Tikkabik

Well, two things conspired against my Halloween this year: 1) My kids acted like jerks all day, and 2) the fog machine I busted my ass to get yesterday didn't frigging work.

I don't know if they were just really primed and wound up for Halloween or if something else was going on, but from the moment they woke up this morning, the kids did everything humanly possible to annoy the living shit out of both Bonnie and me. They didn't pick up after themselves, they interrupted us every ten second with some petty annoyance or other, simple requests required being repeated at least half a dozen times in some cases to be followed through, there was much yelling back and forth between the three of them, and there were all other manner of petty irritations that had Bonnie and me just primed to freak out by the end of the day.

I did, however, cut a four and a half hour mix of Halloween music. And no cheesy shit like "Monster Mash." This was a mix of all our favorite goth music from yesteryear -- everything from the obligatory "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus to "Happy Dead Men" by Echo and the Bunnymen to "Spellbound" by Siouxsie and the Banshees. I put on some modern stuff like "Ghouls" by The Horrorpops and "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson. Hell, I even got dancy with some stuff like "Everyday Is Halloween" by Ministry and "This Corrosion" by Sister of Mercy. About the only thing I couldn't lay my hands on in time was "Grimly Fiendish" by The Damned. Bonnie tells me it got plenty of strange looks from trick or treaters, which was the intended effect.

I kicked ass on our jack-o-lanterns this year, too. Our big one was modeled after the "Pumpkin King" jack-o-lantern that Jack Skellington wears as his head during a scene in The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the little one was decorated with an outline of Zero, Jack's faithful ghostly canine companion.

Our Halloween decorations get more elaborate every year. The holly tree in front of our house is decorated with little plastic ghosts hanging like fruit. We decorated the yard with lots of glowing stuff -- bags with black cat outlines lined the driveway with little orange tealights inside, while the path from the driveway to the door was illuminated with little pumpkin cauldrons on waist-high poles. In the bushes outside our house I'd laid lights of googly eyeballs and ghosts, and one windowbox had a skull candelabra. Another candelabra, with spiderwebs and bats, was planted on a stake in the shrubs in front of the house. And the shrubs on the other side have spooky lit eyeballs staked near their roots.

Inside the house we have our beloved Jack Skellington and Zero lights (from the Nightmare Before Christmas) and around an archway we've hung glowing green skeletons. The staircase leading to the second floor has a bunch of stuffed Halloween character plushies, and the table next to the front door, we're we've placed the giant cat's head we're using for candy, has a strobing purple skull.

The coup de grace this year was to be a fog machine -- the net effect would have been that anyone coming to our front door would have been greeted by my wife dressed in her best vampire outfit and a thick cloud of hanging fog, pulsing with the strobe light from the skull. Unfortunately, the cheap Chinese-made piece of shit I bought crapped out after its test firing last night.

Many department stores sell fog machines for about $20 this time of year -- they dispense steam that hangs thick like fog from a reservoir of glycol-infused water in the back. I woke up at the crack of ass to get to Wal-Mart because Bonnie had spied one the night before, and grabbed one of the last two on the shelf. I then spent most of the rest of the day looking for extra containers of "fog juice" to make sure we'd have enough.

Last night before the kids went to bed, I fired it up to make sure it worked, and it did -- perfectly. After about five or seven minutes of warming, it belched out thick clouds of a heavy, hanging vapor that provided exactly the effect we wanted.

Tonight, it did not.

The light went on. The fuse was not blown. There was plenty of fog juice in the tank. And the remote was plugged in properly. But it never got warm, and it never dispensed fog.

I plugged it in to a different outlet. I emptied out the tank and rinsed it with hot water. I put in more fog juice. The damn thing never worked.

So, needless to say, I get to have words with Wal-Mart at some point this week. And deal with a service clerk who will, no doubt, think that I'm trying to get out of a prop I just wanted to "rent" for Halloween. Much in the same way, I'm sure, that they have to deal with people who want to return flat screen TVs the day after the Super Bowl.

So between the two factors, when I walked out of the house tonight, I was pissed. I was in a rotten mood. Not my best Halloween ever. It hung over me the entire time we were trick or treating.

On the other hand, the kids got a huge haul of candy. And we got some compliments on our decorations. So I guess it was successful.

Except for the goddamn fog machine.

Posted by flargh at 08:40 PM | Permalink

Back in the late 40's this cranberry bog owner in Carver, Mass. named Ellis D. Atwood had the idea to set up a two-foot gauge railroad on his property to help service the bogs. He got a steal on some equipment that was being used on a defunct line in Maine, and created a five-mile loop. Train travel still had a lot of romance attached to it, so Atwood figured he could make a pretty penny ferrying passengers through the scenic area. Before too long he'd created an amusement part called Edaville Railroad. I remember going there as a kid, with my grandparents, back in the 1970s. Edaville fell on hard times and shut down in the early 90s. It reopened two or three times under different owners, and finally seems to have stabilized under its present ownership.

Now, as regular readers will recall, Bonnie and I are a bit down about the closure of another, more recent local amusement institution -- Spooky World, the seasonal "horror theme park" that went out of business last summer. Turns out that some of the folks associated with Spooky World teamed up with Edaville's current owners to turn the site into "Evilville." The money raised by the $10 admission fee is a fund raiser, presumably to help keep Edaville, which struggles from year to year, to stay open.

