Tikkabik

You know, I'm not even slightly prudish, and Lord only knows that I'm inclined to swear like a sailor. But this pegged my bullshit-meter into the red.

Brooke Anderson at CNN interviewed Rick Haskins, the executive vice president of marketing for the CW television network, about a new ad campaign for their popular teen drama "Gossip Girl," about randy debutants in New York City. If you haven't seen it, imagine The O.C. or Beverly Hills 90210 set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It's flashy and trashy, but it's really no different than any of the prime-time soap crap we've been polluting ourselves since Dynasty and Dallas. That's not the problem, from where I'm sitting.

The CW's new ad campaign features posters of two teens locked in a pretty obviously carnal embrace, which on its own was enough to send Puritan ninnies like the Parents Television Council into the stratosphere over the usual problems -- the glorification of people using their genitals for pleasure rather than just the sober creation of new life, and daring to do so on television, where children might be watching, because, you know, the TV is a cheap babysitter.

But what jacked them up even further was the CW's decision to use the Internet acronym OMFG -- Oh My F**king God -- in the ad as well.

When Anderson interviewed Haskins, he coyly defended the use of the acronym, and suggested that if you ask ten different people what it means, you'll get ten different responses. Seriously. That's what this guy said. Haskins is smirking as he delivers this galling line of horsecrap.

I can't quite tell if that smile is the cat who ate the mouse -- a Hollywood studio exec knowing that he's getting free air time for his ad campaign and will come out smelling like a rose regardless of what happens -- or someone who's being forced to eat shit on national TV and pretend that it's filet mignon.

What I do know is that he's too goddamn old for that haircut. Brand Yourself, indeed. What happens when the brand you've created is "Asshole™?"

Anderson's straw poll of people on the street reveals a pretty uniform and consistent understanding of what OMFG actually stands for.

Listen, I'm not one to restrict free speech in advertising or anywhere else in our country, but there's an issue of basic corporate responsibility here. For Pete's sake, CW. Grow up and act like adults, even if your job is to pander to kids.

Posted by flargh at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's the last day of the kids' April vacation, which started on Monday of last week. We had a pretty quiet one this time around.

A while back we drove down to Florida to spend the week with my in-laws, during an April vacation that coincided with Easter weekend, so we were able to get an early start by leaving the day before Good Friday, which gave us a head start on the long trek southward.

Both my in-laws and my kids asked if we could do it again this year, but our budget is tight, and we could afford neither the plane tickets nor the gas to get down and back, so we told them back in February that we didn't think we were going to get to Florida.

The kids resigned themselves to spending the week around the house, but they had a good time in spite of their restrictions. Emmeline had an overnight with her friend Vicky, James had an overnight with his friend Jamison, and Robert is in the midst of an overnight with his friend Joey as we speak -- and all of them spent an evening with Grandma at a local hotel with a pool and a breakfast buffet, and from what I hear, that also went swimmingly well.

Bonnie and I, meanwhile, are in the midst of a few different onerous responsibilities, and neither of us are feeling very well for totally unrelated reasons. I guess it's best, all things considered, that we'll be back to our usual routine tomorrow. The day is a bit gray and grim outside, and the clouds are threatening rain. Seems like a somber end to this year's April vacation.

Posted by flargh at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made my travel reservation for WWDC, for anyone who keeps tabs on such things. I'll be coming to SF on Sunday, June 8th and leaving on the red-eye that Friday. (Friday the 13th, woo!)

Posted by flargh at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave is a childcare worker who occasionally watches our brood when we bring them to a parent support group that Bonnie coordinates. He's a really nice guy -- a very gentle man, and really patient with the kids and kind. We like him a great deal, and he's helped Robert and Emme to get into Dungeons & Dragons without any intervention from me (outside of picking up game accessories, books and such when I can find a great deal on them).

Unfortunately, the meetings aren't exactly the most conducive atmosphere to have a D&D game. Quarters are cramped, and James is a bit too young for it, and if there are other kids there, it's a big distraction. So we've been hoping for a while that Dave could come down and have a proper D&D game, and with the kids on vacation this week, he was able to.

They ended up playing for about four or five hours yesterday and had a great time. Robert and Emmeline are both at the perfect age to start to play D&D, and Dave's a great DM, much better than I could be. Hopefully we'll get to do it again soon.

Posted by flargh at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Comcast:

Your ad with the woman saying "More more more" lip-syncing from Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" is horrible. Please, make it go away.

Posted by flargh at 07:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The better part of a year -- well, nine months, anyway, have passed, since The Frickin' Van's engine blew, and it's sat patiently in a corner of the driveway since then waiting for me to do something -- anything -- to it. It hasn't happened yet.

