morning. I don't think he meant for it to rhyme but that's how it played out:

"The scawy thing about ghostes
Is they don't have any feet or noses."

Posted by flargh at 08:57 PM | Permalink

Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Today be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Posted by flargh at 10:36 AM | Permalink

Okay, you Atrios fans aside (shut up Dan), this is new to at least some of us. And it made me laugh. So now you can too.

Posted by flargh at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Jay Allen = r0xx0rz

As I mentioned yesterday, I've upgraded to Movable Type 3.11, mainly so I can use MT-Blacklist 2.x to block comment spam as it comes in rather than flushing it out after the fact. According to the stats, MT-Blacklist has blocked 66 comment spams since yesterday at about 4PM.

That's 66 messages that didn't bounce to my .Mac account and 66 messages I didn't have to go back and flush out of the system myself. Honestly, I didn't realize the problem was so bad.

Posted by flargh at 09:47 AM | Permalink

So Macs move forward a bit into the internet telephony realm with a new program called Skype. It's pretty cool stuff, because it's multi-platform (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, even PocketPC) and it's free. It seems to work pretty well, all things considered, although I was getting some buzz and latency problems when I gave it a try with Beth last night.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has given it a try. And if you're a Skype user, feel free to drop me a line and let me know.

Posted by flargh at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Jean-Luc Dinsdale writes for Inside Mac Games (and is a talented visual effects supervisor in the Vancouver, B.C. area, for anyone who's looking for one). He's also a buddy of mine. He and his wife Gerie just welcomed their son Noah into the world last week. Congrats!

Posted by flargh at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the stupidest trends I've seen really explode in the last year is blog spam -- that is, automated unsolicited commercial postings made to the comment fields on blogs such as this.

They typically follow a basic format like, "Hey, I agree with you. Nice blog." and then link to some magic penis cream or a promise of low mortgage rates or online casino action. Sometimes I get 20, 30 of these a day. Lately the problem has been worse.

Up until today I was running Movable Type 2.6.x and an older version of MT-Blacklist, an excellent way to clean out your spam once it's there. I've been combatting the problem for a while using MT-Blacklist, but the way it worked before was pretty much a reactive thing that only worked after the fact. MT3 and MT-Blacklist 2 are a lot more tightly integrated, so I'm hoping it'll help. We'll see. If it gets really out of control, I might have to opt for registration or just get rid of comments all together.

Posted by flargh at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

with a common sense paddle, anyway.

This is definitely my pick for stupidest recent abuse of the legal system. This guy Tavares and his group get mediocre food and service at a restaurant, so they pay the bill and leave a lousy tip -- 10 percent, rather than the 18 percent asked for for a party of his size.

The restaurant's owner -- Joe Soprano -- ends up pressing charges (misdemeanor theft of services), saying Tavares owed the 18 percent for his big party and was legally bound to pay it.

Apparently Taveras got off the hook on a technicality: Soprano's restaurant doesn't call the fee for large parties a service charge, so there's no legal requirement to pay it. I'm sure Soprano's having the menus reprinted already.

Meanwhile, word's getting around that Soprano gets the cops after customers who leave a paltry 10 percent tip. That's gonna do wonders for his business.

This is one of those lose-lose situations that outsiders look at and wonder how a guy like Joe Soprano ever got into in the first place. He claims it's about the principle of the thing -- because Taveras' group was obnoxious, and hey, I get that. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of "customer is always right" customers who are just dead wrong -- but there's absolutely no way you can extricate yourself from a situation like this without smelling like that which roses grow in, rather than the rose itself. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team.

Posted by flargh at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

...but it's been replaced by a splint.

James' cast came off yesterday without incident -- they cut it right off, and James got to keep it as a memento. But the orthopod decided to put James in a splint for a week just to make sure his bones have healed right -- apparently the radiologist took a bad picture and the doctor couldn't tell if the bones have mended completely.

So James' arm stays wrapped when he's not getting wet, and yes, he did get his promised bath last night. At least for another week. Then hopefully we can get rid of the ace bandage and splint then too.

Posted by flargh at 02:38 PM | Permalink

Chris Breen at Macworld was pimping these things a couple of weeks ago, and they're awesome, presuming you don't mind some noise.

The Tactile Pro's claim to fame is that it uses the same switch technology Apple used in its Extended Keyboard II. In my opinion, the EKII is one of the pinnacles of late 20th century technological development. It's the best-feeling keyboard I've ever used -- crisp response, satisfying click, and damn-near indestructable.