The format was quite different from either Edaville or Spooky World, but was successful for its first try. Access to the normally sedate park was restricted to only one group at a time, led through holding a rope by two hosts on either end. Actors and props were spread liberally throughout -- everything from the obligatory shambling zombies stumbling out of the fog-laden graveyard to chainsaw-wielding maniacs seemingly ready to cut you to pieces.

A haunted house is a very different environment from a haunted theme park -- in houses, you can restrict visitors' vision and motion by creating narrow hallways, turning off lights and so on. Those are environmental factors that are markedly harder to control when you're dealing with a lot of open space, but the Evilville folks did their best by liberal use of hazing and fogging systems, well-placed obstructions and barriers, and dim lighting -- well, as dim as you can manage on a night lit by an almost full moon, anyway. I'm sure they're figuring it out as they go along, and I'm hoping they do it again next year -- it'd be really cool to see Edaville, which is a short run from the house, turned in to a "horror theme park" on a yearly basis. The one major problem was that the wait to get in was very long. They were taking people in about a dozen or so at a time, so it took us almost an hour, standing outside in line in the cold -- before we actually got to walk through. Better crowd management would help.

But they make it clear on the Web site that it's a volunteer effort, so they're really cutting their teeth this year. I'm hoping they can turn it into something extra special next year.

Posted by flargh at 09:41 AM | Permalink

Tomorrow (Oct. 30) is our 11th wedding anniversary. This year it looks like our plans will be pretty low-key -- in fact, we've aligned babysitting for the kids tonight so we can go out and have some fun. Because for the first time I can remember, all three of our kids have back-to-back Halloween/birthday parties to attend on our anniversary, which would sort of put a crimp in any plans to go out tomorrow. One of James' schoolmates is having a party from 2 - 4, a schoolmate of Emme's is having one from 4 - 6, and one of Robert's friends is having a party from 5 - 7. So there will be much schlepping about tomorrow, and I expect that by the end of it Bonnie and I will probably just want to chill out.

Bonnie found some cool stuff for the kids' birthdays, too -- my favorite is a "Queasy-Bake Oven." It's a variation on the Easy-Bake Oven aimed at boys (and girls with sick senses of humor). Instead of dispensing tasty pastry treats, you can make all sorts of mud treats and gummy bug candy and so on. Nifty!

So with our big night out tonight, we're going to try to stay in the holiday spirit by checking out some more haunted houses and spooky happenings in the area. Happy Halloween!

Posted by flargh at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Without trying to kill anyone's buzz about Halloween (it's my favorite holiday, after all), I just have to tell you that it's a dangerous time of year for people with wonky pancreases and poor willpower. We've had Halloween candy in the house for a couple of days, and I've been snacking after the kids go to bed even though I shouldn't, and I know I shouldn't. The net result is that I've been waking up with blood sugar readings about 25 percent higher than they have been. Bah!

Posted by flargh at 12:20 PM | Permalink

Just checked the stats for MT-Blacklist, the Moveable Type plug-in that keeps automated spam dropped in comments fields on Moveable Type blogs at bay. Since installing it, I've seen 11,126 spams blocked and 3,220 moderated.

Blacklist is an awesome piece of code, and I'm grateful Jay Allen wrote it. I just wish it wasn't necessary to begin with.

Posted by flargh at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Ever since I saw Sony's portable gaming system, the PSP, at E3 earlier this year I've had a couple of nagging questions: How much will it cost, and how long will the battery charge last? It seems that Sony has built a tremendous amount of sophisticated hardware and functionality into its Game Boy Advance competitor. Now some of those questions have been answered, as Sony has taken the wraps off its planned rollout of the PSP in Japan.

Turns out the box itself is going to roll out on Dec. 12 -- which just happens to be my birthday, for anyone looking for a hint of what to buy me this year -- and it'll cost ¥19,800, or about $185 at today's exchange rate. I figure when the PSP rolls out in the United States early next year it'll probably cost $199, or about $50 more than Nintendo's new Game Boy DS box. That's a really good value, considering the PSP sports built-in Wi-Fi support, can play movies and more.

As to battery life, Sony reps at a trade show in Tokyo said last September that it would last about two hours, and that seems to be about the right track if you're watching a movie -- but for gaming, with the screen set at half-brightness, they're now saying you should be able to get about four or five hours out of it, which seems a bit more reasonable.

Posted by flargh at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My boss travels frequently, often to our corporate headquarters on the East Coast, but seemingly just as often to trade shows, conferences and other events. Since we're a small group -- there's only three of us who work together to put news up on the site -- that often puts me in the position of having to cover things more than I'd like.

Actually, this is more of a mental hurdle for me to get over than it is a legitimate logistical problem. Fact is, whether he's home or not, I have about the same amount of work to do, and have about the same latitude to do it with. When he's at home, Jim is so often tied up with other tasks that he's not able to "mind the store," as it were.

But when he's on the road I *feel* like I have to do things differently If I step away from the computer. I get paranoid that something's going to happen that I might miss. Because, well, it's *happened.* There was a running joke between us for a while that the farther away I got from my computer, the greater the magnitude of the breaking story.

