Tikkabik

Noticed the other night that the front face of my LG VX6000 cell phone's face had cracked right down the middle. It doesn't seem to affect the phone's operation. Still, it pisses me off. What's more, I don't remember when it happened -- I expect I either would have to drop it pretty hard or impact a door frame or something else pretty hard to crack it as bad as it is.

It's not the LCD screen where everything happens, fortunately. It's the little screen you see when the phone is closed, that displays incoming phone numbers, duration of call, time and date, etc.

Bah.

Posted by flargh at 10:27 PM | Permalink

Living in an area with a high percentage of pensioners, Bonnie and I are accustomed to sharing the road with people with lousy driving habits, but this summer has been exceptional. It's not just the elderly -- there are just a lot of idiots on the road just now.

What irritates me so much about bad driving is that it's not just something that puts the driver in danger, but those around him too. And there's little excuse for it, when you come right down to it -- driving is a privilege, not a right.

Almost daily, we witness or are almost involved in accidents involving people who overshoot their turnoff or their exit then stop their cars short without any awareness of those around them -- I've even seen people back up to the exit ramps of limited-access highways, rather than simply driving to the next exit and turning around.

Then there are the people who plain just don't know where they're going -- turn signals on for miles, stop, start, stop, start. Is this the street?

Get a GPS system installed, if it's that difficult for you to get from point A to B.

Tailgaters are another one of my favorites: People who think you're not going fast enough, or think that crawling up your ass to a dangerously close distance is somehow going to instill in you the knowledge that they're in a bigger hurry than you and their time is more important than yours.

The inappropriately courteous I suppose I shouldn't get mad at, but do. This is a phenomenon I've seen repeated over and over again on the Cape: Someone waving me on to pass in front of them, only they're totally oblivious to the fast-moving column of cars coming up behind them, and the potential hazard they're causing.

It'll lessen after Labor Day because that's when the tourists go home, and the population of some parts of the Cape will reduce by -- literally -- 80 percent. I can't wait.

Posted by flargh at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So Subaru is pushing its new B9 Tribeca. It's Subaru's attempt at building an upscale sport-ute like the ones we've been seeing from upscale brands like Infiniti and Lexus. Priced about the same, with the same kind of stance and the same kind of appointments in about the same price range.

Weird-looking front end, though. Looks like an old swollen Alfa Romeo, actually -- very un-Subaru-like. (Subaru's chief designer comes from Alfa Romeo, so it's no wonder.)

Anyway, the TV ad uses Kansas' execrable "Dust In the Wind," and depicts the B9 Tribeca passing by other SUVs on the road. Each time it passes one, the victim SUV turns to dust or dissolves in a puff of smoke. Sometimes they're compressed like junk cars at the scrapyard; sometimes they're turned into flower planters. The punchline is the announcer who says that the B9 Tribeca is "the end of the SUV as we know it, and the beginning of what an SUV should be." Very clever.

Bob's comment on seeing the B9 Tribeca cause other SUVs to disintegrate:

"I like how this car keeps killing the other ones. I think this is the Grim Reaper's car or something."

Posted by flargh at 06:12 PM | Permalink

Today my eldest child, Robert, turns ten years old. I've been a dad for a decade. Kind of hard to believe, in retrospect. He's certainly changed a lot in the last decade: From a screaming ball of fury to a ... screaming beanpole of fury, I suppose. He's a good kid, and he's his own person, with unique interests and tastes, a sense of style that's his own and a lot to offer the world. I suspect he'll turn out all right. He's still young and impressionable and I think his mother worries more than I do that he'll have problems that he won't be able to handle as he gets older (related to his ADHD). He's definitely the oldest of three kids -- the leader, the one who gets out in front of everyone to experience new things.

One thing he doesn't have enough of is time to himself. It'll be time to get him into his own room pretty soon -- that's something I don't look forward to, because one way or the other it'll require us to remodel our house and it'll mean less space for someone, somewhere -- whether it's sacrificing what we now use as the "family room" or cutting the existing boys' room in half, we're not sure.