The Tactile Pro comes close, tho -- the satisfying key response is still there. The shape and design is more evocative of Apple's current crop of Pro Keyboards, though, and that better matches today's systems. I'm using it on Bonnie's iMac -- she dumped a cup of coffee in the keyboard that came with it, by accident, so this is the replacement.

The other nice thing that Matias has done is screened extended ASCII characters on the keyboard, so if you're looking for that obscure international currency symbol or you can't remember which key gets you an accent circonflex, this will help.

The downside is that it's noisy -- CLACKACLACKACLACKACLACK noisy. Noisier than the EKII's were, that's for sure. Much noisier than the Apple keyboards are now. That makes it unsuitable for me to use for telephone interviews, which I do frequently, because it has actually become a point of distraction to the people on the other end of the phone.

It's $99.95. That ain't cheap for a keyboard, even one as well made as this. But if you're still pining for an EKII like I am and don't mind the racket, it's worth it.

Posted by flargh at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

And once again a clear delineation has been made between Canadians and Americans when it comes to manners and public decorum...

Posted by flargh at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Market research company Harris Interactive did a poll recently that shows that if western Europeans were allowed to vote in the U.S. presidential elections, Kerry would lead Bush by a 6 to 1 majority. I'm sure this won't earn Europe any points with the Republican faithful or Zell "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending" Miller, but it is pretty telling.

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know where I stand on this by now: I'm not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal, but I think George W Bush is a menace and I want him out this November even if it means replacing him with someone who will probably do a mediocre job at best -- it's that whole "lesser of two evils" thing I'm willing to live with. And I'm happy to see thousands of Europeans agreeing with me.

I'm not suggesting the United States needs Europe's public approval to elect a president, or that we should take cues from European politics. Europe has its own set of problems and issues that need to be dealt with, ones that aren't getting dealt with very effectively by its own elected officials. Meanwhile Russian troops acting against their own government's orders are raping and murdering Chechans, Chechans are doing their best to get back at Russians, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are being murdered, and lots of other bad, bad things are happening in just about every spot on the globe. The whole world is pretty screwed up.

But I can't remember a time since perhaps Reagan than an American leader has so thoroughly polarized an entire continent's population against us, and I'm willing to bet that if HI did this poll in Asia they'd see similar results. But it's a globalized world, now, baby -- it's not us against the commies anymore. Looking at it from a purely practical and perhaps slightly mercenary standpoint, I firmly belive that pissing off a large group of consumers who buy our nation's products and use our services probably isn't the smartest long-term strategy. Even if they continue to consume American things, it's ratcheting up an attitude towards American cultural, economic and military imperialism that is bound to bite us in the ass sooner or later, and hard.

"Not only do most European adults prefer Kerry over Bush, they also believe (by 62% to 16%) that Kerry will defeat Bush. These results suggest that most Europeans have not been following the U.S. elections very closely, as Kerry has not enjoyed a large lead in any American poll, and most polls have shown the race to be close or have given President Bush the lead," said the research company.

Interesting. But they probably have a much greater awareness of American politics than a similar sample group of Americans would have about politics in Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain or Italy, where this poll was taken.

Or perhaps Europeans just have more faith in the American voters than they deserve, if current polls here in the States are any indication.

Posted by flargh at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Freecycle Network is one of the best ideas I've seen on the Intarweb in a while.

The concept is simple: You have stuff sitting in your house you no longer need or want, and for whatever reason you're not motivated to either have a yard sale, try to sell it using a classified ad in the local paper or haul it away to the dump. So what do you do?

In Freecycle's case, the idea is to put people in touch with each other (using Yahoo discussion groups manned by volunteer moderators) who might make use of it. It's broken up regionally, and there's a specific group for Freecyclers on Cape Cod, where we live. The only rule is that whatever you're getting rid of has to be free. You can also post to the list with requests if you have specific things you'd like but can't find or can't afford to buy.

Freecycle got started in 2003. It's the brainchild of a non-profit group in Tuscon, Ariz. whose mandate is to reduce waste and landfill sprawl. Since then it's spread out to all regions of the U.S., as well as Canada and other international points. The Web site says that more than 482,000 people are now participating in more than 1,300 cities.