What ends up happening is that I'll spend 16, 18 straight hours in front of the computer and not realize it. That's exactly what happened yesterday -- I started working around 7:30 AM or so and didn't stop until about midnight. It's no one's fault but my own -- no one I work with *expects* me to strap the PowerBook to my face for every waking moment of the day. But I end up doing it, because when you work from home, it's hard to get away from the office.

Posted by flargh at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So last night Bonnie and I snuck out for a few hours with my mother watching the kids, and took our daughter's friend's mom as well -- we went to a couple of haunted houses. I've had a long love affair with haunted houses, ever since I was a kid. In fact, I even worked in one one year -- a fund-raiser for a Unitarian church we were briefly associated with. But two of our kids are still kind of young for this sort of thing, and the third blew his chance to come with us when he exhibited some really poor behavior choices earlier in the day. So it was parents' night out.

If Spooky World was still around, you can bet we'd have gone to Gilette Stadium. Alas, that is closed for good.

The first one was Harvest of Horrors, put on at the nearby Tony Andrews Farm in Falmouth, Mass. It was cute -- a two-part event that was part stage show, part haunted house. The haunted house portion was very cleverly set up -- paced so it felt like only your group was in the house, and divided into a number of different rooms. The ending was very clever -- it felt like you were back where you started, only you weren't.

That didn't quite whet our appetite. We decided to take a drive up to Fall River, Mass., about 45 minutes away, to do another one called the Factory of Terror. We've seen billboards for this for years, but haven't found the time to do it, and all of us agreed afterwards that it kicked ass. The pacing was a bit faster and the lines were a bit bigger, so unfortunately we were a bit crowded with the group in front of us, but they had dozens of actors hiding in dark places or behind trap doors, lots of creepy exhibits and frightening sound effects, strobe lights galore, and tons of fog machines -- in short, everything you want in a haunted house. If you're in southeastern Mass. or you want to go for a drive, it's totally worthwhile.

At some point this week, Bonnie and I hope to make it up to Foxboro -- apparently the Jaycees put on a great haunted boy scout camp that's worth checking out.

We decided to pass on the Barnstable High School's annual haunted house -- this year they're putting on a Lord of the Rings theme that, by their own admission, isn't as scary as years past. And after visiting the traveling LotR exhibition at the Museum of Science in Boston, we're a bit burnt out on Tolkien at the moment.

Posted by flargh at 11:15 AM | Permalink

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

-- Nazi Reich-Marshall Hermann Goering, April 18 1946 (source: Nuremberg Diary, Gustave Gilbert)

Posted by flargh at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So thanks to Jaap, I've now been initiated into The Kingdom of Loathing. It's the creation of Asymmetric Publications, and it's described as "a comical RPG" that's currently in open beta.

It's brilliant, in that it's a Web browser-driven adventure game comprising nothing but simple, hand-drawn black and white graphics. The six different character classes you can play include "Accordian Thief," "Seal Clubber" and more, and you go up against dread monsters like the "Sabre-toothed Lime" and ninja snowmen. It's a hoot. I strongly recommend it.

Posted by flargh at 12:47 PM | Permalink

I guess it's easier to just try to get a teacher fired than it is to simply instill decent hygiene habits in your kids. And no, I don't believe for a second that the teacher sprayed anyone in the face with a can of Febreze.

My son used to hang out with a smelly kid once. I don't know if the kid had a dietary imbalance or was just filthy and unaware of how badly he smelled, but I had to drive him home a couple of times, and wanted to puke every time I did it. Fortunately, my son stopped hanging around him pretty quickly (the kid had some other personality quirks that made him less-than-pleasant company) and it wasn't an issue. But let me tell you something: If I had to work around the kid every day, or even on a regular basis (this is a music class, so let's say, weekly), I would have pinned him down and slathered him in Right Guard.

Some of the crap today's teachers are forced to put up with is really unbelievable.

Posted by flargh at 07:17 AM | Permalink

So it's been a few weeks since I made the move to Verizon Wireless and a new LG VX6000 phone. With the PalmOne Treo 650 right around the corner it's conceivable that I may upgrade my phone again before too long, but I'm happy to report that I've made progress getting the VX6000 to talk with my Mac. First of all, the VX6000 doesn't support Bluetooth, and iSync doesn't support it -- so a seamless and wireless data connection between the Mac and the VX6000 is out of the question for the moment.

Fortunately a company called RPI Wireless sells an adapter cable for $20 that connects to the Mac's USB port and charges the cell phone's battery in the process, which is a nice fringe benefit. And an open source software application called bitpim enables you to upload data to the phone from your Mac. RPI includes a CD-R with the cable that has a bitpim installer on it; you can download a more recent copy from the bitpim Web site.

Bitpim is, by nature, a bit wonky. It's dependent on an object-oriented programming language called Python that's built in to Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther," and it's an open source app. So its user interface isn't nearly as elegant as an "aquafied" Mac OS X app. What's more, there's no transparency between bitpim and Apple's iApps or other Personal Information Management (PIM) apps.

