Lies, damn lies
I swear I had nothing to do with this. :)
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I swear I had nothing to do with this. :)
I've had a number of PowerBooks over the years. I've got to say that despite the improvments Apple has made over the years in their sleekness, weight and features, there are a few fit and finish issues that I continue to find just plain irritating. I admit that I'm hard on my laptops, but still...
I started out many years ago buying a used PowerBook 540c from a colleague with whom I worked, who had a sideline business reconditioning broken hardware and reselling it to friends and assocations. I took that system with me everywhere I went despite its massive bulk. The "Blackbirds" were far from perfect -- even in their heyday they were weighty, and they had hinge problems that could lead to serious problems with their displays if left uncorrected -- but it was a fine system that I got my money's worth from. I still have that machine, and it continues to function, though it barely holds a charge in its two batteries, and I haven't the desire to really keep it running.
Eventually I graduated to a "Lombard" PowerBook G3 -- the first of the "Bronze Keyboard" models. That system held up quite well through thick and thin, though it was a transitional model that didn't quite have everything to keep it up to date with Mac OS X as Apple quickly evolved the operating system -- the laptop lacked a FireWire interface, and didn't have a powerful enough video system to decode DVD-Videos. But like the 540c, it held up well during its time with me, though it's since given up the ghost (two power inverter boards later, it's gathering dust, and again, I just don't see the cost benefit in keeping it running -- though I have fantasies about cannibalizing it to make a digital picture frame).
Since then I've had three PowerBook G4s. The first one was, if I remember correctly, a 400MHz model. It wasn't fast enough for me to use as my "daily" machine -- for that I retained a desktop Power Mac. But I took the PowerBook everywhere with me when I traveled, and I abused it, though not intentionally. It just seemed like bad stuff happened to it. It culminated one day when I accidentally dropped my backback on the marble floor of a hotel lobby -- the poor machine's titanium frame was horribly bent, though the internal circuitry still worked fine.
From there, I graduated to an 800MHz model -- much faster and better equipped, but with a lousy fit and finish. This was the first system that was fast enough for my taste to use in place of a desktop machine, so it got a lot more use and a lot more daily wear and tear, than my previous laptops. The plastic moulding around the G4's edges just cracked and fell apart over time, revealing adhesive marks and the metal frame. Even though the cracking paint seemed like a computer version of psoriasis, the system worked -- though I had to replace the keyboard three times in all. The keyboards just kept wearing out.
First the ink would rub off the keys. Eventually the plastic of the keys would lose its texture and become a smooth, almost polished surface. Then eventually the tiny springs underneath would simply die, and I'd end up with a non-working keyboard. Three times I replaced it. Which is trivial to do on a 15-inch PowerBook -- unscrew a retaining screw, pull a couple of tabs down, and lift. A tiny ribbon cable connects the PowerBook to the keyboard, and if you have a reasonable amount of dexterity, you can swap it out in about three minutes.
So now I'm on PowerBook #3. I've had it since early this summer. It's a 1.5GHz 17-inch model, and it's largely without flaw, operationally. It's the fastest and biggest PowerBook Apple makes, and to say that I love it is an understatement: It's like driving a big, fast car down the highway. Like my other PowerBooks, it goes everywhere with me. Like my other PowerBooks, it's my daily driver. Like my other PowerBooks, it's plagued with a few fit and finish issues that drive me nuts.
The aluminum chassis was a good idea. This has held up better to daily use than my Titanium PowerBook models, though it seems to collect dirt and muck at a much more alarming rate than its older siblings. The damn letters are wearing off the keys again, though.
This is particularly unsightly on an aluminum PowerBook, because the keys are colored to match the aluminum case. What's more, the letters aren't decals or embossed, they're etched -- because the keyboard is lit internally, to make it possible to see the letters in low light conditions. Anyway, the A, S, E and N keys are all showing signs of wear -- the aluminum coloring looks like it's been worn away with a tiny brillo pad -- it's worse on the home row keys than it is in the others, but it's still there.
I realized after posting this that a picture is worth a thousand words. If you'd like to see it for yourself, check this out.
Fortunately, the problem is only cosmetic for now. I haven't had any problems with the keyboard's operation. But I'm concerned, because the aluminum models' keyboards aren't nearly as easy to replace as their Titanium counterparts, which just flipped up after pulling a couple of tabs. You have to disassemble a large part of the PowerBook's chassis to get to it, so this won't be a simple fix.
I haven't yet talked with my local dealer, but I'll have to see if this is something that can be repaired under warranty.