So far Bonnie and I have used Freecycle to give away some old chairs, books, videos, kid's stuff and more, and we've even used it to pick up a handy corner cabinet we're using in our living room. Jim D. points out that I better be careful or Bonnie might try to give me away too.

Posted by flargh at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A month ago -- Friday the 13th, as I'm quick to tell folks -- my four year old son James busted his right arm. Badly. Running down a trail in the woods at camp, he tripped over an exposed tree stump or root of some kind and went ass over teakettle, smashing his arm into the ground and breaking both bones in his forearm. He grew a second elbow for a little while where one didn't belong, about halfway between his elbow and wrist, until a cast was set -- it ran from his shoulder straight down to his thumb.

Kids as young as James mend their bones very fast, apparently -- "a week a year" is the rule of thumb the orthopedic doctor who's been treating James has said. So later on this afternoon, a month and a day after the arm was broken, the cast comes off.

James' cast has required us to make a few accommodations for him. He can't dress himself as easily, though he still can pull on a pair of socks himself. And bathing him has required us to wrap his arm in plastic cling-wrap and hose him down with the removable showerhead I installed in the tub upstairs. James is a really active kid. He's always running around, he loves to play outside, and he loves to jump and climb. The cast has made us worried a few times, just because we don't want him to reinjure his arm. But for the most part he's worked around his temporary disability pretty effectively.

So what's James looking forward to the most? Going in the sandbox in the playset in the backyard? Going down the slide? Getting his own clothes on?

Nope.

Taking a bath.

Turns out the thing James has missed the most is playing with his toys in the bathtub. He's mentioned it at least three times this morning and twice before he went to bed last night.

Posted by flargh at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One thing that continues to irk me about PowerBooks even in their newest incarnation is the battery meter. Never seems like it's quite right.

Take my 17-inch Powerbook G4 1.5GHz model, for example. The thing's only a couple of months old, so I know I'm not dealing with an excessively depleted battery. Yet if I run it down to scary-low limits, like around 10 percent, I'll get wildly inaccurate time remaining readings. It may tell me I have a few minutes left, and then suddenly and without warning drop into sleep mode. When I plug it back in and wake it up, the meter reads 0.

And for what it's worth, I bought a second battery for my PowerBook and it happens with both of them, so I don't think it's a battery issue.

Posted by flargh at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is the first day of the school year for James. That means I have the house all to myself for a couple of hours. It's virtually the first time since June that it's been like this. Bob and Emme went back to school last week. I must say it's a welcome respite. It's not to say I don't love my kids, but I do find it hard to concentrate with their particular level of volume and pitch.

When I'm working in my office, I can hear the kids trampling through the living room like a herd of water buffalo, and occasionally I can hear them (or their mother) yelling and screaming at each other too. It's one of the relatively minor downsides of working from home, at least from inside the house.

Posted by flargh at 09:54 AM | Permalink

So a few weeks ago Griffin Technology announced the EarJams, which are these snap-on in-ear adaptors for iPod earbuds. They sent me a pre-release set and I've been using them since then, and I like them -- in fact, I like them a lot better than Apple's own crappy in-ear headphones, which are one of the worst uses of $40 I've made in my life.

If you're perfectly comfortable with your iPod earbuds and don't see any reason to replace or augment them, then chances are the EarJams won't interest you. But if you'd like something with a slightly more snug fit, or if ambient noise is a problem for you, these little adapters come in quite handy.

They simply snap on to each earbud, turning them into an in-ear headphone. And like Apple's and other manufacturer's in-ear phones, the EarJams ship with three different cup sizes to accommodate differently sized ear canals. And, amazingly, they actually stay in place, unlike Apple's. I was doing some lawnmowing yesterday -- the first half with the Apple in-ear headphones, until I got frustrated and took them off. The EarJams stayed where they were supposed to the entire time.

EarJams tunnel more bass and volume into your ear too -- I could cut the volume level of the iPod by a full third and turn off the EQ, and get a similar sound. That's gotta be good for battery life.

Posted by flargh at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So Bob is in fourth grade, and he can play a musical instrument in school this year. The choices of instrument they'll let you play in our schools is somewhat limited for his age group -- clarinet, flute, sax, xylophone and a couple of others. Interestingly, Bob opted for the flute -- the same instrument Bonnie's cousin Sarah played in school, and Sarah was only too happy to offer her old flute to Bob, saving Bonnie and me the cost of a purchase or rental.