It's worth noting, however, that bitpim does import data from Comma Separated Variable (CSV) lists, vCards, qTopia Desktop and eGroupware, so if your PIM software supports any of those formats you should be in luck. Good luck synchronizing your data as it changes, however. Bitpim seems to handle importing of some data, but when I tried to do a big dump (113 contacts from Address Book) it blew chunks.

Another fringe benefit of the cable that doesn't have anything to do with bitpim. Verizon's CDMA network supports 1xRTT data communications, and Apple's networking software recognizes the phone when it's attached. This means that I'll be able to use my cell phone as a modem for my PowerBook if I need to get online where there's no Wi-Fi access.

Posted by flargh at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

attributed to Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill. How quickly they forget.

So Election Day is bearing down on us, and while the status of Massachusetts' Electoral College votes is all but a foregone conclusion, given John Kerry's background, the status of various elected local offices is far from a sure thing. The state Republican Party has seen its influence in local politics diminish dramatically over the past four years, and they're making a concerted effort to grab as many state senate seats as they can in November. Really, being a Republican in Mass. is a bit like being a Yankees fan in Boston -- it's a lost cause in more ways than one, and you have to feel a bit sorry for them, given the positively Quixotic nature of the quest -- but like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, you have to admire the GOP's tenacity.

One of those seats is being contested here on the Cape. It's currently occupied by a man named Robert O'Leary, and he's been a pretty effective legislator who seems to vote with a conscience. I don't agree with everything he's done, but we're of one mind on most of the major issues.

His seat is being contested by two people: Luiz "Lou" Gonzaga, a former Republican who's running as an indendent, and someone with moderate enough views to be effectively centrist -- on other words, not very much different than O'Leary on many issues -- and Dr. Gail Lese, the Republican candidate.

I will not be voting for Dr. Gail Lese for three reasons.

Reason #1: About a week ago, I got a call from her office, or someone affiliated with her office. "Mr. Cohen," the girl asked, "can Dr. Gail Lese count on your vote?"

"I'd like to know more about how Dr. Lese stands on the issues," I said.

"Oh ... OK," she stammered. "Thanks for your time." Then she hung up. Apparently this was just a drive-by poll -- not an actual attempt by the candidate to educate me about herself in any way, shape or form. It was a lost opportunity, and more than that, a total waste of my time and theirs.

Reason #2: Our local newspaper, the Mashpee Enterprise, offers candidates the chance to voice their views in the paper. They do the interviews all at about the same time and they schedule the interviews to run in the same issue of the paper. That way, readers can take a look at how the candidates stand and compare them equally.

Dr. Gail Lese didn't bother to do an interview with the Enterprise. Apparently she had a more pressing engagement elsewhere, and didn't follow up with them after the fact. She did, however, give Lou Gonzaga the opportunity to call her a "carpetbagger" without fear of retaliation. Apparently Dr. Gail Lese is new to the Cape, and not familiar with our ways. She's also not familiar with the fact that we don't take kindly to carpetbaggers. Hell, I've been here for almost eight years and I'm still a "washashore."

Reason #3: Twice in the past week I've received inflammatory fliers paid for by the Mass Republican Party attempting to portray Bob O'Leary's positions as outside the mainstream and somehow dangerous. I've received nothing telling me where Dr. Gail Lese stands on the issues.

I don't take kindly to overtly negative advertising. In fact, it makes me want to diassociate myself from whoever's behind it.

So there you go. Three blown opportunities to win my vote. With this record Dr. Gail Lese might want to send Joe Torre her resume.

Posted by flargh at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm a fair-weather fan at best. Even when I was a kid and my grandpa (and later, after he died, my friend across the street's dad) took me to a game here and there, I was never that into baseball. In fact, it's only been in recent years that I've begun to take any notice to team sports at all, though I generally now reserve Sundays this time of year for football.

But when the Red Sox get to the point where they're a serious contender to win the pennant, I'm once again drawn to it. And so I've spent the last few days watching them fight an uphill battle against the hated Yankees. And it's certainly made for great theater.

The Red Sox/Yankees rivalry goes deep into the psyche of both Boston and New York, and it says a lot about people who are from each place. Yankees fans don't just think but know that their team is better, and that no matter how the Sox do, that's just the way it is. Boston fans have for generations thought of their team -- and their city -- as the underdog compared to our southwesterly neighbors, and that's just the way that is.

It's funny. To hear Sox fans talk, it's all about putting the Yankees and their constituents in their place. To give them a bit of comeuppance. To help them taste a little humility. And for Yankees fans, the Sox are that stuff on the sole of the shoe that doesn't come off and just stinks up the place.

So here we are in game seven of the American League Championship Series, and no one -- after last week's efforts -- would have thought we'd be here, including only the most self-deceiving (or faithful, depending on your perspective) Red Sox fans. As far as I'm concerned, who wins tonight isn't as important as the fact that the Sox didn't go out like punks, and helped tenderize the damn Yankees for whoever wins the NLCS.

Personally, though, a little piece of me is praying for a Red Sox/Houston showdown. It'd just be fitting given the Presidential race.

Posted by flargh at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sorry that I've been incommunicado for the past few days (but I'm not self-absorbed enough to think that you've been pining for my ramblings while i've been gone). On Wednesday of last week I went down to New York City for a couple of days to visit Digital Life, a new consumer expo put on by Ziff-Davis that took place at the Javits Center, the old home of Macworld Expo.

