Review Blogging
But before I start that, I must say how nice it is to have Paul posting things of substance while I get to drivel about music, movies, TV and such. Good on ya brother.

Now, the fluff:
I borrowed the divids of the first season of "24" from the Enigmatic Misanthropes and have finally pushed through the whole set. Whew. I understand now why people like it so much. It starts slamming right out of the gate with the exit from and subsequent destruction of an airliner by the first of the bad guys (in this case a bad girl) at the end of the first hour. And it just doesn't let up. The fact that the writers manage to go from a first set of bad guys to the next set of bad guys who are even worse to yet another set of bad guys who are worse yet is truly impressive. All the motivations are in place and the plot twists gyre like, well, let my borrow from a master:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

(BTW: If you don't recognize that, shame on you!) It seems as good an epigraph for the series as any I can imagine and, a stanza from a great poem is, even in the debased currency of Hollywood, proper tribute to great writing.
Having praised the show, I now need to join the law firm of Bitch, Carp and Moan. The female leads are just not my cup of tea. The fact that Jack Bauer is married to one and had an affair with the other makes me question his taste in women but that's not a material criticism. What I find interesting is that the women (Leslie Hope and Sarah Clarke) have a passing physical similarity which makes sense. If Jack Bauer were attracted to one, he probably would be to the other. That's smart casting even if they don't float my peculiar boat.
On the other hand, Jack's daughter, played by Elisha Cuthbert I actively hate. If her character had a brain in her head, she never would have put herself in the situations that lead to the peril played out over the course of the day. But then there'd never be a show so my complaint is moot. However: Dee you em bee See you in Toledo. Moreover, I'll be happy if I never see Elisha Cutherbert again. She has, in the inelegant if accurate words of Chandler Bing, a "face ass" (cleft chin). OK, so there'd never be an offer but, no thanks. Pity the daughter survives while the wife cacks.
One salient screwup in the last episode is Victor Drazen's semiautomatic handgun. He and Jack Bauer are gun-point to gun-point and Drazen pulls the trigger causing the gun to go "click, click, click." Bauer then blows Drazen away. However, as anyone who knows handguns knows, when a semiauto runs through its magazine, the slide racks back and locks. After a new magazine is inserted, the shooter pulls the slide back, unlocking it and chambering a round from the magazine. I suppose it's possible with a malfunction that the slide might not chamber a round in which case the gun would click on an empty chamber. But such a malfunction is a slim thread to hang a tale on.
One lingering question is include why Senator Palmer keeps trying to sell me Allstate insurance. But that's a matter for another day.

I had the great luxury of watching the show at my own pace, commercial free. I sincerely hope my friends keep buying the seasonal DVD packages so I can continue to leech off them. Isn't that why we have friends?

I FORGOT: Two glaring continuity errors that may be artifacts of the divid and not have been visible on TV. At one point CTU turncoat Nina is in a building looking for something when a production worker appears almost dirtectly in front of her (though to one side of the scene). Then, again the same thing at the tpoint Jack's wife and daughter are about to be rescued from their initial captivity. The daughter says something like "There's nobody around for miles!" just as a production guy comes into the camera frame agin almost directl in front of her. Of course the payoff of the line she says is that a rifle shot cracks at her feet so there is someone within miles. But still, it was a bad time for that particular continuity mistake.

Biometric Visa-Waiver Program
Steve Forbes has hit the nail on the head in this piece regarding the United States immigration and visa policies. Neither one of us can understand why the US "can't come up with software and hardware to expeditiously assist in determining who should and should not gain entry." It sounds to me like a problem that could be solved pretty easily by using fingerprints or retinal scans, instead of the current clumsy system involving mountains of paperwork and delays.

Now I am not going to argue whether or not we need more technology workers from foreign countries or whether US technology firms are being put at a disadvantage by not being able to fill their ranks with foreign-born workers. Those are arguments that do not conveniently fit in a blog. Though I do believe that hastening the process of determining who enters and leaves this country is growing ever more important, especially in light of what happened this week on the London subways. I think it is obvious that as the nation that has produced both the Mac and Windows software we should also be able to develop the software and hardware needed for a biometric system to assist in guarding our borders.

I'm Not Just a Mac Guy
I have a PC too. And I've come upon something that just make me fire up the Athlon Box more often: Google Earth. (Hat tip to Roger Simon.) I can't rave about it because it's not available for the Mac but it looks outrageous. I look forward to visualizing the routes for Atlantic Cycling rides.
But that still won't stop me from wanting them to get the Mac version up and running. We live in a remarkable age. My late parents would have loved playing with something like this.