I asked Bob what interested him in playing the flute, and as usual, video games had something to do with it: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time inspired him.

So Bob's first music class was this week, and when he mentioned he already had a flute but wanted to get it serviced, the teacher offered the name of a guy up in Hyannis who could do it for him. Bonnie and Bob took a spin up there yesterday; the guy was nice enough to oil the keys and inspect the pads for free. He said that Bob should be able to get another year out of the pads before they need replacing. Given that it's been gathering dust in Sarah's closet for a while, I think that's great.

And, of course, I laughed when Bob came home and excitedly told me the nice man lubricated his instrument for free. If Bonnie hadn't been with him I'd have been worried. If fact, while he was there, Bob picked up a cheap plastic ocarina, just to fill his life long ambition of becoming a heroic video game character.

Not sure what Bob wants to do with the flute long-term, but I can only hope he leans more towards this end of the spectrum than this or this, because the latter two would require me to kill myself in shame.

Or maybe his tastes will change as he gets older and he'll eventually pick up keyboards or a guitar. We'll see.

Posted by flargh at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The only thing that could make this story better is if the puppy aimed for the head.

Posted by flargh at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Max is our cat, and we love him. We rescued him from an animal shelter this February, and he's become an indispensible part of the family. He's got his own character and personality. He's a fifteen pound Maine Coon with brown tabby markings. A very handsome boy.

Max started life as a housecat but spent time outdoors after his previous family was, tragically, killed in a car accident. And it was long enough for him to develop some poor grooming habits. He hates, hates, hates being brushed. Because he's so big and furry, Max has trouble getting all of his fur groomed himself. So he's got tangled mats of fur on his belly and hindquarters that makes him look unkempt.

So last night Bonnie and I gang-brushed him.

Bonnie dug out the brush and comb and I grabbed Max. He started snorting and huffing indignantly as soon as I did so, and folded back his ears, tensing his body for escape. I propped him up on my lap with his forepaws raised upright so Bonnie could work at the knots of fur under his forelimbs and on his chest and belly, and it wasn't too long before his snorting and huffing turned into full-blown hissing and growling.

Working as fast as she could, Bonnie offered Max words of praise as she pulled off little tufts of tangled and matted fur, collecting them in a Tribble-like ball on the floor. Max did not cotton to this activity at all, however -- his hissing evolved into growling and yowling and moaning.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to hold this writhing behemoth of a cat -- the sharp claws of his huge paws are scrambling for any purchase, including the skin of my own prodigious belly. He finally grabs hold and tries to pull his whole body upwards, howling in the process -- trying to gut me from navel to sternum like some vicious prehistoric beast.

We struggle for a few moments more and I'm now bear-hugging the cat, his deadly paws turned outward, as he glares at me -- well, more to the point, straight *through* me, yowling and howling as Bonnie resumes work on his tangled coat. It was no more than a few seconds later that Max, now leveraging his considerable weight, managed to work free from my grip and got ready to run away.

"Not so fast, cat," I say, and managed to get him back in my clutches. I succeeded in twisting him around again, now holding the cat in a full nelson to keep him still. At this point, if his facial expression and body language is any indication at all, Max clearly wants Bonnie and me both to die and go screaming straight to hell right this instant.

Bonnie manages to work a few more knots free when I look down and see a different look on the cat's face. It's a look of very dark and very bitter revenge. And then my lap goes warm. I've felt that warmth before.

He peed on me. The damn cat peed on me.

I let Max go and run upstairs to change my clothes. As I'm looking back on my way up the stairs, i see him staring back at me with a smug, satisfied look on his face. Max gives his chops a quick lick before he scampers off under the kitchen table. He spends the next hour glaring at both of us with a look that says, "YUO SI NAZIS."

Posted by flargh at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So about three years ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes -- adult onset, in other words: The kind fat people with poor diets and little exercise are prone to. Unfortunately, I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with my doctor, so my treatment for it hasn't been nearly as consistent as it should have been. In fact, I haven't been taking any medicine (or seeing a doctor regularly) for a while. What I was taking would occasionally make me queasy and lightheaded, because it could actually cause my blood sugar to drop below where it should have been.

Anyway, I decided to take matters into my own hands earlier this summer and made an appointment with an endocrinologist referred to me by my medical insurance provider. I had the appointment earlier this week. I'm back on medicine and have a plan of action to implement over the coming weeks.