So our four-day holiday (actually, the kids' five-day holiday, as school was out on Wednesday) is drawing to a close, and Bonnie and I have slightly frayed nerves. We're looking forward to seeing our kids off to school tomorrow and having a bit of quiet around the house. Judging from the wide-eyed and rather nervous look from the cat, so does he.
We've come to the conclusion that Emmeline's hijinks cause about 80 percent of our work to keep the peace around the house, though that's not to say that it's 80 percent Emme's fault. She certainly makes things difficult for herself by reacting poorly every time her brothers (or we) cause some imagined slight, loudly proclaiming "It's not fair!"
Emme has also developed the habit of arguing the point at every single turn, whether it's negotiating how much dinner she needs to eat to get dessert (my stock answer: All of it) to how much of her room she has to clean up before she can have a play date with Vicki (my stock answer: All of it). You know, she's lived under my roof for her entire seven plus years of existence: You think she'd realize by now that this household isn't run as a democracy, it's a benevolent dictatorship. Well, sometimes. Benevolent, I mean. Mostly it's just a dictatorship, and I am the leader of this banana republic.
I'm not sure exactly when my daughter became possessed by the rogue spirits of an attorney and Che Guevara. She says she wants to become a veterinarian or a pet store owner when she gets older. But if she gets a law degree and goes to work for IFAW or PETA or some other animal rights group, she'll be hell on wheels. If she becomes a revolutionary, God help us all.
I sure wish I'd thought of this the last time I was in financial trouble.
So we made it through Thanksgiving unscathed. It was just the immediately family: My mom, my in-laws, including my sister in-law and brother in-law, and their families. A manageable size. Though there was Situation with the turkey (my FIL insisted on cooking the turkey according to what it said on the label instead of what common sense dictated, requiring us to wait an extra hour and a half to eat), it was fabulous: A turkey that damn near weighed as much as James, a freshly baked spiral-cut ham, a salad the size of a football field, several tons of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce with and without berries, two giant troughs of stuffing, and not nearly enough gravy.
We came home with three plates of leftovers. A good haul.
I could say a lot of things about the National Institute on Media and the Family's 9th annual "video game report card," but I won't. What I will say is this: It reenforces to me that a lot of parents are dropping the ball when it comes to making sure their kids are playing age-appropriate video games, mainly out of a combination of ignorance and laziness.
This was reinforced to me a few weeks ago when one of my kids was invited to a party for a young child; when we asked one of the parents what the boy liked, we were given a list of stuff, and Xbox games were mentioned. The father said that if he had known the Xbox didn't have a lot of kid-friendly games, he would have bought something else, but he had no idea.
It really doesn't take a lot of research to figure this out. Even without doing a Google search, even without cracking open a magazine, if he'd bothered to ask any store clerk in a video game shop, or even the guys in places like Best Buy or Circuit City, he would have gotten the same answer: Xbox for T and M rated games, PS 2 for broadest selection, GameCube for most family-friendly titles.
The ESA's Doug Lowenstein has been quick to point out with reporters over the past couple of days since this report was published that only a small percentage of video games get an M rating from the IDSA to denote the games are for Mature audience -- by far, most games either rate an E for Everyone or T for Teen. At least part of the problem is numbers and media exposure -- many of the top sellers are M-rated games, and many of the ones that end up on the cover of gaming magazines and featured in television news segments are M-rated.
Anyway, all the controversy over whether video games are making our kids fat sociopaths aside, here's the bottom line: Parents have a responsibility to make sure their kids are watching and playing appropriate content. If a parent isn't willing to step up to the plate and take an interest in this, they shouldn't allow the video game console to be in their house to begin with. But between IDSA ratings, a plethora of video game magazines and Web sites (hell, a whole cable channel dedicated to video games), and the assistance of their local retailers, they have the tools they need to see this happens. They just need to use them.
Happy Thanksgiving to you, in advance.
We'll be spending the day with my in-laws, and with any luck we'll be back before the massive intake of turkey puts me into a stupor.
Stop recruiting assholes. This latest controversy with the Pacers and the Pistons is another example of not what's just wrong with the NBA, but pro sports in general.
When I was a kid, way back in the Triassic Era of the 70's and 80's, the NBA certainly had its share of characters and controversy. But in the last twenty years it seems like the league has made it their point to recruit absolutely some of the most loathsome sociopaths to become stars. Enough so that it seems rape and violent assault have become standard practice among the NBA elite.
There's a lot of hand-wringing from Commissioner Stern and others who say that fans sit too close to the court and drink too much and so on -- I'm sure that some of that is true. And to their credit, the league has handed these guys stiffer penalties than any I can remember. But I don't think it goes far enough -- I think these players ought to have been fired and banned from the sport.