Do You Have 5 Minutes?
Then you can watch "Pulp Fiction," "Jaws," "The Shining," "Alien," "The Exorcist," "Titanic," "It's A Wonderful Life," "Scream," "Freddy V. Jason" and "The Texas Chainsaw Masacre." All performed by bunnies!

Pugs of War Loves
Rubies! She is Sugarmama's baby and even if plagued by basic end-stink, she is such a cutie! Go. See the slideshow.

A Sacred Idle
There's a book this summer from Tom Hodgkinson called "How To Be Idle."

Let me tell you from experience I know that it takes it takes a lot of work to perfect a sacred idle. It is part of the reason I am so fond of 19th century Romantic poets. They always took the time to write what was on their minds. Every time I reread these favorite bards of mine I have to marvel at how much time it must have taken to compose their wonderful thoughts.

Anyhow, next time I am rushing to catch a flight I will surely look for "How To Be Idle" if only to remind me of why I am rushing around in the first place.

Sugarless Gum Blogging
I am rather fond of sugarless gums. 'S no big thang. But I attempt to try new gums when they debut on the unsuspecting public. I recently tried Dentyne Ice's "Vanilla Chill" flavor and was rather disappointed. Weak. To quote Mrs. Slocum, "Weak as water." A starter but a non-finisher.
Extra's new "Cool Green Apple" flavor, on the other hand, is outrageous. I like the green apple flavor generally (the apple martini is a great invention!) and "Extra" doesn't lie. I started two pieces about 2 hours ago (yes, 2 hours) and I can still taste apple in the still-malleable wad in my mouth. (that sounds ugly, I apologize).
If I find other gums worth dribbling about, I'll be sure to let you know. But do try the "Cool Green Apple." Tasty. And long lasting.

Gift Update
The cool device I alluded to earlier is the JamPlug FM from DV Forge. I keep wanting to call it the JamPod (I wonder why? -Ed.) It's coolness quotient makes me want to buy an electric guitar just to be able to use one. I mean, really: plug this into the gitbox and you can play through any FM radio instead of having to jack up the amp and stacks. How cool is that? Now I'm going to need a stereo that goes to 11.
It appears to have been well received by the soon-to-be birthday boy.
And he grilled up some dee-lish mesquite T-Bones. What's not to like?

"Will Someone Please Explain This Policy To Me?"
This was the question Dwight A. Roberts, the Texan president of the U.S. Rice Producers Association, asked at a recent news conference in Havana.

Hey Dwight, what took you so long? I have been wondering about our trade embargo with Cuba for years. It makes no sense to anyone who wants to see reform in Cuba. The only person who benefits is Fidel Castro because it gives him an enemy to blame for his own economic mismanagement of Cuba. This is an island that once fed itself. Now thanks to Castro and his Communist cronies it is a place where food rationing is the norm.

It is truly staggering to think that a small minority of Cuban Nationals in these United States could have so much influence in Washington as to keep this policy in place. The embargo of Cuba hurts US exporters and it most certainly hurts the people of Cuba. It has no effect on Castro as this is exactly what he wants: something to take the Cuban people's minds off their empty stomachs.

Nostalgia Is A Mental Disease
For a scathing review of the "Me Generation" of Baby Boomers who are heading quickly towards retirement check out Varifrank. I am a Baby Boomer and I take no offense at what he has said because it is so right on. Here are some excerpts:

Thank you, baby boomers! Thanks for the sexual revolution, thanks for Chlamydia, herpes, oh and a very special thank you very much for the spread of AIDS. Thanks for a generation of kids raised in divorce. Thanks for rampant adolescent drug use. Thanks for crack cocaine and black tar heroin. Thanks for making a culture that makes the staggering hell of drug addiction something "cool". I guess it was just too much of stretch to make cancer cool so you went for the easy kill with the glamorization of the drug trade instead. Thanks to the generation of hedonists who produced a president who educated my kids on the phrase "oral sex", or the special nuance of phrase "no controlling legal authority". Thanks for turning baseball and football from the leadership and inspiration of Vince Lombardi to the stepping-stone to federal prison it has become. In 30 years we ha’ve gone from a culture that found the phrase "give em hell harry' vulgar to a president so vulgar as to defile the office of the White House by his personal acts. A generation who found the only vulgarity in their President was his being held accountable by the citizenry for those acts.

