Tikkabik

In years past Bonnie and I have spent a lot of money at Suncoast Video -- a national video sales chain that occupies space in malls. Ever since their sale to the same company that owns Best Buy, the chain has been in decline, and more than a year ago the local store near us closed. It was a sad day.

While I had no illusions of having a relationship with the corporate entity that owned the store, I was friendly -- on a first name basis, actually -- with most of the staff. And I genuinely liked them. They were movie geeks, to be certain. My kinda people. The kind of people who you could describe an obscure scene to or quote some dialogue to and they'd know instantly what movie you were looking for. Which, not coincidentally, I'm sure, was the focus of a Suncoast TV ad campaign one year.

The way in which the store closed was most abrupt. Their lease was up for renewal, and the company didn't renew it -- but they didn't warn the employees, either -- literally locked the gate on them and told them to clear out with only a few minutes' notice (apparently to reduce the likelihood of theft).

Anyway, since they've closed, they've been replaced by a Hot Topic which Bonnie and I frequent more often than I should admit. I've stayed in touch with one of the guys who used to work at Suncoast, mainly because he's a serial retail employee who's worked at three other places in that same mall since Suncoast closed.

But the manager -- a gregarious, furry round fellow named Bob -- went MIA. I always appreciated his attention in the store, since he'd let me peruse their advance release lists, take my preorders, listen attentively as I complained about this minuta or that issue, and would often keep me in mind if new stock came in that he thought would interest me.

Earlier this week I took Bonnie and the kids out for lunch. Next door to the restaurant is a gaming store called The Gathering. It's the sort of place I would have adored at 13 -- chock full of D&D, Warhammer 40,000 gear, card games, board games, and rife with LAN-connected computers and video game consoles. A real game geek paradise.

There, behind the counter, was Bob.

Turns out he's pals with the guy who owns the place. He's also the leader of the Warhammer 40,000 sessions they have each weekend.

I should have figured.

Anyway, it's reassuring to know that Bob landed safely, with another gig that's as uniquely suited for his geeky sensibilities as his last job. Some things don't change, and they shouldn't.

Posted by flargh at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm patiently biding my time and doing a bit of work in the last few hours before the kids' grandmother takes them for the most of the weekend. Bonnie and I (and Max) will have the house to ourselves for tonight and tomorrow as of about mid-afternoon.

As usual, the kids are causing a ruckus, but there are some funny moments too.

This morning as I was working on my coffee I saw James marching around the living room in circles. He was holding a stuffed animal on his head like a hat -- it was a large, round pink stuffed pig we got at a rummage sale some time ago.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"The Pig-On-Head Ritual," James responded solemnly.

I daren't ask anything else. I don't want to know.

Posted by flargh at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If there's one thing you can be assured of in New England at Christmastime, it's that winter is on the way. Living on Cape Cod, we're not accustomed to having "white Christmases", as it were -- in fact, we get them less than 20 percent of the time, if the local meteorologists are to be believed.

Still, it's usually quite chilly, and it's clear that it's only a matter of time before the ground has a layer of snow on it. Not this year, however.

I was able to go outside a few times today without even wearing a jacket, in short sleeves -- it's actually in the low 50s, which is damn near tropical for this time of year. And while it's expected to cool down a bit over the weekend, it's supposed to remain above freezing straight through New Year's Day.

It's cloudy and raining (lightly), but not that I'm complaining. We don't have to shovel rain.

Posted by flargh at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, my company offered up yesterday as a holiday, and many others did as well. So we had a nice lazy three day weekend to recover from Sunday's burst of activity, and spent most of it laying low.

We'd had enough lounging around by late afternoon, though, so we gathered up the kids and headed out around suppertime. Our first stop was the local Target store -- Bonnie spied a couple of good deals on things we really needed, like new underwear for her and Emmeline -- then we went to dinner at Applebee's.

I don't know if it's just residual energy from the day before, the time of year, or what, but my children's behavior is, in general, aggravating the hell out of me, especially when we go out in public. I know I should be thankful they're all reasonably healthy and well-adjusted, but there are a few things that totally drive me crazy -- like having to repeat myself five or six times before what I'm saying finally sinks in, or repeatedly asking a child not to do something (like run away from us in a department store, for example) and having the child disobey me.

Today doesn't seem to be a lot better -- we're following the same pattern as we have for a few weeks now, where Bonnie and I ask the kids to do something (take your pills, brush your teeth, pack your bag for the overnight at the hotel with Grandpa tonight) and have to repeat it four, five, six times before the command is followed.