Bonnie and I were young when we had Robert -- we were both 25 years old. In our area people do get married and settle down pretty early, and judging from the other parents we see at school days, we're not alone in our age group, either. But it did feel isolating, at first, for the same reason that it feels isolating when you first get married: All of a sudden the friends who you've developed as a single person or a couple no longer have the same experiences you do, no longer are interested in the same things as you are, and gradually you spin out of those social networks and into others.

Having two more kids in relatively rapid succession -- the spread is 10 years old, 8 and 5 -- didn't help. It can be, and has been, quite isolating in some respects. But we love our kids and want to provide a healthy and happy home for them, so we keep at it, even though it's not easy.

Bob gets gypped a little bit because he has a summer birthday, and can't share it with friends and classmates at school -- so many of them travel or are at camp or otherwise indisposed in the summer vacation months. So this year we thought we'd try something a bit different, and we're going to be hosting a combined birthday party for all three kids closer to October, and tie it in with Hallowe'en, which is collectively our favorite holiday of the year. They seem content with that, so we'll see how it goes.

Posted by flargh at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So my office voicemail message specifies that if your call is urgent and you need to reach me right away, to call my cell number.

It's intended to give people with a legitimate need to reach me another way to do so that will, in all likelihood, get my attention. Say, the administration of my childrens' schools, for example, or someone who might have my work number listed as an emergency contact for a friend or relative.

Unfortunately, the PR hacks I work with seem to think that this means them. It doesn't. I'm regularly called on my cell phone to be reminded of a press release they sent my by e-mail, or to find out if I'm interested in speaking with their client or their employer about a new product release.

99 times out of 100, I'm not. I find it intrusive. It irritates me to no end that they think it's okay to do so, but I don't want to get snarky about it, especially in my voicemail message. Any suggestions?

Posted by flargh at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

So, like I said, Robert has Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). A casual understanding of ODD leads many people think that it's just some academicians and psychologists slapping a label on normal male adolescent and pre-adolescent behavior: Kids (disproportionately boys) who are quick-tempered, argumentative, defiant, vindictive and so on. Nothing could be further from the truth: For one thing, this is a diagnosis in the DSM IV -- that's the "red book" that doctors use.

What separates ODD kids is not only in the extremity of their emotion but also the duration. While it's normal for all kids -- especially boys -- to be occasionally defiant and oppositional, it's not normal for it to last as long as it does or to be as extreme as it is in ODD kids. ODD is, put simply, a recurring pattern of negative behavior that lasts for six months or longer that involves the kid losing his temper, arguing frequently with adults, deliberately annoying other people, actively defying the requests of adults, blaming others for his own misbehavior, being easily annoyed, being angry and resentful, and being spiteful and vindictive.

In Robert's case and in the case of others with ODD, this isn't just an occasional thing, and that's important to emphasize. This is a constant pattern of behavior. It doesn't stop Robert from making friends and being a social and loving kid. It does, however, create a lot of friction with authority figures, like teachers and school administrators.

It surprises me, given the frequency with which ODD pops up (by some estimates, 2 to 16 percent of the general population), that the school administration at Robert's school is as taken aback as they have been by his behavior in the past. The old principal was absolutely mystified when Robert showed vindictive behavior toward another schoolmate who had gotten him in trouble some months before.

Bonnie and I learned a bit more about ODD in a 12-part workshop we're doing that's been sponsored by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in our area, and it's pretty interesting. The bottom line is that Robert pegs into the red for just about every trait found in a diagnosis of ODD. Fortunately it's treatable, and we're doing the right thing by involving him in therapy, psychiatric medication and behavior modification.

Kids who exhibit ODD symptoms can, untreated and left in environments where it can fester, anyway, can sometimes develop full-blown Conduct Disorder (CD) or Antisocial Personality Disorder. These are the real nutjobs you may remember from school, who are, in all likelihood, now serving time in your local state or federal pen: The kids who tortured animals, who set fire to things, who stole, who broke into your house or someone else's, who may have been molested or assaulted, who engaged in risky and just downright dangerous behavior.