If that doesn't leave you gasping for breath, then read this:

I have to hand it to you, you did change the world in one accidental, don't get your actual hands dirty way. You gave us the internet so that we could do the work you could never get around to doing. With the internet, my generation will help free the oppressed. With the Cell Phone we will bring down dictatorship after dictatorship. With the palm sized video camera, we will put a stop to the suppression of freedom and human rights. The day of centralized control is over Mr. Trudeau, and if you were in my generation, you'd know that. The day of the subversive cartoonist has also passed, but I suspect you probably did know that.

"power to the people"? Absolutely friggin right. And At T1 Speeds no less!!

Oh, and we'll still be here after you and yours are gone. We'll remember you, but I don'’t think your gonna like what we tell our kids about what your generation did to the world.

And hey, thanks again for the internet.

I have often wondered about these same issues, even while I continue to read Mr. Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoon. Though now that Varifrank has put it into words I don't feel so alone about thinking that something is out of whack.

In the Boomers defense, it's not too late for them. They have the Greatest Generation to look to for inspiration and I only hope they take the time to ask them for some advice. Any generation that had to deal with the Great Depression, the Nazis, and the Japanese must have some wisdom to pass along. Come to think of it, I think I'll touch base with my parents and send them this link. Though I know they will hardly give it a look, not out of any animosity or because they are not curious. No, this is just the normal sort of thing they have been dealing with all their lives. It will only confirm what they have known for a long time, and have been gently trying to tell me.

The Future of ICANN
ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is a part of the US Commerce Department. Without becoming too technical, this is the organization that supervises the Internet and makes it possible for you to type Pugs Of War into a web browser and be automatically linked to this site.

The question before us is whether or not the US should continue it's historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the master file of Internet domain names. Or does the US, amid appeals from countries like Brazil, India, Syria, and China for a new international government body for the Internet, relinquish this role and let some bureaucracy like the one in Brussels take charge.

God, just typing in the words "bureaucracy in Brussels" causes me to tremble. It is now in my mind a no-brainer: Keep ICANN a part of the Commerce Department. They haven't done too bad a job so far and the thought of a new International Governing body gives me the willies.

Chinese Internet Addiction Clinic
It appears the Chinese have opened their first Internet Addiction Clinic to treat teenagers and young adults who can't stop playing games or hanging out in Chat Rooms. This falls under the category of "I'm Not Making This Up." I commonly use this phrase when telling stories about some of the customers I do consulting work for. Here are some excerpts that would be funny if they weren't in all likelihood true:

"I would stay up for 24 hours. I would eat only in front of the computer," he said.

"It's been good to sleep" says another, a 17-year-old with spiky hair, now that he's no longer on the computer all day.

"I wasn't normal," said a 20-year-old man from Beijing who used to spend at least 10 hours a day in front of the screen playing hack-and-slash games like Diablo.

I guess the Chinese are going to have to figure out more strategies like this to combat Internet addictions because there is no chance they are going to stop people from going online. No chance at all, despite their best efforts.

Other Business
The BlogDog segment of PoW wishes all who have visited, whether by happenstance or design, a very happy Independence Day and a fun-filled summer to follow. We in America must never forget that our first is the Fourth. God bless us, God bless our ongoing experiment in freedom and government by the willingness of the governed.

I am planning to visit a friend who is a Grill Grandmaster even if we have nouthing but cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Yes, I know I shouldn't be eating cheeseburgers but off the grill, a cheeseburger puts a mere hamburger in its shadow. And it's tradition.
I have a slightly early birthday gift for him (link to come, after the gift is given) of something that's so cool, I simply couldn't resist getting it for him. Then viewing of some public fireworks and a few private displays and the day will be done.

Tuesday marks the day of my whole new HVAC system. Oy. Again, dropping 3K on a system is not really what I want to do but circumstances call for it. I figure I'll get better performance for less energy use and I won't have to worry about an aging "contractor grade" system. I'll post more later as the work develops.