Fans can be assholes in any sport. It's not exclusive to basketball, it's just exacerbated because it's closer quarters than other sports -- hell, even hockey games have sideboards to keep the players away from the fans. Having said that, these guys are getting paid more money than God. Their lack of professional decorum is totally inexcuseable. Ben Wallace's inability after the fracas to own up to his part of it and accept responsibility is just infantile. 'He started it' may work on the playground when you're seven, but it just makes you look like a complete ass when you're an adult.
What is unique to basketball is the seemingly never-ending stream of controversy over players that seem to think the law doesn't apply to them, whether it's rapist (or philandering, depending on who's side your on) pigs like Kobe Bryant, or wingnuts like Jayson "12-Gauge" Williams who literally got away with murder. Eleven years ago Charles Barkley said "I am not a role model" in a Nike ad. Barkley's point was that parents should be role models for their kids, not sports stars. But that doesn't absolve Barkley and others from being role models as well, on and off the court. You're getting paid a hell of a lot of money to play for the public, and whether you're prepared for it or not, you're a public figure. By virtue of that fact, you are a role model, whether you like it or not.
Violence and sports go hand in hand -- this is something that goes back to Roman times, and a hell of a lot further. In this day and age, a lot of it has to do with the physicality of the profession, I'm sure. As much of it, I suspect, has to do with the delayed emotional maturity of men who are essentially playing a kid's game -- men who are coddled by agents and coaches and others to think that they're somehow special because they can throw a ball farther, dribble a ball faster or hit a puck straighter than other people. They're not. And big money or not, it's about time the owners and officials responsible for these professional sports organizations step up and show some responsibility to the public.
Last night I made Beef and Guinness Stew in the slow cooker. It was quite good. Here's the rundown:
Two and a half pounds of stew meat, floured and sauteed til brown.
Three large potatoes, cut to bite-sized chunks
Three large carrots, cut same
Three big stalks of celery, cut same
Two yellow onions, quartered
One clove garlic, chopped
Two fresh sprigs of thyme
Two cups of stout
Put the vegetables in the bottom of the slow cooker, put the meat over it, then pour the stout over the entire thing. Cook for eight hours.
The alcohol in the stout cooks off slowly over time, and the flavor of the stout is absorbed into the root vegetables. The liquid from the stout and the vegetables, as they heat, mixed with the juices from the meat, are more than enough to create a tasty base -- you don't need to add any additional liquid, though at first it looks a bit dry. And the starch from the potatoes helps to thicken it up, though if it's runny when you finish you can always thicken it quick with a bit of cornstarch.
It's quite a tasty concoction, though I wish in retrospect I'd added salt and pepper earlier and put in more garlic too. Amazingly, the vegetables didn't turn to jelly -- they were still reasonably firm and very tasty -- well, except for the celery. That I should have added a bit later too. Definitely worth a try.
Beth likes soda bread with this stuff, but I hate soda bread just in general. So I opted for a nice crusty baguette.
Next up, chicken and dumplings.
TWIRP stands for The Woman Is Requested to Pay, and it's an innocent-sounding enough role reveral tradition that happens in a tiny Texas school district once a year. The idea is that school-aged boys and girls reverse social roles; young ladies get a chance to buy their beaus sodas, open doors for them and ask them out on dates.
Apparently there's a bit of cross-dressing that happens, too, which has some 33-year-old who knows better than the rest of us up in arms -- enough so that it got cancelled this year, thanks to the intervention of a Plano, Texas-based religious organization called the Liberty Legal Institute.
Apparently they're worried that TWIRP Day's cross dressing will the impressionable young children of Spurger, Texas to a life of homosexuality. Which conveniently ignores years of research that suggests that transvestites are, for the most part, heterosexual.
My mom did something nice for us over the weekend when she gave Bonnie and me a belated anniversary gift -- an All-Clad stainless steel slow cooker from Williams Sonoma. It's this seven-quart monstrosity with a digital timer and enough sense to know that if I've programmed it for over [x] hours, it should go on low heat instead of high. A real nice piece of kit, and big enough that I could use it to make enough stew to feed a dinner party if need be.
Now, I've made stews and soups a lot over the past few years -- I like hearty meals like that especially as the weather gets cold. Combine it with a nice crusty loaf of bread and it's the perfect cold-weather dinner, as far as I'm concerned. But up until now, I've used a big pot on the stove to make it. The meat doesn't get very tender or flavorful, because I inevitably don't give myself enough time to make it.