Maybe I'm expecting too much. Or maybe I'm letting something bother me that shouldn't. Or maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. All I know is that it's annoying.

Posted by flargh at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The game's been around for a while, but we haven't had the chance or the budget to pick it up. Being able to pick up Taiko Drum Master for only $10 each before Christmas was a deal I couldn't resist.

We bought two of them, one for me and one (in the interest of evening out who got what) for Emmeline, both marked as from Santa. Both of the packages included the game, but both of them also included the drum itself -- a replacement for the Dual Shock analog controller that looks like a tiny taiko drum, a traditional Japanese drum.

Another music-based rhythm game, Taiko Drum Master has you pounding out rhythms to a variety of pop, classic and video game songs, and it's a lot of fun without being impossibly hard. Depending on the level of difficulty you have to match various beats, beat out drum rolls, and tap either on the center or rim of the drum. The effect is completed with the inclusion of a pair of plastic drumsticks with which to beat your tiny taiko drum.

I played a few games against Emme and James this afternoon. Despite his young age, James resoundingly beat his sister, reaffirming his mother's suspicion that James is a natural drummer.

I, of course, beat them both.

Posted by flargh at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

These "December to Remember" ads from Lexus really hack me off.

Cue beautiful-looking middle-aged guy with grey on the temples or his hot young (second or third) wife, in the jewelry store or other high-end retail boutique looking for the perfect Christmas present and coming up short -- after all, how many Cartier watches can one self-indulgent member of the upper class wear? Then in a moment of inspiration, they figure out what they'll buy their significant other: A Lexus.

What a load of unmitigated bullshit.

I realize that Lexuses are luxury vehicles, but does anyone -- except maybe the super rich, or those that are being blackmailed -- actually go out and buy one for someone else as a friggin' gift?

Puh-leeze.

In the category of commercials I like, anything by United Airlines. Don't care how many times I hear it, don't care how many variations they make, I never, ever get tired of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. And their latest spots, featuring these animated line drawn-style illustrations of people on job interviews or sales pitches speaks to their audience, obviously.

Posted by flargh at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It was about 2 o'clock this afternoon when I realized I still needed to grab stuff for the kids' stockings, as well as a few cosmetic items that Bonnie had requested. So there I am, at the local pharmacy, along with all the other last-minute Christmas shoppers.

The parking lot was terrifying. Normally I can park right around the corner from the pharmacy and walk right in. There wasn't a single space to be found anywhere in the parking lot, except for a few unmarked spots literally in back of the building, where the delivery trucks pull up to unload their wares.

When I walked in, there were four lines to the register -- each line at least 10 shoppers long.

Amazingly, by the time I left, the lines had dwindled to just two shoppers each -- I think I must have come in at the very peak. Either that, or when one or two of the cashiers had just returned from break.

I got everything on the list then made the dash next door to the grocery store to pick up a few last minute provisions, then bolted home.

As I was pulling in the driveway, I realized I'd forgotten to get anything for the cat -- Emmeline had asked Santa to bring him treats, and I knew she'd have a fit if the cat was forgotten. Then Bonnie reminded me when I came back inside that we needed to pick up a card for my brother in law and his wife, who just had a new baby.

So I went back out, this time to a different grocery store.

Now I'm home, hopefully for the evening. But we'll see.

Posted by flargh at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of our favorite games is to look for pictures of our kids and kids we know in the local newspaper. This week's paper features a front page image of trio of sisters who are known to us, sitting on Santa's lap.

The eldest girl's name is Norway. She used to play with Emmeline and they've been involved in similar activities, so they're friends. Bonnie has a complete mental block on this girl's name. The other day she said, "Oh, that's the mother of ... uh ... Denmark ..."

"Norway?"

"Yeah, Norway. I knew it was some European country."

Her younger sister's name is Sinead. James and she are in the same kindergarten class. James is still at the stage where girls are strange, alien creatures. He only plays with boys at school.

I showed the picture to James and Emme. "Do you know anyone here?" I asked.

Emme peered at it for a bit and said, "Oh, yeah, that's my friend Norway."

"James, do you see anyone you recognize?"

"Santa," he said to me.

"Anyone else?"

"Sinead," he grudgingly admitted, eventually.

Posted by flargh at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mentally, I was done with Christmas before the season even started, but now I really mean it -- a last-minute trip to Wal-Mart to get two last things on the boys' Christmas list, a couple of gift cards, and we're done, just in time. The only thing I have left to go is some stocking stuffers -- candy and the like -- for the kids, but I can do that at the pharmacy or at the grocery store tonight or tomorrow, no rush.