If there's a silver lining behind this particular cloud, it's that Robert isn't exhibiting any of the signs that might lead us or his doctors to think that he'll end up suffering from Conduct Disorder or worse, and obviously he's in a low-risk environment for developing those symptoms.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, so I suppose Bonnie and I won't know if we've made a difference for a while yet. But one way or another, we're doing whatever we can to better understand and deal with it. Recognizing that there is a problem is the first step towards finding a solution for it.

Posted by flargh at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This will come as news to a few of you but not to others, because I'm pretty open about it: My two older kids suffer from ADHD and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) and inattentive-type ADD and bipolar disorder, respectively.

Bonnie and I spend a lot of time and effort to understand our kids' issues and help them deal with them. What astounds us is that there are still people in the 21st century who think that these issues don't exist, or if we'd somehow parented them or fed them differently, the results would have been different.

What I can tell you is that this isn't the case. We've done a lot -- more than most parents, according to the educators, doctors and social workers we've spent time with -- to get a handle on our kids' issues and find workable solutions for them. The only things we've had any luck with is a combination of pharmacology and behavior modification.

Part of the problem here is that different things work for different people: One kid may respond well to having red food dyes or sucrose pulled from their diet; another may not. One kid may respond well to Ritalin (mine didn't), another may respond better to Concerta or Adderall XR. Brain chemistry is something that even neurologists don't understand very well. Psychopharmacology is an infant science. It irritates me that even when we're in group sessions with parents of other kids who have these problems, they immediately think that what they know or what they've tried will work for us. It's not true.

Another issue that, as far as I'm concerned, is positively medieval, is the title of this entry: The fundamental belief because you can't see something, it's somehow less real or less problematic than something you can see.

This perception is something that we've been fighting with our public schools over since Robert was about three years old. If our kids were physically deformed, or if their mental issues extended into physical form like they do with Down Syndrome, for example, there'd be no question of their need for special services.

But because my kids are otherwise bright, gorgeous children but suffer from behavioral problems, the perception is that it's somehow our fault as parents -- that we're not doing our jobs, or not doing our jobs right. It's unfair to us and it's unfair to our kids.

If that fatuous attitude was just limited to the schools, it would be one thing. But amazingly, my kids have even heard it from people who ought to know better.

Posted by flargh at 01:34 PM | Permalink

So the repairman from Sears showed promptly this morning a few minutes past 8 AM to fix our fridge. I'm about $200 poorer for the experience, which is still less than half the cost of a new fridge, and we get to keep our ice maker and the other amenities this model offers that our "spare" backup one -- still at the other house -- doesn't. He gave the refrigerator a clean bill of health otherwise, and said that it should continue to last years.

It turns out the defrost circuit was shot, which, as you may recall, was one of the things I thought might be wrong. Not a common problem, the tech told me, but not exactly unheard of either. He figured it out by trying to manually trigger the defrost circuit. No joy -- it didn't turn on at all. So the circuitry that handles that function needed to be replaced.

Refrigerators work on a really simple concept: Convection. Heat causes air to circulate; warm air rises. Today's run-of-the-mill refrigerators typically have a refrigeration coil in their freezer compartments that chills the air to sub-zero temperatures; fans then blow cool air into the refrigeration compartments. Warm air naturally rises, goes over the condensor to cool, and is blown back down into the fridge. The freezer is the coolest spot in the fridge, because it's closest to the condensor.

Frost free refrigerators -- virtually all fridges available these days -- cycle a small amount of heat to those coils every few hours to keep frost from forming. The cycle period varies from model to model -- usually it's anywhere from four to eight hours. The defrost circuit causes the frost to turn to water, which then drips off the coils and runs into a drain through a channelled gutter in the back of the freezer, usually hidden behind a panel or underneath a tray.

The water drains into a drip tray underneath the fridge, and a fan above the tray typically evaporates this drip as soon as it forms, so you don't find puddles of water under your fridge after a few days.

When the defrost circuit doesn't work, the frost builds up, typically over a period of a few days or a week or so. This is what was happening. Eventually the frost gets so thick it blocks the air from going over the coils. This causes the fridge to warm up, because it can't do anything with that warmer air -- that gets trapped in the refrigerator compartment, driving the temperature up. This is consistent with what we were seeing: The fridge would warm up first, then eventually the freezer would start having problems with temperature regulation.