Just Damn
The good folks at Apple, who have the habit of separating me from cash which has found its difficult way into my grasp, have discovered a new way to bifurcate me from the contents of my wallet. Kim du Toit says, rightly, that man can never have too many knives. I'm starting to think that one can't have too many iPods either. The new 'Pod has a color screen, and - here's where I start reaching for my credit card - 15 hour battery life. Just damn!
It's a photo iPod of course and I don't give a hoot about carrying around pictures. And if it were made in a 30 gig model, I'd be even more sorely tempted. I've loaded the great majority of my CDs onto my current 20 gig 'Pod (I have about 1.6 gigs of space left) and if I had a 30 gig model, I could pick up the contents of the few discs that I have which I don't really listen to. I mean, c'mon, "Flagpole Sitting" is a good song but the rest the "Harvey Danger" CD is nothing to write a blog post about. I also have none of the Glen Miller or Mills Brother on my 'Pod, which I would if I had the extra 10 gigs.
So, with those caveats, no new iPod. But that doesn't mean I won't want one.

Food Blogging
I haven't joined in the great posting of recipes which results in such things as the Carnival of Recipes (hosted this time by our blogroll pal Anywhere But Here). But there's always something that pushes the blogger to do things he or she has never done before. So I'm posting a recipe stolen from the pages of Bicycling magazine but based on an earlier throw-away mention in a post of mine. The recipe is from a chef who cycles: Michael Romano. And, unbelievably, it's called:

"Michael Romano's Perfect Post-Ride Pasta Carbonara."
You'll need:
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 6 ounces guanciale (traditional cured pork jowl) or pancetta, thinly sliced and cut into strips
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 2 egg yolks plus one whole egg, beaten together
• kosher or sea salt
• 12 oz. spaghetti, bucatini or perciatelli

Before you ride (keeping in mind the name of this recipe):
1. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add the guanciale or pancetta, and slowly cook until it's crisp, 8-10 minutes. Season abundantly with pepper, then drain the meat in a colander, reserving the rendered fat in a metal bowl large enough to hold all the cooked pasta. Put the meat in a small bowl, cover and set aside.
2. Whisk the 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano into the fat to form a creamy sauce. Add pepper to taste. When the mixture is completely cool, whisk in the beaten eggs, cover well and refrigerate.

Go ride.

When you get back (and after a shower I hazard to guess):
3. Take the cheese mixture out of the refrigerator. Bring four quarts of water to a boil. Add salt to the water, then add the pasta.
4. Just before the spaghetti is al dente , ladle about two tablespoons of the pasta-cooking water into the cheese/egg mixture and whisk well. Add the meat to the bowl.
5. When the pasta is al dente, drain it well, reserving some of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the bowl and place it over very low heat. Using tongs (I'd say you could use chopsticks but what do I know), toss the pasta gently but thoroughly with sauce. Heat from the pasta and the stove will cook the egg and thicken the sauce. If the sauce becomes too think or grainy, quickly add a tablespoon of the reserved cooking water and toss to restore the texture. As soon as the pasta is nicely coated, remove from heat.
5. Serve immediately in heated bowls and top with the remaining Pecorino. Serves four.

Or, in my case, two. (Kidding! I'm working on the eating thing.)

(Guinnessscientist) Brilliant! (/Guinnessscientist)

From the Blogfather, James Lileks's new book! I must have a copy.

(Yes, I know the faux html code should have angle brackets but angle brackets make faux html disappear in blogspot posts. We must suffer for my art.)