The Christmas tree has been slowly filling up with gifts over the last couple of weeks as Bonnie has been arduously wrapping presents. We also got a couple of boxes of stuff from the kids' paternal grandfather and his significant other, who were very generous this year (and, near as we can tell, gave the kids a ton of books, which we appreciate).

You can feel the kids' anticipation, which has led to a few embarrassing moments in stores and elsewhere in public, as they have had a few meltdowns, but mostly they've been good this year, which I appreciate.

Besides the stocking stuffers, my last Christmas-related chore will be to wrap Bonnie's gifts (those that I can wrap -- her "big" gift was the renewal of an expensive anime magazine she likes). That I'll do tomorrow, because I procrastinate.

And then I'm REALLY done with it.

Posted by flargh at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had a victory this week when we met with officials from the Department of Mental Health (DMH). Both Robert and Emmeline qualify for services -- it's been a bit of an arduous process to get to this point, involving the filling out of copious volumes of paperwork, having clinicians and therapists sign off on stuff, and having an interview by one of their intake people.

One of the DMH reps present at the meeting was boggled by the difficulty we've had securing services from the town of Mashpee for Robert in particular. She said this never would have happened where she's from -- South Florida. Yeah, that's right. Where police taser uncooperative six-year-olds. That sort of puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

It's a bit odd for us, given that difficulty, suddenly dealing with a state agency that actually seems to want to be helpful and useful, rather than obstructionist. Let's hope it's a trend that's here to stay.

But now that we are covered, we can actually try to get Robert and Emmeline some additional help through state-funded services and programs they haven't had access to before. Fortunately for us, we have a great ally in the form of a woman who runs a parent support group we attend regularly, who's experienced with the ins and outs of DMH. She was there with us when we met with the DMH people.

What does this mean? For the short term, nothing -- the holidays put a crimp in everyone's schedules, obviously. But sometime in January we'll meet again to discuss how we can work together. More to report on this later.

Posted by flargh at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Christmas is bearing down upon us like a freight train with a brake failure. We're not yet done with our shopping, but most of the major stuff is off the list. I'm continuing to grind my teeth and dread it -- I really can't help it. As much as I feel guilty about it, I still hate this time of year.

Part of it stems from work-related stuff: We have Christmas, we have New Year's Day, then we have Macworld Expo in San Francisco -- arguably our busiest week of the year, workwise. So there's three weeks in late December and early January that disappear.

Speaking of Macworld Expo, I've made my travel reservations -- I'm flying out on the 7th and coming back on the 14th. Hopefully everything will be okay back here at the ranch while I'm gone.

Posted by flargh at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry to be a buzzkill, but here's a sobering thought:

Almost 128,000 British kids will be homeless this Christmas Day, according to a new report published by a U.K. housing charity.

Estimates suggest that on any given night, about 1.2 million kids are homeless here in the U.S.

Meanwhile, people beat each other up for a chance at a cheap laptop during Wal-Mart's Christmas sales.

'Tis the season.

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

Literally. We finally got a plumber out yesterday to hook up a new gas line for our hand-me-down stove, which has been sitting on the porch for a couple of weeks.

The new stove works great and looks a damn site better than its predecessor. I've already used the oven twice -- once to bake cookies for Emmeline's teacher, whose last day in the classroom is today, and once to make lunch for Bonnie and me. A solid home improvement, I'd say.

Posted by flargh at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...it's my birthday too, yeah.

No, seriously. It really *is* my birthday. I'm 36 today. Woo.

Don't have a lot planned for today -- I had a nice dinner at my mother's house last night, and Bonnie, the kids and I will have cake tonight. Otherwise, it's pretty low-key, which is just how I like it.

Posted by flargh at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Our IT manager recently updated the software we use to trap spam. It's now regularly grabbing between 700 - 1000 spams a day from my primary account.

And that's not everything.

That's just depressing.

Posted by flargh at 07:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wooly Jim


Originally uploaded by flargh.

Pardon the graininess, but I snapped this with my cameraphone. Here's my boss giving me the stinkeye, with his best Osama Bin Dalrymple/Saddam-fresh-from-the-spiderhole facial hair.



The family's reaction:



Robert, Emmeline and James all screamed in terror, then laughed hysterically.



Bonnie remarked that Jim's moustache is almost long enough to start braiding, like a dwarf from Lord of the Rings.