90 plus degree days and kids opening the fridge door to look for drinks and snacks all day long certainly don't help matters much. But the good news is the gaskets around the fridge door and freezer door both look soft and pliant and unbroken.

I had to manually defrost the fridge again yesterday morning, while Bonnie was at a doctor's appointment -- the fridge was heating up, and I didn't want the food to go bad. That got rid of a one-inch thick layer of frost that had accumulated on the back of the freezer compartment and a lot of frost that had condensed on the coils at the bottom of that panel, visible when you remove the bottom tray on the freezer. It was enough to fill up the drip tray twice, although I knew there was still more. I just didn't want to risk any more food spoilage than I had to.

The repairman took off a panel in the back of the freezer to show me the condenser and coils, which I knew were there but hadn't actually seen before -- the coils were still caked with ice, though they were free enough for air to circulate again. He did the rest of the job as he replaced the defrost circuit.

We'll know in the next few days if that does the trick, but I'm confident it should. Hopefully it's the last frickin' fridge story I'll have for a while.

Posted by flargh at 12:14 PM | Permalink

It's been a while since I've had one -- but I spent about three or four hours dodging a migraine this afternoon. Bright lights and loud noises didn't help (occupational hazard with three kids at home). I spent the time in my room with a towel over my head. The constant heat (despite the A/C's going nonstop) hasn't helped.

Posted by flargh at 08:29 PM | Permalink

I love it when a new Harry Potter or Series of Unfortunate Events book gets published. We end up reading them together as a family before bedtime. I picked up the Half-Blood Prince last weekend at Border's when it was 40 percent off (and promptly discovered that I had been robbed, when I found it cheaper later that day at Wal-Mart).

Because of our schedule, we haven't had much time to read it, but I just made it through the first chapter this evening. The kids -- and we -- are enjoying it. There are thirty chapters, so hopefully we'll be finishing up about the same time the kids go back to school. It's nice to be able to savor it, rather than tearing straight through it in a couple of days.

Posted by flargh at 08:17 PM | Permalink

Got burnt pretty badly before I bought a hat at last week's Ozzfest -- July sun in Massachusetts is hot and bright. So I spent most of the weekend with an uncomfortable sunburn and even blistered a bit.

I'm feeling better now but am suffering the after-effects -- namely, peeling skin. The skin has been peeling off the top of my head for the past couple of days and now it's coming off on my neck, which also got pretty badly burned. The top of my head is more or less done now, though there are still a few rough spots that need to be exfoliated before I'm back to normal.

It's disfiguring but no longer painful, although it is quite itchy. I just wished I'd realized how bad it looked on Tuesday when I brought Robert to the Apple Store in Cambridge for the iMovie camp session. I wouldn't have worn black.

Posted by flargh at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The kids are home, the boys are in the shower, supper is on the stove. I took the trash to the dump, ran a few errands, drove Robert to and from his CCD "youth ministry" retreat, and did a few other things. After a week away from home, it's kinda nice to be back to a normal routine.

Posted by flargh at 07:14 PM | Permalink

Jim and I had fun on Friday at Ozzfest 05 in Mansfield, Mass. It was quite a mix of young people and old people alike, milling about, watching the band perform on the two stages, and having a good time together. There was a large contingent of dispossessed-looking young people clad in black and outfitted with piercings and tattoos, and there were also a lot of folks about our age who had been clearly listening to metal and hard rock their entire lives and were there to see the "older bands" like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath perform.

The venue itself -- the Tweeter Center, nee Great Woods -- had two stages set up, the main stage area and a second stage that had taken over a big chunk of the parking lot. The second stage was rimmed by sponsor tents like FYE, Jaegermeister and Trojan, with a big Sony Playstation 2/PSP truck set up in the middle. It was, unfortunately, directly out in the sun, and Tweeter Center security wouldn't let us sit in our seats in the main pavilion until an hour or so before the main stage opened -- which meant wandering around in the sun and heat for hours. I got a really bad sunburn and while he didn't burn, Jim felt the heat and the sun big time and looked like he was going to pass out for a bit.