Music This Month
A month with no scheduled shows that I have to attend. And after careful consideration I realized that my collection of one of the all-time great Hillbilly hippie folksingers (kinda narrows it doesn't it) was incomplete. Not that it ever will be complete as three of his titles are out of print. Dadgummit. Mike Cross is the man. Not just the man, he is The Man. More talent in his flying fingers than in several contemporary bands put together (more talent than in the entire artist stable of some record companies).
As you can see in the "longings" sidebar, I'm going to get "Solo At Midnight" and "At Large in the World." I don't own "Michael's Magic Music Box" but as it's a kid's disc (and more power to Mike for making it), I don't expect to ever own it.
It's the original three that are out of print: "Child Prodigy," "Born in the Country" and "Rock 'n' Rye." At least I own all three on vinyl and, given sufficient time and inclination, I can put them on tape, then digitize the songs from the tape thus creating CDs that are no longer in print. I know I'll miss having all the jewel box inserts but inasmuch as I listen to my music now off my iPod (have I mentioned my iPod? I like my iPod), it's not an overwhelming loss.
My introduction to the World of Mike Cross was hearing "Born in the Country" played on Duke's FM station in its entirety upon its release in ... (thinking) ... 1975. Maybe 1976. I had a roommate who worshipped at the altar of John Denver and I had a Mike Cross quote I'd heard, again on the Duke FM station which was broadcasting a live tape of a show in Chapel Hill, to the following point: "There's nothing wrong with John Denver. That a good snort of scotch wouldn't cure." So I was inclined to like the guy before I really listened to the music. Which meant I was paying attention when the album was played. And "BitC" is a knockout: "Blue Skies and Teardrops" right out of the starting gate is quite simply superb. "Wisdom or a Drink" is one of his break-your-heart beautiful love songs. Both "Mountain Mean" and "Nobby" (his Leon Rebone-inspired song) are bust-out laughing funny. The album closes with "Born in the Country/Devil's Dream" which is dead solid perfect.
There I was, a neophyte in the path of the Cross, listening to what I knew instantly was one of the best albums I'd ever heard. I made the pilgrimage to Schoolkid's Records in Chapel Hill - one of the greatest music stores I've ever slipped an ear into (I doubt it's still there but wow! I could have dropped several hundred dollars there in no time). Upon finding "BitC," I went ahead and bought his first album "Child Prodigy" as well. I also sent copies to Lycurgus down in Florida. Which is what led to my meeting Mike. But that's a story for another time.

I just wish Mike would come back to NoVa and play the Birchmere again.

Cornering Bloggish Dustbunnies
First, I didn't make it to see Emm. I took the shower and instead of refreshing me, it ennervated me. Ah, lassitude. I will have to wait for her next tour to the area.
Other items of note:

The Enigmatic Misanthrope and the Enigmatic Missus-anthrope (that's surely the wrong way to put it but what the hey, I'll neologize when no one's looking) are headed off to sunnier climes and a bit o' scuba diving. PoW wishes them Godspeed and we await their safe return with bated breath.

Softish drinks - what I'm lately most fond of. Propel "fitness water" from the makers of Gatorade. 20 calories for a half liter bottle. Not too sweet. Good flavors (lemon, berry. kiwi-strawberry). Two thumbs up. Also, Crystal Lite Ruby Red Grapefruit is top notch. As long as you allow for the fact that you're drinking Crystal Lite and not real grapefruit juice. And if you try it, make it more dilute than the package suggests. Making a half gallon with one of those little tubs of powder is like making syrup. I make it up about three quarts. But that's just me.

Oh My God.
$7.00 and two and a quarter hours of my life irretrievably lost to the massive turd that is "Revenge of the Sith." Effects: wonderful. Fabulous even. Loved the gadgets, loved the planets. Never seen Natalie Portman look worse or be more wasted in a movie. The dialog has already been criticized (rightly) but the real problem is that the intelligence and logic of every single character with the sole exception of Chancellor Palpatine (who is the single best actor in the whole misbegotten mess) is beyond belief.
I'd like to get a copy of the script and subject it to some freelance samurai islamic fisking. Need I say that I'll not be buying the DVD of this steaming pile?

Whew!
Back from running ride support for Atlantic Cycling. 175 riders today. Let's try Blogger's image tool shall we? Here's a shot (with silly comment) from the ride registration:

Not that I had to feed and water all of them, of course. That was last ride. This ride I got the stop that took the long riders (the 60 milers) at the 20 mile mark. The other stop (use the link above to see more on Chesapeake Beach where the stop was on the boardwalk) got the short riders at 20 miles and the long riders at 40.
Got my butt up early: 5:00am. Out the door at 6:00. On site at 7:00 and alone there until 7:30. Having arrived at the start of the second ride (when I was too ill to run support but was rescued by rain - only one stop was opened) after the registration was set up and a good number of riders were already on site, I wanted to be on time. Not to mention I was a bit unsure of exactly where I was to be. But I went almost straight to the start. Havings directions in hand is a good thing.
The day dawned cool and wet. But it was the kind of cool that promised heat. And the damp morning air was heavy. I even drove through a couple of patches of thick fog on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I am impressed at the riders who showed and rode. It was oppressive. I merely drove to the rest stop site and set up the table and the refreshments and I was Mr. Schvitz. The riders were doing a lot more work than I was. I think the latter half of the course was probably not quite so bad even though the heat was up by that time because the later stages were through a fair bit of tree-covered road. Really pretty countryside over there in Merlin. Emphasis on the countryside.
I am now trying to gin up the gumption to clean up, dress nice and go out to see Emm Gryner at Club Iota. (I don't really need to put up those links again, do I?)