I've gone back and forth on whether to fix it or just get rid of it several times. Fixing it is going to cost $2000 for a new -- well, a recovered -- engine. That's a lot of scratch to come up with out of nowhere, and I haven't been able to save it. Bonnie and, for the most part, survive paycheck to paycheck.

But at the same time, I realize that two grand won't get us anything close to the same level of size and comfort as we have with that van. Hell, I'd be lucky to score a busted-up Ford Escort station wagon for that kind of money. So *not* fixing the van doesn't seem like a good option, either.

Anyway, my realization that I had to something with it came to the fore this past week when I opened up the front door and found a business card on the welcome mat that someone had apparently left wedged in the storm door -- it was for a vehicle disposal service.

So I'm looking into it again, and once we have gotten through some long-overdue house cleaning, I'm planning on spending a few days at least cleaning the van up so I can take another appraisal on whether it's still worth fixing.

Posted by flargh at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Commentary: An 'average' American will never be president - CNN.com: "Listening to the punditry today, you would think folks who revel in the comedy of Larry the Cable Guy or Katt Williams really would have a shot at the White House.

"It's totally absurd."

Posted by flargh at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've learned today through Jim Dalrymple that Stan Flack, MacCentral's co-founder, passed away. Even though it had been some time since I had spoken with Stan, and even longer since I had seen him, I'm still very sad to hear the news.

My association with MacCentral started with a phone call from Stan. He and Dave Moser introduced themselves to me during a conversation that ultimately led to my sale of MacGaming.com to MacCentral, and their retention of me on a part-time basis to cover the Mac game beat.

At the time, I was working full-time in IT, managing the computer systems of a regional newspaper publisher. And I was desperately unhappy. Although I had the knowledge to do it, I didn't have the right temperament for IT, and the company I worked for wasn't very expertly managed, either. It didn't help that I was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, had a crushing commute and was put in charge of managing computers at three different facilities spread over most of Cape Cod (and ultimately had to travel an hour north to Marshfield at least once a week too).

I had originally created my own Web page years before as a way of learning HTML, and over time it had turned into a complete Web site updated with daily news from the world of Mac gaming, reviews and other information. I poured a lot of effort into it, and it paid off: While I wasn't smart enough to monetize it with ad revenue, I was getting plenty of free games and game peripherals for my trouble, and more than that, a steady reader base and recognition in the Mac game business as a good news resource.

Stan, Dave Moser and Jim saw an opportunity to expand their coverage in an area they didn't have much of a foothold in, and I came on board part-time, in addition to my regular job.

At first I wrote game news specifically, but Stan and Jim pretty quickly recognized that I could be flexible enough to cover the regular Mac news of the day as well.

Interestingly, our relationship was entirely virtual, conducted over the phone and by e-mail. I met Stan and the rest of the MacCentral gang (minus Jim, who stayed back that time) when he invited me to come help MacCentral cover Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Up to then I'd gone to the shows in a strictly civilian role. I took time off from my full-time job to prevent any conflict, and found the whole group to be a lot of fun to work with.

Stan in particular was very driven towards success -- he had a strong entrepreneurial streak, and he expected everyone to work as hard and to take the job seriously. While we may not have had a huge budget -- or really, any budget, we proved to everyone in the business that MacCentral could cover events like Macworld Expo better than even the best-heeled publications of the day. We were a force to be reckoned with, and I knew at that point that I'd found what I wanted to do with my life.

Eventually MacCentral was sold to Mac Publishing, the company that publishes Macworld, and on that day, I became a full-time Macworld employee. It happened at the right time, as less than two months before I had lost my IT job, part of a restructuring layoff the H.R. manager grimly referred to as "the Easter parade."

It was no surprise to me that Stan left Macworld not too long after it was sold. A person with such a strong, independent spirit would have found being part of a larger enterprise to be uncomfortable, especially after being his own boss for so long.

It wasn't too long afterwards that Stan resurfaced with his MacMinute.com Web site, plugging away in the same spirit with which he had started MacCentral.

One of the obvious downsides of telecommuting is "out of sight, out of mind." It's not easy to maintain a professional or personal relationship with someone who's a significant distance away from you unless both of you are both really committed to making such a relationship work.

Unfortunately, this proved to be true with Stan and me. He moved to Spain, got re-married, got divorced, moved to the U.K., then back to North America. I was busy with my Macworld job and my job as a father to three kids. I would, from time to time, drop him a line and say hello, but we never regained the daily phone calls and e-mails that had once dominated our relationship. We were, after all, professional rivals, so there was a distance that couldn't be easily navigated.