Of course, the Tweeter Center made a ton on people who wanted to eat and drink. At $7.50 a pop beer was obscenely expensive, and food was similarly stupidly priced. The high point was when we saw Ozzy himself wandering around with an entourage, and Jim got his autograph. I'm sure it's a moment Jim'll never forget.

For me, it was a chance to see bands I love that I've never seen in concert before, including some of the top-billed acts: Black Label Society, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath. Really amazing stuff. Bruce Dickinson damn near stole the show -- a hell of an energetic performer and one of the best heavy metal singers out there, period.

Outside of the sunburn and Jim's sunstroke, only one other bad thing happened: As we were getting on the highway, a young lady driving a sedan behind us tapped the bumper on our rental car and took out a reflector and dented the bumper a bit. Jim took the insurance on it (surprising, since he never does, but given the venue we were going to, he felt better safe than sorry), so we were covered -- and what's more, when I checked with the rental agency the next day, they told me they didn't plan to pursue it -- damage was too minor to worry about. Phew.

Posted by flargh at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The big domestic crisis while I was away for Macworld Expo was that our fridge started not working again. Like before, heavy frost had formed inside the freezer compartment -- this on a frost-free refrigerator. I defrosted it again yesterday and it's working -- at least for another few days.

As I understand it, there's typically three or four major problems that can explain what's happening: A problem with the defrost system, the refrigerant level, the compressor, or the gaskets around the freezer and refrigerator compartment doors. I've checked the gaskets and they seem okay -- they're holding tight and create a nice strong vacuum seal when they close. The other stuff is out of my domain, though.

We have a Hotpoint fridge that we bought before Bob was born -- we got it when we moved into an apartment about 12 years ago. It's in good shape and has seen only occasional service for the past decade or so -- for a while I used it as a beverage cooler, then it went into hibernation when my mother moved into our old house, since it was in the basement. I've considered moving it into the house we now live in and using it instead -- the advantage is it's a free fridge. Unfortunately, it's not in this house, it doesn't have an ice maker, and installing it means pulling out the old fridge and removing the plumbing that connects that fridge's ice maker to the water supply. Not a huge issue, but still a logistical hassle.

The one we're having problems with is a Kenmore fridge, and having a Sears repairman come out to take a look at it will cost $65 and will take until next Saturday. I'm not naive enough to think that it will cost only $65 to get fixed, but it seems worth it to pay that money to find out what is wrong and what it will take to get fixed. Replacing the refrigerator outright with a new unit that's roughly comparable is going to cost $500 or more.

Posted by flargh at 11:32 AM | Permalink

Jet crashes into stray cow

This is the latest in a series of incidents in Africa where transportation and cows intersect, according to the report.

"Last month police in Lagos arrested a cow after it attacked and killed a bus driver who stopped to urinate by the side of the road."

Okay, the concept of a maddened cow murdering an incontinent bus driver is disturbing enough.

But arrested a cow?

Posted by flargh at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Okay, now that I've had a chance to play with both iPodderX and with iTunes 4.9, I think I can safely say that podcasting is a complete waste of my time.

I'm not saying it's a waste of your time. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea. All I can say is that for my own purposes, it's as useless as the figurative tits on a bull.

I don't commute anywhere, and I suspect that has a lot to do with it. I'd prefer to read content online when I can, and I'm a huge user of RSS feeds whenever they're available, so it's not like I don't understand or appreciate the underlying technology. Also, I'm within range of public radio, so when I am out and about and not listening to my iPod or enjoying the relative silence, I'm usually listening to NPR.

The point is, podcasted audio chatter just doesn't really do it for me.

Part of it is clearly a signal to noise ratio problem. There are a handful of decent podcasts out there, but most of the stuff is complete shit. People with no voices for radio sharing opinions I don't care to listen to. The stuff that isn't shit isn't particularly informative to me, either. But I admit that I'm in a different bracket than a lot of folks. Staying on top of the Mac news is my business, so Mac-related podcasts are a complete waste of my time. And I haven't found much else out there that appeals to me at all.