I've bought enough stuff to make slow-cooked meals three times this week. I've got for lazy, lazier and homemade. The first run last night was my chance to try the lazier method: using a Slow Cooker Helper recipe -- that's from the same folks who make Hamburger Helper. It's a box with dehydrated vegetables and seasonings, and it's dead simple to make (though I did opt to brown the meat myself, since it helps get the excess fat out). Basically pour the stuff out of the packets, add five cups of water, mix it thoroughly, then add your meat, turn the machine on and piss off for six or seven hours -- et voila, a feast. Bonnie and Bob loved it. Emme and James turned up their noses at it, as they do with virtually everything I make. Ungrateful little whelps.
Tonight I'll try something different -- I might try a recipe out of a slow cooker recipe book Mom got us, or I might try the lazy method: A frozen slow cooker meal from Banquet that comes with everything, meat, vegetables and seasonings. Again, it's basically a dump-and-pour way of cooking. I'm sure it'll be good. I'm not sure that it will be plentiful, however. Despite adding two pounds of stew meat to last night's Slow Cooker Helper recipe, we didn't even have enough for leftovers, and Bonnie and I only had a small second helping to polish it off. Still, this might be handy for those times that I'm on the road and Bonnie is looking for a hearty meal for herself and the kids without a lot of prep work.
This is really interesting: It seems like there's a new trend in slow cooker helper-type pre made meals that I hadn't noticed before. I don't know if that means that the use of slow cookers is on the rise and it's a trend we're just grabbing on to, or what, but it's interesting regardless.
So, homemade: The one recipe in this book that totally grabbed my attention was for Beef and Guinness Stew. Adding beer to beef stew isn't anything new, but this recipe is just so simple but so good sounding that I couldn't help but want to try it right away. I think I might make that one tonight, and I know Mom wants me to, because I promised to have her over next time if it was good.
James is starting to gear up for Christmas already. He's been wandering around the house for days humming Christmas carols to himself, much to my chagrin. He's also creating a mental wish list of gifts.
This was heard moments ago as he was sharing Bonnie's company in the family room.
"Mummy," asked James, "can God tell Santa what I want for Christmas?"
"Yes, I heard it," I said to Bonnie, before she could ask, "and that one is all yours, hon."
And today's "What's with people today?" story comes from Corona, Calif. -- site of an apparent kidnapping involving two men in a black sedan and a woman who they stuffed in a trunk.
This is the part that blows my mind:
A few shoppers appeared to turn their heads and watch but took no action. In addition, several motorists drove through the scene.
OK. It's not a good idea to put yourself in potential physical jeopardy by trying to physically intervene in a situation like this, but what does it say about us collectively that no one bothered to pick up their damn cell phone and call the cops?
Spiders get along very well on Cape Cod. I understand it's a combination of soil, climate and native flora and fauna that make this environment almost ideal for them. There are myriad species that populate the Cape from the Provincetown Monument to the Sagamore Bridge, apparently.
Most of them live in my house.
For some reason -- perhaps it's our wooded back yard -- we have a lot of spiders. And lately, as it's gotten colder and wetter, they've decided to take up residence in the house.
We're not talking about little tiny spiders that would get lost on your pinky fingernail. We're not talking tarantulas, either. But seeing spiders whose leg span would easily cover a half-dollar piece is not at all unusual.
Despite their alien nature and occasionally painful though exceedingly rare bite, Bonnie and I have no fear of spiders. In fact, we have a pathological loathing of insects that makes us appreciate the spiders for what they are -- ravenous insectovores that would happily paralyze, cocoon, liquify and suck dry to husks the multi-legged, chitinous vermin that populate the dark corners of our home. That's not say we're bug infested by any stretch, but it's like keeping a cat around if you've got the occasional rodent -- it's a checks-and-balances sort of thing.
So it's live and let live for spiders in the Cohen home, but when they get too big for their britches, we invite them to live outside instead, rather than squishing them. Bob caught a nice big one this morning inside of a card tin and brought it down to me; I promptly dumped him out on the porch outside the kitchen.
He'll probably be back inside by next week, building a Web somewhere in my office.
I want some Rimonabant.
Did anyone really expect otherwise?
No sooner does Halloween end than preparations for Thanksgiving begin. Being a big food holiday but not a big decorating holiday, department stores have already put out their Christmas goods, and I don't mind telling you I find the whole prospect rather depressing. I'm not a Christmas person. Not an Ebenezer Scrooge, quite, but I really don't like having Christmas carols and pine-scented candles shoved down my throat this soon after October. Not to mention the inevitable parade of conspicuous consumerism that marks this time of year -- the endless ads for expensive toys and gadgetry that manufacturers try to make us feel like we have to buy to fulfill our obligations to family.