It was a small show (by Javits Center standards, anyway), taking up about the same square footage as 2002's Macworld Expo, minus all the conference tracks and other stuff going on. Most of the vendors who were there were pushing PC-centric products or products that don't have much if anything to do with computers at all -- flat panel televisions, DVD players you can wear, a robotic version of Hello Kitty and other fun stuff.

Outside of a scoop regarding ATI's display of a Radeon X800 card in a Power Mac G5, the show was a bust from the news perspective, though I got to meet some interesting folks doing some pretty cool things. Probably the thing that caught my eye the most was a product called hip-e, a PC-compatible computer whose maker claims it's the first ever specifically designed for teenage kids. It has a pretty elegant industrial design for an all-in-one PC (many Mac snobs sneer at it, which is all too predictable), and sports some nifty features, such as plugs where you can attach a flash media player and cell phone for recharging and data transfer (though recharging is apparently all the cell phone plug does).

Posted by flargh at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cape Cod is heavily dependent on the revenue generated from tourism and the tax money from seasonal residency -- our region represents the highest concentration of second homes anywhere in Massachusetts, and its population swells to four or five times its size in the summer months. It's an annual boon the cities and towns on Cape Cod depend on heavily. Still, many of the year-round residents are relieved when the tourist season finally ends, especially those of us who don't depend on tourist money to make a living. Most long-time residents consider this weekend -- Columbus Day weekend -- the time when that tourist season is completely over.

The peak tourist season runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day. That's when the vast majority of vacationing families and couples visit our sandy peninsula, filling the beaches and local restaurants and malls. There's a mass exodus on Labor Day that's been welcomed over the years by Cape Codders waving to tourists driving off-Cape from overpasses that intersect Route 6, the Mid-Cape Highway. For some of us, it's "Thanks for coming, see you again next year," for others, it's "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

So as much as we welcome tourists, those of us who like the place to ourselves really do appreciate it when they go too. It's a huge difference in the quality of life that may really only affect one season, but it's the best season to be on Cape Cod. There's a "sweet spot" of a few weeks after Labor Day when it's still warm enough to be summery but devoid of tourists, for the most part. The savvy travelers and seasonal residents know this and use that time of year to come down.

But by Columbus Day we've typically gotten a killing frost or damn close to it, the leaves are turning their Autumn colors and with a few exceptions here and there it's too cold to go outside without a sweater or a light jacket, so any pretense of this still being a summer vacation spot is gone. Most of the seasonal restaurants, ice cream stands and clam shacks have already shuttered themselves and put up their "See You Next Year" signs, and we're once again left to ourselves.

Next comes the departure of snowbirds -- elderly residents who maintain seasonal homes in warmer climes like Florida. There are at least a couple like that in our neighborhood -- typically between now and Thanksgiving (or perhaps a few days after, if they have kids and grandkids still in this area), we'll see them load up the 30 foot RVs they've had parked next to their houses all spring and summer. With their sedans and SUVs hitched to the back, they make the long journey south for the winter.

It's a beautiful, sometimes desolate place this time of year. It can get a bit harsh in the winter, but that's not something we really have to worry about until the waning days of December.

Posted by flargh at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So our favorite family holiday comes at the end of this month. We go for Hallowe'en like most families go for Christmas -- decorations all over the house and yard, weeks of advance planning. The only thing we really wait on to the last minute is candy, and that's because we don't like to have it in the house (willpower and self-denial isn't the Cohen family's strongest suit).

Yesterday we put out the decorations, which we've collected over the years. The holly tree in our front yard has little ghosts hanging from it like fruit, and the bushes are now replete with bloodshot eyeballs and cheery little ghosts. We've staked out some jack o'lantern torches on our front walkway, planted a black cat sign on a stake, and put out a spooky looking candelabra. There are googly eyes staring out from the shrubs, along with jack o'lantern signs that spell out "trick or treat." Our Hallowe'en welcome mat is on the front steps too, and we've hung a big fabric ghost off a planter hook on the porch near the kitchen.

Inside the house gets the treatment, too -- dancing skeleton votive holder and scary jack o'lantern votive candle holders adorn the top of the entertainment center, while strings of lights frame the windows and archway to the kitchen (this year we have Jack Skellington and Zero lights from the Nightmare Before Christmas, and a string of green skeleton lights on the archway). We've also got a bat-light display (a multicolored plastic thing that looks like a bat flapping its wings) suction-cupped to a living room window, and various other trinkets around the house.

Last night we went out for a drive and stopped at a local farm that had haunted hayrides. Emme was a bit scared at first and overreacted, despite loudly demanding (along with the other two kids) that she do this activity, but everyone had a good time. It was just about the perfect time to do it -- we got there for the 6:30 PM ride, just as the sun had set, so we couldn't see what was coming next.

After we got home it was clear that Emme was a bit scared of going down the hallway by herself, because the entrance to the family room, which is adjacent to her bedroom, was dark. The family room adjoins the living room on the other side, so as soon as she was out of side and creeping down the hallway, I put on my glow-in-the-dark hockey mask and went charging through the family room, roaring and clenching my hands.