Posted by flargh at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hans Eisenbeis has an interesting piece in today's Boston Globe entitled El Camino syndrome?

He talks about Microsoft's new Xbox 360 and a quandary facing consumers nowadays -- to wit, the proliferation of devices that try to do too much, and end up confusing consumers.

This issue is central to Nintendo's philosophy towards its development of the Revolution, which has already taken some hits for its relative lack of horsepower compared to the forthcoming PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, and for the unusual design of its controller, which more closely resembles a TV remote than it does a gamepad.

In interviews, Nintendo's ranking officials note that video gaming has become too complicated and that mainstream consumers are unnecessarily intimidated by complicated controls and lousy interfaces. I couldn't agree more. While the game business is booming -- or at least it has been for several years now -- a lot of people still don't play games, because they just don't get them, and they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars for the privilege of finding that out.

To support his hypothesis, Eisenbeis points to a string of multifunction products that should have succeeded but didn't -- Chevy's El Camino chiefly among them (from the front, a passenger car, from the back, a pickup truck) ... hence the name of the article.

Part of it is just a question of design, Eisenbeis admits. "These capabilities hide behind strange symbols and inscrutable buttons. They frustrate and irritate consumers, who don't want to spend the time or energy to figure out whether they're any use."

That may be one of the secrets to the iPod's success. Despite the fact that the market is polluted with products that have better feature sets -- FM radios, voice recorders, the ability to stream audio from other devices and more -- the iPod has won the major market share in the portable digital music player market. I think it's partly because the iPod is as easy to use as falling off a log, and it's also because Apple owns a terrific ecosystem in both the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.

Early users of the Xbox 360 have been impressed with its ease of use not only as a gaming system but also as a media center. It's clear that Microsoft has invested a lot of time making the device as easy to use as possible if you're planning on basing your entertainment system around the console experience. And ultimately, as the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Will the Xbox 360 buck the odds and become the next can't-live-without digital device? At a $400 cost of entry and a temporary but real constraint on availability, I don't see it happening any time soon, but over time, it's certainly possible.

Posted by flargh at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's very rare I bring the family to the movies -- for a family of five, it's an expensive proposition. at $6.50 per ticket for my three kids and $9.25 each for Bonnie and me, plus a bucket of popcorn and drinks, I'm out $60 by the time I'm through. Compared to $15 or $20 for a DVD, it's just not worth it most of the time.

So it has to be a really special movie to get us all to the theater, especially, given my pathological loathing of crowds, on opening weekend -- and so it was for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which we took the kids to see last night.

As it turned out, there was a perfect confluence of events to make it happen. On Friday New England got belted with its first serious snowstorm. And while the Cape didn't get a lot of snow, we were pummelled with hours of high winds -- enough that the electricity in our neighborhood got knocked out from the middle of the afternoon straight through the middle of the evening.

Given that we had no heat and no way to prepare dinner, it only made sense to go out someplace warm and lit, so Bonnie and I made our way (through miles of traffic) to the local mall to have dinner and catch a film. The weather kept the crowds away.

Best of all, since it was opening night, they had games and activities for the kids, and each of them won a prize -- Emme got a poster, Bob got a CD of the film's soundtrack, and James got a Narnia T-shirt.

As it turns out, Andrew Adamson did a masterful job of bringing this movie to the big screen. And the actors who played the Pevensie children all did fantastic work. The special effects work was superlative -- there was hardly an unbelievable or unrealistic moment on screen, which is exceptional when you consider the film is filled with fawns, talking lions, centaurs, griffins and all other manners of mythical creatures.

Before it opened, a huge amount has been made about how Narnia is supposed to appeal to Christian movie goers. If you were concerned about it, don't worry too much -- ultimately, the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is about sacrifice and forgiveness, especially within the context of the family unit. Christian values, to be sure, but hardly unique to Christianity -- and ample fodder for an adventure film.

Posted by flargh at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got back from a whirlwind two day business trip out to the West Coast and back -- left the house at about 3:45 AM on Monday and arrived back on Wednesday afternoon.

The trip included a "red eye" flight in the wee hours of Wednesday, and I'm convinced I'm just not cut out for such expeditions. I was exhausted by the time I'd stepped off the plane, having not slept a wink and expending a great deal of energy just trying to find a comfortable position to rest with my eyes closed for a few hours.

Arrived to find that the weather was an easy 30 degrees cooler than where I'd left, with some snow on the ground. Whee.

Posted by flargh at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)