Insulin is a pretty important hormone produced by your pancreas. It helps your body regulate the storage and consumption of your blood glucose. With Type 2 Diabetes, your body has trouble making proper use of insulin, so you can't regulate your blood sugar as well as normal people (this is different from Type 1/Juvenile Diabetes, which is where your pancreas is wonky and doesn't produce enough insulin to begin with). The net result is that you end up peeing a lot, feeling like you're walking through mud, and are prone to a whole shitload of side effects: Blindness, numbness in your extremities, heart disease, stroke, infections. In my case, years of a sedentary lifestyle, correspondingly poor physical condition and a wretched diet high in carbohydrates put me at very high risk. It's a triple threat, like having unprotected sex with heroin-addicted third world prostitutes.

Interestingly, though, there are plenty of people walking around that are heavier than me, who eat worse than I do, who have acceptable blood sugar levels -- even if they're at high risk for future complications in their life. So understanding why my body is doing what it's doing is important, and that's something that's frankly beyond the domain of a "normal" general practitioner. That's what interested me in meeting with an endocrinologist: This is their specialty.

The meeting went well. I like the woman's bedside manner and she's got an efficient and friendly (albeit busy) practice that's not too far away from where I live. She's interested in why I'm diabetic too, as I'm still pretty young for this problem -- so she's ordered a battery of blood work that I'll have to do soon, testing just about every fluid that comes out of my body to see what exactly what is working and what isn't.

The good immediate news is that I'm going to be using different medicine than I did before, which should make me less prone to some of the problems I had before. Previously, the medicines I used had two effects: One raised my basal insulin level, and the other reduced my body's resistance to absorbing insulin. Raising my basal insulin was what would occasionally give me the shakes. This time around I'm taking the same drug I did before to reduce my body's insulin resistance, but instead of the basal drug I'm taking a different one that actually blocks your liver from producing glucose. There's a nice side effect, too -- it can cause your blood fat levels to drop, possibly helping with some minor weight loss.

My old doctor forbade me from going on a trendy low-carb diet, as well. I'd had it drilled into my head that those things were bad for diabetics. Turned out he (well, more specifically, the nurse practitioner in his practice) was wrong -- the endocrinologist said that low-carb diets are not bad at all for diabetics, though Atkins -- at least in its original saturated fats-rich form, isn't something she recommends. She said that some of her patients have had really good luck on South Beach, so I'm looking into it.

"Carbohydrates are the enemy," she said. More than once.

Posted by flargh at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I admire and respect Nicole Kidman's body of work but I agree with Lauren Bacall that calling Kidman "a legend" is a misappropriation of the term.

Even Bacall's career has been pretty undistinguished. She made a splash with To Have and Have Not -- "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You put your lips together and blow." One of the great lines of 20th century cinema, thanks to her delivery. Bacall made a few memorable films with Bogie before he died, but she's certainly no Kate Hepburn.

Hepburn, now THERE'S a legend.

It's no slight against Kidman, either -- she's enormously talented, beautiful and clearly picks and chooses roles fairly carefully (though slip-ups like that remake of "The Stepford Wives" are bound to happen too). It's just that popular culture has evolved into something that's incredibly attention deficit, where anyone who's able to hold on to fame longer than Warhol's requisite 15 minutes instantly gains the undeserved status of cultural icon.

The same thing has been going on in R&B and pop music for a while, where any singer who can hold a note for longer than a second or two, or one who can somehow unnecessarily inject five or six scales in the middle of a song is instantly declared a "diva." I'm sure it makes Maria Callas spin in her grave.

Posted by flargh at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've coveted my friends' TiVo systems but I haven't made the commitment -- part of it is simply the cost involved: It's another relatively expensive piece of home entertainment gear (even their current rebate plan calls for you to initially lay out $200).

Comcast has simplified this by offering a DVR box for a nominal fee and adding a monthly charge instead, and they just started the service in our region this month. Bonnie picked one of the new boxes up from the local Comcast office yesterday, and if the woman who helped her is to be believed, we're the first family in our town to have one of these systems.

The advantage with the Comcast solution is that the box is totally integrated with Comcast's cable television service. Comcast's DVR is a Motorola-made box that's basically an upgrade of the same system they sell to customers looking for HDTV. The only real difference is the addition of internal hard drive storage for recording shows, and a new "DVR" menu that pops up on the screen. The user interface is moderately different from the last Moto box we had, and I think the response is a bit better too. The custom remote is very different, also.