Yes indeed. I LIVE for this time of year.

Posted by flargh at 10:45 AM | Permalink

So there's a bit of a tiff going on in Livermore, Calif. over a large ceramic mosaic that's been put up outside the city's new library. It contains the names of more than one hundred influential historical figures, and close to a dozen of them are misspelled. Sort of a blemish for a building dedicated to learning.

The artist who created the work is Maria Alquilar, and she's based out of Miami, Fla. I confess I'm not familiar with her work or anything about her personally, but it seemed that she was on-track to do the right thing -- pay my expenses and give me a little on top of it (another $6,000 plus expenses on top of the $40,000 she's already been paid) to make it worth my while, she said, and I'll fix it. That's kind of a lame deal but what were the city officials to do? They agreed to it (just barely -- it was a 3 to 2 vote).

But now, she says, no joy. Why? She's apparent gotten "vile hate mail" from people who are upset that she made the mistakes to begin with. And that's enough to make her change her mind.

Alquilar claims that people who " are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words" and that the mistakes wouldn't register with a true artist. But she didn't just bollox up the names of a few obscure figures. She left the N off of Einstein. There's an A missing in Shakespeare. She even got Michelangelo wrong -- that one's especially embarassing for someone who professes some knowledge of the history of art, as Alquilar demonstrates with her Blake quotes .

I don't remember anything in reading Blake's concept of The Divine Vision that gets people off the hook for lousy proofreading, but I guess I'm just not enlightened enough. It occurs to me that for $40,000, the least you could do is make sure your stuff is spelled right -- especially for a piece that's hanging outside a frickin' library.

Hey, all of us make mistakes -- Lord knows I screw up my spelling enough in the course of my job, even with the help of a spell-checker, though it's most often with a misplaced homonym that slips in there despite my best efforts. But I acknowledge the mistake, correct it, and move on. It takes a true artist -- a bullshit artist, that is -- to blame their own mistakes on other people's lack of artistic vision or enlightenment.

Bottom line is this: If Maria Alquilar isn't up for public scrutiny over her work, that's her prerogative. But perhaps she oughtn't to accept commissions to make public works -- though a quick check over her Web site shows that this Livermore installation is far from her first, as she's done work elsewhere in California and in Arizona as well. What she absolutely should do is make this right -- regardless of whatever heat she's receiving -- especially after the City of Livermore agreed to her terms.

Posted by flargh at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The neighborhood has been filled with the sound of heavy construction equipment this week. One of the town's major public works projects is currently underway -- they're outfitting our area with water.

Like many areas on Cape Cod, each house in our neighborhood has its own private well. And private well water has some advantages: It's free, outside of the cost of drilling the well and installing the pump; and the town can't tell you what to do with the water, so you can water your lawn or wash your car even if there's a drought.

There are some down sides, however: The water we pull up from the well is pretty hard (that is to say, it's mineral-heavy), so we have to use a relatively complex filtration system that needs to be regularly maintained to make it good enough to drink and use without worrying about eroding the pipes. And we always run the risk of the pump failing or the well running dry, which could cost us thousands to fix. What's more, if there's an electrical failure (and there have been several since we've moved here) there's no water pressure. There's another problem around here as well: Several plumes of pollution from the nearby military base -- legacy of decades of shelling practice and dumping jet fuel straight into the ground -- have contaminated the local water supply. We don't have to worry about that so much here, but it is a big concern elsewhere in town.

So we're happy to see them laying pipe, although the sound of the backhoes and dump trucks are certainly creating a cacophony in our quiet neighborhood. One of our neighbors asked the workers about the project and they told her it would take about seven months from start to finish, so I guess we'll be living with it for a while.

Posted by flargh at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The title of this entry is cribbed from a Taoist expression (that was also used as the title of a Steve Jobs bio from some years ago), and it seems quite appropriate. Tikkabik.com turns 10 today.

It was in 1994 that I first registered this domain. At the time I did it, registrations were still handled through the InterNIC and cost nothing. There was a boom of domain name registration going on at the time and I figured I'd stake my claim.

At the time I registered Tikkabik.com I was working as the IT guy for a design firm in Watertown, Mass., and we were all just getting our feet wet with this whole Internet thing. It seemed like a logical progression of the business we were doing but it was still hard to predict how much of an impact it was going to have on our work, which up until then -- and for a while afterwards -- was still primarily focused specifically on broadcast and print work.

For a while after I registered it, Tikkabik.com sat idle. After all, it was -- and has once again become -- nothing more than a vanity domain. Eventually I found a niche that suited my interests: Mac games. There were already a couple of sites that were offering up general Mac game news -- Inside Mac Games (which, at the time, was primarily a periodical that shipped out on CD, but had an occasionally-updated Web component), and Mac Gamer's Ledge.

Flargh's Mac Arcade Game List was a very specific idea: a simple HTML table that listed old-school coin-op arcade games and their Mac equivalents, with links. Eventually that snowballed into a full-fledged gaming news service, complete with reviews, features and editorials. I eventually turned that into MacGaming.com, which, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, led to my current gig. This year I celebrated my fifth anniversary as a Mac Publishing LLC employee: My fifth year writing about the Macintosh full-time.