Here is an essay by Paul Graham that he never was able to give to a graduating class of High School seniors. The school authorities vetoed the plan to invite him. That's really no surprise given the blandness of most High School Commencements. Though after reading it I most certainly wish he had. An excerpt:

The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn.

Your life doesn't have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don't have to wait to start. In fact, you don't have to wait to be an adult. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age.

This may sound like bullshit. I'm just a minor, you may think, I have no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it's restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.

The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don't. That realization hits most people around 23. But I'm letting you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first generation whose greatest regret from high school isn't how much time you wasted.

Say What?
Here's one to shatter any faith you had in polls of "The American People." The gist of it is simple: a majority of people want the Federal Government to make the Internet safe. It goes on to say that this same majority doesn't trust Federal Institutions to do the job. My question for this majority is, "What kind of behavior do you expect from people you do not trust?" Do they really think this lack of trust is going to make the Federal Institutions more honest and efficient?

Here is my answer in a nutshell. We will just have to face facts about Security and the Internet, namely, it is up to individuals to take the necessary precautions to make it as safe as it can be. Relying upon someone else is ludicrous. What's more, would you want to live in a world where someone else made sure your home computer had the latest Operating System patches, had up-to-date Virus Protection, a Firewall, and Intrusion Protection software? I think not.

If you don't believe me then how about Thomas Jefferson:

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."

Windows XP N
I believe the N stands for nothing as that is what it accomplishes. The main difference between the N version and a regular copy of XP is that N makes you download a media player. This new product was foisted on Microsoft by the European Competition Commissioner. (Now there is an oxymoron!) Microsoft was forced to sell it in Europe "as part of the punishment in the software maker's long antitrust battle with the European Union."

Here's the surprise: Nobody wants to buy it. Dell and Sony won't even offer to install it on their new PCs! Though I guess this comes as no surprise if you consider this is business as usual in Europe, bureaucrats in Brussels wasting tax payer money by issuing rulings that nobody cares about and which don't do anybody a lick of good.

Doc, You Slept Through Thursday
I found this on BoingBoing about a colorful baseball pitcher from the 1970s named Doc Ellis. It's one of those "Don't Do This Yourself Stories" that made me laugh.

Pens
I posted earlier that I have accumulated a lifetime supply of pens so, when I use them, I try to use them up. The pen I'm using now is an old Bic "crystal" ball point whose cap has dissolved in the mists of time. What amazes me about this old workhorse is that the ink level has sunk below the visible barrel for several days (not that I'm writing all the time, mind you) yet it keeps on writing. I wonder how much ink there is in that little metal nib end of the pen.

Yes, I realize how inconsequential this post is but such inconsequentialities (What?! -Ed.) are the stuff of life.

Not Exactly Tech But Not Not Tech Either
Now there's a title to conjure with.
I happened, a few nights ago, to see that Charlie (The Tool) Rose was interviewing the Wall Street Jornal's "personal tech" editor Walt Mossberg. Mossberg, as a tech journalist, gets it. Stephen Manes of Forbes gets it too but Mossberg is the silverback to Manes's gorilla. And I'm not saying silverback as a reference to Mossberg's neat, white goatee. In fact, he has, very possibly, the best expression of the white goat in the known world. I'd love to be able to carry off such a beard in my future. Distant future.
But looks are not the point (You would say that -Ed.). Mossberg was extremely interesting to listen to. Despite the lousy technique of CR (with the just-too-fey purple striped shirt and matching purple tie), Mossberg made the show worth watching. I was surprised to learn that he lives in the Washington, DC area (suburban Maryland it turns out). Not that his job requires him to live in any particular place but that he lives in my general metro area catches me by surprise. Secondly, he says that Apple's OS X "Tiger" is the best operating system currently on the market. He likes the "Spotlight" search technology which really is seamlessly built into the interface. I like Spotlight but it's the widgets that do it for me (new fave: a widget from The Weather Channel which puts an animated 600 mile doppler map on my desktop at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse). Mossberg also says that Microsoft's next interation of their OS won't have such a deep search capability built in for another 18 months. A year from this coming Christmas is how he characterized the time frame.
MS might be able to push up the integration and ship sooner but the fact remains that one of the most useful OS features (Mossberg's opinion, not mine) is available now in Tiger. Mossberg is no Apple shill though. He pointed out, correctly I think, that the interim period in Apple's history, the Jobs Interregnum as it were, Microsoft's OS was the better bet. Apple had some good ideas - the move to the PowerPC from the Motorola 680x0 for example. But Systems 8 and 9 were problematic. Even a diehard Mac fan like me will admit that.
The opinion of a respected journalist aside, very few people who are already using one platform are going to switch, Apple campaigns notwithstanding, because they've already made a substantial investment in their OS of choice. Software programs, even at the consumer level, are expensive. If not by themselves then in aggregate. I, for example, have identified nearly $100 worth of programs I use regularly that I need to pay for and register (I mentioned Delicious Library a few posts earlier - that's one) that I've downloaded from the Interweb thing. It do add up. Point being that I don't expect anyone to switch. However, if you are starting your computing experience, do what Walt says: get a Mac.
For that matter, read his reviews regularly and follow his advice. It may not be 100% to your tech tastes but the man knows what he's talking about.