The service is still pretty bare-bones -- you can do simple searches for programs or movies you wish to record, and you can "instant replay" live video while you're watching, which is a really nifty feature. You can't do "season passes" yet, though -- in other words, you can't tell the box "Record '24' every time it's on," and you can't do some of the more sophisticated searches you can do with TiVo, like "find me movies directed by Steven Spielberg." It's also absent of any home networking or online programming features. Some of this could potentially be done in the form of firmware upgrades, and I'm sure Comcast will offer new boxes in the future with new capabilities too.

I'm not sure if this is a limitation of TiVo, too, but you're basically locked out when you're recording a program or movie -- it tunes the box to the station you wish to record, and if you attempt to switch, it pops up a warning on the screen telling you that it'll stop recording if you change the channel. Beats having to futz around with a VCR on a timer, though.

Bottom line, though, I'm not locked into a contract to use the new box, so if I don't like it, I can always downgrade and go pick up a TiVo. So we're still experimenting with it, but it looks like it's a handy new addition for a TV addicted family looking to maximize their time.

Posted by flargh at 09:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Our next door neighbors are moving today, judging from the giant moving van that's now parked outside their house. They put their house on the market earlier this summer after doing extensive renovations, and managed to find a buyer quite quickly -- it was a matter of weeks before a "sale pending" insert went up on the real estate agent's sign on the lawn. The house listed for $329K and I'll be interested to see what she got for it -- it's got a two car garage, which we don't have, and a brand new kitchen, but an unfinished bathroom upstairs.

We live in a very typical Cape suburb -- lots are about one third of an acre each, on average, with a nice mixture of two, three and four-bedroom houses of varied architectural styles. It's a mixture of young and old familes. Some retirees, many families with kids in high school or middle school, some families with kids the age of ours or younger. So it's a fairly densely populated neighborhood where you can see your neighbors out the windows, but they're far enough away that they're out of mind most of the time -- unless they're doing something inconsiderate like blasting Fleetwood Mac while doing yardwork.

In every neighborhood it seems like there's at least one person who is the nexus of information for the whole community; the repository of gossip and trivia who knows everything about his or her neighbors' comings and goings. Bonnie and I are not that couple, never have been and never will be. We'll have been here three years by this Thanksgiving, and it occurs to me as these neighbors are moving out that we've never gotten to know them. I don't even know their first names, just the surname, and that's because of the junk-mail that's occasionally mis-delivered to our house.

I've waved at them when we're in our front yards at the same time; the kids have gotten candy from them at Hallowe'en; I've nodded and exchanged pleasantries with them as I've been walking through the neighborhood; even waved at them from our porch in the back yard, as we can see onto their porch as well. But we've never gotten to *know* them. Part of the problem was just very different lifestyles -- the home owner is a divorcee and a busy professional, with kids who are much older than ours. It didn't seem that we really had anything in common. And by the time it started to bother me a bit that we didn't know them, an uncomfortably long period of time had passed -- enough that I didn't feel comfortable penetrating that barrier.

Meanwhile, the neighbors on our other side are much more accessible, though, paradoxically, we don't really have a lot in common with them, either. We know them all by name; we've been to their house for parties and we've had them over for dinner; our kids have played fetch with their dog and get presents from them at Christmas. Then again, they've been more friendly and welcoming from the start, which obviously made a big difference -- especially when we were new to the neighborhood. I'm not saying that I expected everyone in the neighborhood to show up with a bundt cake and a hearty, "Hello new neighbor," but making an effort to cross over the bushes and shake your neighbor's hand goes a long way to making someone new feel welcome and settled -- and as far as I'm concerned, it's the responsibility of those who are already there to introduce themselves to the new people.

So, with the neighbors moving out, the discomfort of breaching whatever psychic barrier it is that's prevented us from getting to know each other is dissipating. Here's to hoping the next neighbors and we make more of an effort to be friendly. This time, though, we're the veterans, so the first step will be ours. Where'd I leave the bundt pan?

Posted by flargh at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We spent yesterday at my wife's cousin's house. By mid-afternoon their entire family had arrived -- Bonnie's aunt and uncle, two other cousins, one cousin's wife and daughter as well. So it was a nice, family afternoon with the Bluvols and Oliveris.