In a way, it reminds me of the early days of the Web, when everyone and their cousin wanted to make a Web page or site because it was a new medium that was suddenly democratized. No longer would the published word be the domain of the media elite! Now everyone could spread their opinion and observations far and wide!

What I don't think people quite get is that democratized isn't the same as good. There are a lot of bad Web sites out there. And no, I don't separate Tikkabik from that category. Likewise with podcasts. I'm sure that once the new medium shakes itself out, it'll be more interesting, informative and palatable. But for now, it's a relative smorgasbord of junk.

Posted by flargh at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you get mugged for your iPod, here's an idea: Give the damn thing up.

Tragic. Stupid, senseless and tragic.

Posted by flargh at 12:08 PM | Permalink

...where you wake up with the best of intentions, a realistic set of goals to achieve before the day's end, and the motivation to get everything done? Then you realize by 8 or 9 PM you haven't gotten a damn thing done that you wanted to?

Yeah, me too. I call them "weekdays."

Posted by flargh at 08:59 PM | Permalink

Senator Rick Santorum (R, Penn.) is a friggin' wingnut. I realize none of this is new, and there's a lot about Santorum that I haven't liked since this was written and posted, but crap.

In an editorial posted by Catholic Online, Santorum calls for a "new evangelization" of Catholicism across America to be spearheaded by a new hierarchy of seminarians, priests and cardinals that "will be both faithful in thought and courageous in confronting all infidelity within the Church."

Santorum's fundamentalist view of the future of Catholicism aside, where he completely loses all connection with reality is linking the ever-present demon of the religious right -- the "liberal" media and academia -- to this scandal as promoters of "aberrant behavior" and "moral relativism."

And this is what seals the deal: "While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

To hear Santorum speak, our airwaves and college campuses -- especially here in Boston -- are filled with the message that it's all right to rape and abuse young children. Because it's all about promoting "aberrant behavior."

Last time I checked, there's a world of different between promoting a message of tolerance and equality for people who have different sexual orientation than the majority, and actively promoting the criminal agendas of deviants.

But what do I know? New Englander born and bred, even though I haven't voted Dem. in years, I'm still part of that seat of liberalism that Santorum vilifies.

Oh, I love that dirty water. Boston, you're my home.

Posted by flargh at 07:07 PM | Permalink

So Robert and I were supposed to go into Boston today for a checkup at a doctor's office in town, but we never made it.

We usually need about two, two and a half hours to get into Boston to the doctor's office from our house, sometimes a bit more. It's more than an hour's drive to get to the Quincy Adams MBTA stop, which has a large enough parking garage that -- more importantly -- has a high enough ceiling that we can actually park our van there (it needs 7 feet 6 inches of clearance). From there, Robert and I take the Red Line to Downtown Crossing, change for an Orange Line train, take that two stops, and bingo -- we're a block away from the doctor's office.

Today we got a late start -- we left the house with a little less than two hours to get there, so I was already worried. But I was relieved when we got near the highway entrance, and I didn't see any traffic heading westbound, towards one of the two bridges that takes you off Cape Cod.

A moment later I realized that I'd mistaken a lack of traffic for a lack of motion in the traffic that was there. Looking at the overpass, I was actually staring at the top edge of a bunch of car roofs. Standing still.

I checked with the cell phone SmarTraveler service that keeps track of traffic in the Boston area, and they confirmed that there were huge backups getting off Cape and other backups heading north, too. Looks like a lot of people just decided to take a long weekend on the Cape and were heading back home today.

Now, when we made the appointment -- months ago -- it hadn't struck me that maybe it was a bad idea to drive into Boston the day after Independence Day weekend. But it turns out that it's a veritable parking lot.

So I called and cancelled the appointment, which hopefully we can reschedule before too long.

Posted by flargh at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yeah, the spelling is intentional. That's the sign that greeted me at the grocery store.