Regardless of the time and distance involved, I remember the time I had spent with Stan as very formative in my career as a Mac journalist and I'm grateful that he thought enough of my skills to pull me into the fold when he did. Along with many others whose orbits intersect with the Macintosh, Apple, and the myriad products that comprise this market, I mourn Stan's passing.

Posted by flargh at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So at my friend Paul's behest I got the kids Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii sooner rather than later -- he told me how much fun his own boys had had with it since they got it around Easter. It's pretty much all they've been playing since.

One thing I think is interesting, though -- rather than playing with the Wii Remote, they opt for the GameCube controllers. They're much more comfortable with them than the Wii Remote. Now I read that Nintendo is readying a new controller in Japan for the Wii that's essentially the GameCube controller in white plastic, to match the Wii. Guess my kids aren't the only ones.

Posted by flargh at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever hook up a set of speakers or a headset to your computer and suddenly realize that all the music you've ripped to MP3 sounds like absolute shit, because you're hearing it clearly for the first time?

Posted by flargh at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I woke up this morning it was sunny and warm outside, and now it's gross, cold and grey.

I'd be really happy if we finally get some springish spring weather, at least before summer hits.

Posted by flargh at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This entry is only of interest to Cape Cod Mac geeks who might be reading this, but the guys at Cape Mac have moved their Falmouth store location from where it was on Teaticket Highway in Falmouth (across from the McDonalds) to the same plaza where Gladstone Furniture, Kenyon's Market and the UPS Store is (about 2 miles up Rte. 28, closer to Mashpee).

This location takes the place of both that Falmouth store and the Mashpee store in the Roche Bros. plaza, which closed when the A/V reseller that they were sharing space with shuttered.

They're open today for the first time, but are planning a "grand opening" on May 3rd. Make sure to stop in and buy something -- independent Mac resellers need all the help we can give them these days. Apple don't make it easy.

Posted by flargh at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So now that I've cleaned up the cable mess behind my entertainment center, I'm trying to figure out inexpensive ways to maximize what I have. One thing I'd really like to do sooner rather than later is ceiling-mount my projector.

I want to do this for a number of reasons: For one thing, my projector is balanced rather precariously on top of the entertainment center at the moment. It's not at the optimum height, so every time someone walks by it or in front of it, they block the projected image on the screen. If someone's trying to play a video game, this is more than distracting -- it's potentially game-ending.

Also, the entertainment center isn't perfectly level, and that crookedness is magnified as the image projects up to 80 inches, so it's impossible to see a level image without doing stupid things like sticking a kitchen trivet or dvd case under one side of the projector. And while the projector lets me adjust things like keystone (the trapezoidal shape of the image to counter distortion created by projecting up or down), it doesn't let me adjust level.

Finally, the projector is a relatively "short throw" model. Keeping it at the distance it's at right now means the image is bigger and a bit less sharp than it really should be. I need to shorten that length by at least three or four feet to get to the right distance from the screen.

My problem is that I don't want to get a bracket especially made for the projector -- what happens if I upgrade the unit? So I'm shopping around for a "shelf" of sorts I'll be able to bolt to the ceiling. Then I'll run some piping along the ceiling and back wall to cart the cable -- that's basic commodity stuff I can get easily from Home Depot. But does anyone have a recommendation for an inexpensive, attractive shelving apparatus I can put on the ceiling?

Posted by flargh at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few weeks ago the center channel on my stereo stopped working -- any time we watched a movie on DVD or cable, the channel that carried most of the dialogue and sound effects was absent.

It was easy enough to work around -- I just had to switch the receiver to stereo mode, which streamed audio to the left and right speakers, specifically, avoiding the center channel all together. But clearly it wasn't a fix.

I suspected it was a problem with the wiring to the speakers, rather than the receiver itself. I had speaker cables back there that I'd been using for a couple of decades, and I had little doubt that something was squirrely. So on Sunday I moved the entertainment center forward a couple of feet and began unraveling the Gordian Knot of cable that had amassed there since we moved into this house in 2001.

What I soon discovered was horrifying -- a congealed lump of patch cables and speakers coated in a thick layer of dust and cat fur. As I'd upgraded and replaced the cables for various components -- moving from composite to SVHS to component to HDMI video, for example, I'd run new cable but hadn't bothered to remove the old stuff, figuring out of site was out of mind.

The net result was, that in addition to pulling probably about 30 feet of "bad" speaker cable, I also yanked another five or ten pounds of unused patch cables.

Now they're sitting next to the living room sofa staring angrily at me, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.

But for what it's worth, I fixed the problem, and we have 5.1 sound again.

Posted by flargh at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey, Blu-ray Disc makers -- don't bother sticking trailers on the discs I'm buying or renting convincing me of the wonders of Blu-ray. I already have the player, idiots.

Posted by flargh at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)