Hmm. I didn't really mean for this to be a Mac post. I have always had great respect for Mr. Mossberg and wanted to say how good a guest he was on the Craptacular Rose show.

UPDATE: Here's Mossberg on the Apple-Intel annoucement. For your delectation.

Ted Kennedy Needs To Read More History
There was a nice exchange of words today between Senator Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Kennedy believes the war in Iraq is a "quagmire" and Secretary Rumsfeld and the Top US Commanders disagree. With all due respect to the 1725 service personal who have lost their lives since March 2003, I suggest Mr Kennedy do a Google search on Cold Harbor.

"Grant and Meade attacked on June 3. In a series of frontal assaults, the Federals were slaughtered, sustaining approximately 7,000 casualties compared to Confederate losses of 1,500. Grant always regretted ordering the assault at Cold Harbor."

The American Civil War by the time of Cold Harbor in the spring of 1964 was considered a "quagmire" by some people. I won't debate the merits of the issues here. Suffice to say what we are doing in Iraq hardly compares in either scope or ferocity. In Iraq we are going after people who think nothing about blowing themselves up along with as many innocent bystanders as they can (remember the WTC). Furthermore, these same people have showed they will go to any extreme, including using Chemical Weapons, to maintain their control over the Iraqi people.

Senator Kennedy needs to quit posturing for votes and visit the mass grave sites of the people who disagreed with Saddam and were gassed. Maybe he could also go visit the graves at Cold Harbor and try to gain some historical perspective.

A Biometric Laptop
HP is starting to ship a biometric laptop. I sure hope Apple does the same by the time I'm ready to buy one of their new ones next year that contains the Intel chip. What can I say, I like bleeding edge tech toys. Though I especially like the enhanced security inherent in fingerprint biometrics and the fact I will have one less password to remember.

Maybe one day this same technology can be used in cars and to eliminate the need to carry around house keys. By my conservative calculation, I annually spend 4 or 5 hours looking for my keys and in opening and locking doors. It may not seem like much but combined with the aggravation involved in the search for keys and the locking/unlocking, it would certainly be worth it to me not to have to engage in any of it. Sometimes it's the little things that drive people crazy and this one is near the top of my list.

A Tale of Two 'Puters
I am sitting at my desk with my Mac on the left and my Athlon Box on the right. A 20 inch screen on my left and a 19 inch screen on my right. Thank TPTB that flat panel displays are so damn good. I'd have no desk space left were I running with CRT monitors.
But it's not just deskspace any more. I have two wireless keyboards and two wireless mice sitting on my desktop too. And I switch between the two platforms (right now the PC is running Firefox with an attractive brushed-metal looking theme I grabbed when I downloaded the browser yesterday) with most of the real work going on to the left (natch). But it's weird to juggle two mice and two active keyboards. You should try it sometime just as an exercise in unconscious memory. Are you able to put your hand on the correct mouse every time? When you switch machines, do you start typing on the wrong keyboard? It's not easy.
Now that I have a direct side-by-side comparison, I can satate with a high degree of confidence that Firefox on the Mac is preferrable for the small but distinct advantage of having a "Window" menu.
I visited Sugarmama this morning and made a comment - OK, a couple of comments - but I wanted to double check what I was commenting so I clicked on the browser window. The comment window was then lost behind the main window. On the Mac, I only have to choose the comment window from the Window menu. I am unaware of a way to bring the window forward as easily on the PC. It's probably there but I'm unaware of it. So the Mac version is preferable even if only for my limited experience on the PC.
But really, don't you want a Windows menu on your PC?