This will be our eighth summer as residents of Cape Cod. It's a place that sees a large influx of tourists every summer, just as it has for decades. After living here for nearly a decade, I've come to realize that I have a dislike for the single-mindedness some tourists have to be on vacation. It expresses itself in a certain self-centeredness that many of us here -- and I presume in other tourist-heavy areas -- find repulsive.

We've all seen the caricature of the ugly American traveling abroad -- the loud, fat, obnoxious tourist who expects that everything he sees and everyone he meets is there for his pleasure and convenience only. Unfortunately, that caricature isn't relegated to Carribbean cruises and Mediterranean vacation packages. It's equally true of Americans who take holidays within their own country's borders as well. And while it's a strict minority, it is a particularly unpleasant one.

Fortunately, as someone who works from home and as part of a family that doesn't go out of its way to go to the beach or do other things in the summer that are likely to put us in direct contact with tourists, I can limit my exposure to those folks.

So that's one reason we'll be taking it easy today. The crowds at the spots where they'll be doing fireworks tonight will be big. There will be a lot of traffic, and much of it will be made up of people who lack familiarity with our roads. Bonnie and I will have a nice relaxing day at home with the kids, and likely will just watch the fireworks on TV, and be done with it.

Posted by flargh at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I only get the Sunday Globe delivered. I don't have the time or inclination to read a newspaper the rest of the week, and virtually the only reason I get the Sunday paper delivered is for the coupons. So the guy who delivers the newspapers, who kindly includes a pre-addressed envelope for gratuities in with the paper a few times a year, gets one chance a week to impress me with his professional skill.

Twice in the past month our newspaper delivery guy has totally effed up.

Three weeks ago he didn't bother to deliver the newspaper at all. And today, he delivered the newspaper, but only the first four sections.

I don't quite understand how it happened, because the first four sections (A, B, C and D) arrived in a neat bundle with a rubber band to hold them in place -- so it was quite clear that our newspaper delivery man thought this was a complete package.

And on any other day of the week, I could possibly understand the mistake -- because that's about the size of a regular weekday newspaper.

But the Sunday paper is different. It's larger -- considerably larger -- because it has extra sections for weekly op/ed pieces, for business and society pages that are only printed on Sunday. For Parade magazine. And for the onslaught of circulars and coupon sheets that really make the Sunday paper worth buying.

And these weren't there.

So I reported the paper as missing using the Globe's Web site, and I'm sure I'll be credited. But I'm still out this week's coupons, and that pisses me off. And after having gotten back from my father in law's annual Independence Day cookout (yes, a day early, I know) at 11:03 PM in the evening, it's too damn late and I'm too damn tired to go find one.

Posted by flargh at 11:03 PM | Permalink

My recent entry on summer vacation was in mind when I read a report in the Boston Globe (available to subscribers only, but free to register) that notes teacher salaries in this state have been rising faster than the national average -- up an average of 37 percent in the last decade, compared to 31 percent nationwide.

The rise in Mass. teachers' salaries is not the real story here, however: It's about raises that aren't pegged to achievement and mandated without any apparent thought of how they'll be funded.

I don't begrudge teachers their income -- it's a tough job, and they deserve to get paid a good wage for the jobs that they do, even if they do get two months off when the rest of the world has to work. And, as one person quoted in the Globe article wryly noted, no one ever got rich being a teacher.

But the bottom line is that teachers get the raises whether they deserve them or not -- it's not pegged to performance or achievement, and a teacher who's bad will get the same raise as a teacher who's good -- as long as they stay in the school system long enough. That's a lousy system.

There should be some merit-based compensation system in place here, and an effort should be made to replace teachers who are just going through the motions, counting the days until they can collect a pension. I had enough of those lousy, ineffective educators in my own life to really have a sour taste in my mouth about public academia as soon as I graduated, and I think it had a lot to do with why I never successfully went back. There are just so many lousy and mediocre teachers, and so few good ones that actually inspire or encourage.

I'm sorry to say that my kids continue to deal with those same speedbumps today -- teachers who have figured out a way to work the system, or just don't like what they do anymore, and are more trouble than they're worth, but more trouble to replace than the school system is willing to deal with, either. This system was busted almost 30 years ago when I entered it, and it's still broken, near as I can tell.