Over the course of the year, Bonnie and I spend significantly more time with her family than mine, both her mother's and father's sides. I think it's because her family makes more of an effort to actually get together with each other than mine does, and ever has. My family is a lot more fractured. The Cohens, Richtons and Valzanias -- the three more or less distinct branches of my family tree -- all really keep to themselves. Within their structures there's a lot of interaction and cameraderie, but between them, there's very little connection at all. And I don't ever recall a time that we were all one cohesive family unit, either. I don't say this as a judgment against my family, either -- it just seems that they've gone in separate directions, each with very different patriarchies and family loyalties intact, and none of them have much included me.

I get along well enough with my two cousins and aunt and uncle and some of my mother's first cousins, but it's been years since I've had anything to do with anyone else -- enough so that when my grandmother talks about distant relatives, I often have little if any idea who she's talking about, and usually relate the names she's talking about to vague childhood memories.

It makes me wonder what direction my own kids' lives will take as they get older and have their own families. Will they stay close, geographically and emotionally? Or will they drift apart and eventually be assimilated by other clans?

Posted by flargh at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The pleasant weather has had me working upstairs a lot lately; I'll perch the PowerBook on my lap and occupy a corner of the living room so I can enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. And with it being summertime, I often have the pleasure of company -- either the kids or the cat will sit near me.

James is four, and he hasn't developed an inner monologue as such -- just about any thought that pops into his head comes out of his mouth. It's a constant running banter about everything from toys to food to cartoons he's fond of to what his brother and sister are doing. You get used to this constant murmur and babble after a while.

So I'm working as James is happily babbling away when all of a sudden two words pop out at me in stark contrast to the steady flow of words he's speaking. "Batman vomits," James says.

"Huh?"

"Batman vomits," he repeats. "And we eat it."

At this point I'm flabbergasted. James has a peculiar sense of humor, but vile scatology isn't exactly his thing. So I cautiously plumb this exchange for more details. "I don't understand," I say.

James looks at me, exasperated. Clearly, I have not been paying attention to the nuances of what he's been telling me for the last several minutes.

"Bob's BATMAN TOY," he says, nodding his head up and down for emphasis -- body language he uses when he thinks he's talking to a particularly stupid adult. "It vomits candy and we EAT IT."

Then it dawns on me what he's talking about. Bonnie had come home from the store the day before with refills for Bob's Batman Pez dispenser.

Posted by flargh at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Am I the only person that thinks the new iMac G5 looks like a bathroom scale?

Don't get me wrong -- I think it's great that Apple has returned to a wholly integrated all-in-one design for the iMac. And I'm sure it looks and performs great. But the pictures and photos and videos I've seen all give me the feeling that I'm looking at one of those nifty euro bathroom scales I see in Bed, Bath and Beyond from time to time.

*shrug.*

Posted by flargh at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Didn't watch any of the RNC last night, partly because I really dislike Healey and Romney and partly because I was really turned off by Schwarzenegger's comments the night before. The play-by-play in today's paper tells me that I made the right decision -- there seemed to be very little more than the snarling negativism that's thoroughly punctuated this week's proceedings.

I think that Schwarzenegger's insistence on using references to his movies devalues his point the same way that some politicians insist on using trite sports analogies to get their point across. This guy may be a decent politician, but he has to stop shilling for laughs or some kind of phony connection to people by reminding them he used to be a big movie star. It's not particularly clever, it doesn't color his position at all, and it's insulting. What the hell is an "economic girlie-man," exactly? Is that to imply that if you think our economy is flushing down the toilet, you're somehow milquetoast or limp-wristed?

I also found Arnold's talk about getting Republican religion after watching Nixon debate Humphrey to be, frankly, bizarre. Though it seems as though some people's opinions of Nixon have softened over the year, I still consider him to be one of the most criminal Presidents our country has ever had. Relating yourself to the party of Lincoln is one thing; the party of Watergate is something totally different.

As someone who really just dislikes Michael Moore, I can't say as I was disappointed to see the delegates booing him the other night, but even then, a line was crosses when Sen. John McCain told late night talk show host David Letterman that he though with all his "Farenheit 911" success, Moore could afford a shave and a haircut. That's a cheap shot -- it's about one step up from calling Moore a fat pig. And it's a lot lower than what I would have expected from someone like McCain.

Posted by flargh at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)