It looks like this year, we'll be doing Thanksgiving at my parents-in-law's house. I just spoke to my own grandmother yesterday and she said that she's doing a small thing in New York because my cousin Michael has promised himself to his girlfriend's family this holiday and my cousin Richard has other obligations -- that's officially one half of the cousin contingent right there. So she's visiting my cousin Jennifer and her husband, who will have a small holiday feast with Jen's parents, my uncle Steve and aunt Sandy. Next year, Grandma says, Sandy and Steve will have Thanksgiving at their house, and we'll be on the hook.
My in-laws are on vacation in Florida right now, enjoying their condo in Bonita Springs, but they'll be back in time to prepare to have the whole family over for a feast. And the Nowiks know how to do it right -- in the thirteen years I've regularly been going to Nowik family events, I've never once walked away hungry. This also means a short holiday commute -- they live just Off-Cape, which means a half-hour drive instead of an hour-and-a-half trek up to the western suburbs of Boston. This delights me, because driving back in the dark while fighting off a tryptophan-induced coma is a dangerous proposition.
For me, it'll be a makeup for last year, because I was stuck at home with Emmeline, who'd fallen ill with the flu. Hopefully none of the kids will get sick this time around. But if they do, Bonnie will have to stay home this time. It's only fair!
So Trader Joe's just opened up a store in Hyannis -- their first location on Cape Cod. I'm delighted they're finally here. While Trader Joe's isn't as full service as, say, Stop & Shop or Shaw's, it's a wonderful place to pick up tasty foods and unusual treats.
I stopped in when we were out today just because I needed a loaf of bread to go with some vegetable beef soup I was making, and ended up walking out with more than $30 worth of groceries. Some frozen pork gyoza and mandarin orange chicken; some vegetable fried rice; a gallon of apple cider; a tray of sushi; some spinach salad; tortilla chips and some excellent guacamole.
Bonnie asked if we would be able to do all our shopping there, and the answer is no -- they don't carry the depth or breadth of supplies we need, and we'd go broke trying. But as a place to supplement our weekly grocery list with some tasty, offbeat foods, Trader Joe's is awesome.
The National Legal and Policy Center has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission because of a new ad campaign from Subway that compares the fat content in a single Big Mac from McDonalds to three of Subway's own foot-long Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki subs. Thank God we've got the NLPC to save us from ourselves, otherwise I'd be polishing off a half-dozen of these teriyaki bad-boys every day, let me tell you.
The crux of the NLPC's complaint is that the Subway ad disregards the overall caloric, cholesterol, sugar, carb and sodium content in their subs to emphasize the fat content as compared to the Big Mac.
They call the spots "clearly misleading to weight-conscious consumers." Consumers who are, as far as the NLPC is concerned, too stupid to actually check the nutritional information that fast food chains like Subway post in plain sight for "weight-conscious" customers to review before making an informed choice about what they're going to eat.
Anyone who thinks they're getting health food at a Subway or any other fast food joint needs a swift kick in the ass, because they're frigging idiots. But the fact stands that eating a Big Mac has about the same nutritional value as eating a large sponge that's been soaked overnight in rendered fat. You don't need Jared to tell you that, though he makes a good point when he hauls out three feet of submarine sandwich to illustrate the difference.
The O.C. is back on Fox, during a time on Thursdays that's perfect, because everything else has been pretty much crap since the season started. It remains a guilty pleasure that I'm just delighted to be able to indulge in again.
... to the more than 58 million of you that have apparently been in a coma for the past four years. Morons.
So there are two ads that I've been enjoying lately, even though they're both in heavy rotation -- Toyota's new Camry ads, since they use "It Keeps You Runnin'" by the Doobie Brothers. I love that tune, and can't seem to get sick of it.
The other one is another Toyota ad, with two little boys in the control center of a crash-test center. They keep joyfully prodding this guy in a lab coat to hit the big red button that causes the pulley to smash a succession of differently colored Toyota Sienna mini-vans into a concrete wall, and then beg him to smash his own car once he's gone through the test fleet. Sure, I can see my own kids doing the exact same thing, but I'm right there with them.
Now that Election Day is here, we're getting a blissful reprieve from the political ads that have saturated TV airwaves over the past few weeks, but in retrospect, there was one that made me chuckle every time I saw it: Mass. congressman Barney Frank's. His plug at the end was "I'm Barney Frank and I approve this message. Who else would?" A well-needed dose of humor in a campaign season that otherwise rubbed a lot of nerves raw.