Posted by flargh at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Good: Well, congrats to the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team for winning the Ansari X Prize yesterday; obviously it cost a lot more than the $10 million prize to do, but proving that commercial passenger space travel is at least possible (if not exactly cheap) is an important step forward into opening up this resource for everyone. I really hope to see this sort of travel as more than just a novelty in my lifetime. Plus I'm delighted to see one of Microsoft's founders use his money for something that's just damn cool.

The Bad: In sadder news, yesterday also marked the passing of "Gordo" Cooper, one of NASA's "Mercury Seven." I had a special place in my heart for this guy because he was public in his conviction not only that UFOs exist but that the government is covering up evidence that would prove it. Whether or not you believe Gordo Cooper, you gotta give him props for inspiring a generation of X-Files fans.

The Ugly: Within an hour or two of SpaceShipOne's return to the Mojave desert, 7-Up had already announced its promotion to give away a free ticket to space, as one of the official sponsors of the Ansari X-Prize. Given that the whole theme here is "commercial" space travel, I guess I should have expected it, but it still would have been nice to give the SpaceShipOne team a day to revel in their technical achievement without mucking it up with marketing.

Posted by flargh at 07:40 AM | Permalink

So I've spent the last few days with our new Verizon Wireless cell phones -- VX6000 models from LG -- and I can safely say that coverage is much better with these phones than it was with AT&T.

Much of what I've read of the difference between TDMA -- the networking standard our olde AT&T phones employed -- and CDMA, Verizon's system -- seems to be what the editor in chief of my magazine refers to "inside baseball." That is to say, interesting on a technical level, but not substantive when it comes to the actual user experience. So I don't expect that's the major reason why we're having better luck with the our new Verizon phones.

There's no question that the LG phones are infinitely better equipped than our two-year-old Nokias. But the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, and in general, the Verizon phones have been more reliable. Today I was out with my mother running a couple of errands -- she got a couple of phone calls on her AT&T Nokia phone that were no-go's. She couldn't understand what her callers were saying and they couldn't understand what she was saying. But we called them right back on my Verizon phone, and with one exception (a known dead spot that they're planning on building a tower at in the near future), it worked just fine.

I'm a relative neophyte when it comes to these newer phones, but from what I've been able to divine so far, I'm pretty much locked in to the licensed services for wallpapers, ringtones, games, and other content for these new phones through Verizon's "Get It Now" services. If anyone knows otherwise I'd really appreciate a heads up, because frankly, I'm finding it rather confusing.

One shortcoming, of course, is that I don't have any way of getting my contact information from my Mac to my phone, and this is a problem I was aware of before I committed to them, so I'm not surprised or particularly disappointed. I'm aware of at least one open-source option to get info from the Mac to the LG VX6000, however -- if anyone's familiar with any other ways to do this, please drop me a line and let me know.

So, lack of Bluetooth and iSync support notwithstanding, all told, I consider my switch to Verizon Wireless a good move and an excellent value -- I'm experiencing better network coverage, bought one phone for fairly short money and got the other for free, can share minutes with Bonnie so she's no longer on a comparatively expensive pay-for-minutes "Free2Go" plan, and can call other Verizon Wireless subscribers for free. We still have a few penalty-free days left to decide for sure whether we'll stay with them or move on to someone else, but barring any catastrophes, we'll probably stick with them.

Posted by flargh at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A brief foray over the bridges and off Cape Cod revealed to us that the leaves are turning to their autumn colors once again. While most trees are still green and lush, some are tinged shades of red, orange, yellow and brown.

Autumn comes late to Cape Cod. Spring comes late too, and summers are generally more mild here than the rest of Massachusetts. So while the leaves are turning just a few miles north, they're still green for the most part here. Which means we still have a week or two to convince ourselves that it's still warm outside, but there have already been a few days when we've been able to see our breath misting when we first go outside in the morning.

While those foliage colors are the harbinger of cold, harsh months to come, autumn in New England is one of the most glorious spots on Earth. Crisp, clean air, a rainbow of colors everywhere, fresh apples, hot mulled cider and fresh donuts at the local farms. Mmmm. Donuts. I love autumn.

Posted by flargh at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So we keep our kids on a really short leash (to borrow a phrase from our Commander-in-Chief) when it comes to what they call "game time."

As someone who plays video games quasi-professionally (at least in the context of reviews), I keep a lot of game systems in the house. When my son's friends come over to the house, their reaction is funny -- it's almost like they've been led into the Fortress of Solitude or the Batcave. Their eyes grow wide, their mouths open and they gasp. Many of them have never seen so many video games in their lives. If you have the idea it's some kind of gamer's paradise in my house, however, you're wrong. We carefully mete out gaming time as a privilege to each of our kids as a reward for good behavior. We give them their time each day in return for good behavior and completing their chores. In fact, our policy towards kids playing video games is a lot more restrictive than most other parents we know.

I started doing this several years ago when I noted that Robert was developing obsessive tendencies towards playing video games -- he would do so to the exclusion of anything else, including homework and physical activity. He also became markedly anti-social and aggressive toward his brother and sister when it came to anything to do with video games. I wanted to nip that behavior in the bud before it evolved into a more serious problem. So using video games as the reward for good behavior became my model.