What's more, the way the money is actually distributed to pay these teachers is screwed up beyond belief. The state can mandate a pay increase as negotiated with the teachers' union, but it's up to the individual cities and towns to budget for it. This is one of those cases where I believe collective bargaining is a big mistake, at least the way it's implemented here. There are certainly other, more fundamental problems with the way that money is allocated for school systems here in Massachusetts that exacerbates this greatly.

So if the town's payroll comes up short, rather than scaling back teachers' pay, or doing away with the raises all together, they simply have to lay off the teachers they can't afford. That way, the remaining teachers get their promised raises. And class sizes increase, sometimes dramatically. That overburdens the teachers who are left as they try to manage more kids and bigger workloads.

Ultimately, it's the kids who suffer in the end because of it. Is that a good system? Hell no.

Posted by flargh at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Post facto editing time: I misspoke in my earlier rant about Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields -- what they're doing has nothing to do with freedom of speech at all, which of course has everything to do with the citizens' right to assemble free of government interference (a good lesson to remember this Independence Day weekend).

Posted by flargh at 11:42 AM | Permalink

Thus ends the first week of our kids' summer vacation, and Bonnie and I have started to wonder how we'll survive the next two months.

Call me a scrooge, but I don't really see the point of summer vacation in this day and age -- it's very disruptive to kids and parents alike, and it seems mainly to be a way for school systems to avoid paying the cost of keeping facilities cool in the summertime more than anything, because the last time I checked, teachers were getting paid an average amount that seems like a living annual wage: An average of $51,942 in Massachusetts for the 2002-2003 academic school year, according to the American Federation of Teachers, which ranked us at the time eighth in the nation. Not bad for only having to work ten months out of the year.

This year, Bonnie and I have intentionally not overburdened our kids with a ton of activities during the summer break. Last year they did a week at a day camp (where James broke his arm) and had a smattering of other activities as well. This year, we'll just take each day or week as it comes without a lot of expectation that we need to keep the kids busy. Frankly, the family's schedule was frantic enough during the school year; it's a good time for all of us to take a break, I think.

The weather hasn't exactly been cooperative, and I feel bad for anyone who took last week as a summer vacation on Cape Cod. It was vile the entire week, sodden and cool. Centerville, a village of Barnstable (where Hyannis is), is just due east of us, and every time we went up there this week, it was draped in heavy fog and mist. Yesterday we had at times torrential downpours. That's good, I suppose -- we've had a dry spell of late, and I'm sure the vegetation benefitted from the precipitation.

But the mugginess has left me with the windows locked and the air conditioners on just to get the moisture out of the air. Unless you've got a breeze, which we haven't for the most part, the weather makes you feel positively leaden.

Fortunately, fate has smiled upon us this Independence Day weekend: They're predicting decent weather now, which is good, as we're due to go to my father/sister in law's for the annual big family cookout on the beach. Somehow Independence Day weekend just wouldn't be the same without some grilled meat at the Nowik/Neuberts' house.

Posted by flargh at 10:26 AM | Permalink

You guys are friggin' actors. I'm no more interested in either of your opinions on post-partum depression or the validity of psychiatry as a medical field or psychopharmacology as a form of treatment than I am in having my auto mechanic -- whom I respect and admire greatly when it comes to diagnosing a leaking oil pan or replacing a water pump -- figure out what's wrong with my back.

Freedom of speech rocks: It lets celebrities make public spectacles of themselves by espousing their whackadoodle beliefs on morning television and publish books about subjects they're not qualified to talk about. Too bad there's a celebrity culture in this country that actually makes both actions viable, however.

To anyone who actually watches Entertainment Tonight or Inside Edition seriously: There's a lot of other enriching, interesting and entertaining television to watch, folks. Even better, turn off the TV, read a book and learn something. Tom and Brooke might be pretty to look at, but you're better off doing some research and forming your own opinion than basing what you think you know off what some famous guy (or gal) has to say.

Posted by flargh at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)