Unfortunately, Bob seems to have made it his job to subvert this policy. And I've been repeatedly finding my Zodiac where I didn't leave it, with the sound turned all the way down -- a sure sign he's been playing one of the RPG's I have installed. And until the CRT on his computer went south a few weeks ago, Bob was also playing a lot of online video games -- so I'm taking this opportunity to install a Web browser called BumperCar that will let me more thoroughly restrict his online access.

Outside of actually locking up the games, however, I'm running out of ideas for how to keep him playing games only when I want him to. Anyone have any creative ideas?

Posted by flargh at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It's a scientific fact.

Posted by flargh at 09:42 AM | Permalink

"As the politics change, [Kerry's] positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts." - George W. Bush during Thursday night's debate

Bush's Top Ten Flip-Flops.

Posted by flargh at 02:16 PM | Permalink

So I spent much of Friday migrating my e-mail from Entourage to the Mail application Apple includes as part of Panther. My boss Jim seems to think it was a good idea, others are less sanguine about the move. What I can tell you is this: I've had no end of problems since I upgraded from Office v.X to Office 2004. I've had to rebuild my Entourage database close to a dozen times.

Our IT director seems to think the problem is in the sheer size of my database: Pushing 4GB, with documentation going back to 1999. I'm a bit of an information pack-rat, and find it enormously convenient to have on hand a searchable directory of e-mails I've received (and occasionally sent). I don't save everything that comes in the door, but I do try to save everything that's relevant to my job and anything that I think keeping a paper(less) trail might be important for.

Regularly, I've been getting an error message from Entourage instructing my that my database is damaged and asking me to fire up its utility software to fix it. I do; the utility verifies the database is damaged, spews out a log that's totally devoid of information, then fixes whatever has happened and allows me to continue.

It's typically an hour out of my life I don't get back. And it happens frequently enough that I've decided to do something about it.

So I imported those five years of e-mail to Mail, and while it took a while, Mail imported them all successfully. It took almost as long to set up my account information and major rules again. I decided as part of this switch that I'd give Mail's IMAP support a try -- we use IMAP at work, and because of how Entourage handled IMAP accounts, I had gone a circuitous route to use POP instead, mainly so all my all my inbound mail would be sorted into the same common directories. As I'm sure you can figure, after five years, I have my own way of doing things.

Turns out Mail's IMAP support is quite logically set up, so I'm now using Mail to ping three different IMAP accounts include my .Mac e-mail (along with three more POP accounts provided by various ISPs).

So far, so good.

I may not be done with Entourage entirely just yet -- there are rumblings that we're going to use its calendaring features as part of a new groupware effort at work. But hopefully Mail will work for me.

Posted by flargh at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So now that I've had a half-day to digest last night's Presidential debate, I have a few more thoughts:

Stylistically, I think there's no question that Kerry came out on top, and after watching past public debates that he's had with the likes of former Mass. Governor Bill Weld, I'm not terribly surprised. For all the talk about how this guy hasn't connected with voters yet and how he's too much of a Boston blueblood to connect with mainstream America, Kerry is a formidable debater. He was more polished, more focused, and more professional and statesmanlike.

Bush, on the other hand, looked like he was late for a Skull and Bones kegger at Yale. He fidgeted, he smirked, he rolled his eyes, and at some points he was downright amateurish -- his "I know that" response when Kerry called him on his misdirection about who attacked us on 9/11 comes to mind immediately.

Glad to see the "Don't Forget Poland" T-shirts that are already in production. It demonstrates well just how pathetic George W. Bush's attempts really are to make us believe that there's a real honest-to-God international "coalition" at work in Iraq.

Ever since John Kerry's position as presumptive Democratic nominee because obvious, Bush has been able to assassinate John Kerry's character and misstate Kerry's position on issues pretty much with impunity -- he's said whatever he wants on campaign stops to large rounds of applause from the Republican party faithful. Bush couldn't get away with any of those shenanigans last night. He was reduced to desperately parroting the same sound byte fragments over and over again as Kerry continuously batted them down, very effectively.

One of my favorite points of the night was when Kerry cleaned W's clock by quoting from George H.W. Bush's memoirs about why he didn't invade Iraq, and compared it to the exact situation we're in now: A bloody chaotic disaster bordering on civil war, with no clear exit strategy.

I appreciated that they actually had a substantive debate about foreign policy -- specifically, the information on bilaterism versus multilateralism in de-fanging North Korea. I wish they'd spent more time actually discussing what to do about the present situation in Iraq rather than what has led up to it. Because I suspect many of us who are footing the bill for this bloody debacle would like to know.

I watched ABC News last night as part of my ongoing fixation with Peter Jennings and George Snuffalupagus Stephanopolous, and I'm not sure if the other networks are doing something similar, but in the post-debate discussion they actually had a fact-checking segment, where they called both candidates to task for factual mistakes: For example, Bush said 100,000 Iraqi troops have been trained, when the real number is closer to 50,000, and Kerry said the total bill was $200 billion, when it's closer to $130 (wow, I'm so relieved to know we've only pissed away $130 billion dollars on this futile exercise). They've been doing this during stump speeches as part of their nightly news coverage, and I think it's invaluable.

Posted by flargh at 12:32 PM | Permalink