The other salient aspect is fan noise. My iMac is dead quiet. I can't say silent because there is a smidgen of noise (like optical drive spinup) but the PC is ever in the background with the fan. Think what you will of Steve Jobs but the design he pushes (even the desktop G5s are designed with cooling zones to minimize fan noise) is superb.

Observations on "Smallville"
First, Tom Welling (Clark Kent) and Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang) are just way too pretty. If Hugh Jackman is a pretty, pretty man (and we all know that he is), then these two see his pretty at the flop and raise him before winning the pot on the river card. If these two ever had offspring, it's likely that the resulting child would so pretty that average mortals would be unable to actually see it! Special hospitals would have to be built where only the most beautiful nurses and doctors would be available so the child could be cared for. And special schools with supermodels as teachers.
So, they'd best not ever fuse gametes. It would be far too much trouble for the rest of us.

Oh, "Smallville" is a pretty good show too. It would be nice if they didn't get so far afield with medieval French witches and the like.

I Don't Get It
Yeah that too but what I don't get is why anyone in his right mind would make a remake of "The Honeymooners" starring Cedric "The Entertainer." He is mildly amusing at best but I guess "Cedric the Mildly Amusing" doesn't look all that good on a theater marquee. I'm betting that after all the shekels have been stacked, "Cedric The Entertainer" won't be seen too often on theater marquees either.
Look at it this way: would you follow "The Great One" in a role he originated and defined with "The Entertainer?" I thought not.

I want the geniuses who bankrolled "The Honeymooners" to put up the cash for my brilliant idea: An all-white remake of "Wating to Exhale." It's called "Don't Hold Your Breath."

Yes, More Droning on About Footy
Last night I watched the Port Adelaide Power put a hurt on the Western Bulldogs (the Doggies being preferred by PoW of course) and was surprisingly uninterested in the game. I find that with Collingwood languishing in the bottom eight, that, unless the game is a ripper, I am not as enthusiastic about watching. But it really is a great game. Maybe I am just suffering through an enthusiasm deficit. Ah well. Go Pies! Rally for at least a finish in the upper bracket!

I also missed "Hell's Kitchen" last night. My guilty pleasure of the television off season.

Exit Date From Iraq
A tip of the cap to the Vodka Pundit for explaining why establishing an "Exit Date" from Iraq is a silly proposition.

The best bit:

"For our sake and Iraq's, we have to be in this for the long haul. Announcing an exit date would tell our enemies we were never really in it to begin with."

Funniest. Triumph. Evar.
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog (a Hero of Pugs of War) visits the Michael Jackson trial. Link lifted from Spoons. Triumph brought to us courtesy of the Conan O'Brien show.

Several Sections of my Brain Began to Liquify
Luckily, I realized that the cure for said brain liquefaction was to post a link to the offending image.
Seriously, dude, what were you thinking? Any chance to get this in, say, Chow dog for a beer keg?

And Then Some
I let too great a bolus of mail accumulate in the little cluster box (not named "cluster" for nothing) and had to go to the PO to pick it all up. Which is of no moment to you, gentle reader, save for the fact that I now do have the Kajun Kelley Project "Moods" CD in hand as well as ripped into iTunes. Very nice. "Soaring" (link leads to MP3) is exceptionally nice. Very Eric Johnson, which is high praise in my book. The rest of the disc, instrumentals all, is highly listenable. Lyrical bitchin' guitar to coin a phrase. This is the kind of music I would put on while concentrating on desk work. Great music but no distractions in remembering/singing along with the words.
So now I have to figure out what gets the "longings" link for next month. I was watching a special on The Carpenters on PBS pledge week and I just might get some of their best. Karen had a voice that I never appreciated when they were active. She was pitch perfect and had a much richer voice than such a petite woman should have. Yes, a lot of the music was pure pop confection - Richard was a commercial arranger without equal - but can you listen to "Goodbye To Love" without feeling it? I can't. What a loss her death was!

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of ...
Snot? The great mystery of sea bottom carbon seems to have been solved by the mucosal excresences of the giant larvaceans. Why was I not imformed earlier?

Moments of Zen or Randomness
Paul posted on the Apple/Intel announcement and I've been all over theblogosphere reading takes on it - Cringely, Slashdot, Peeve Farm and I'm left with the current conclusion (subject to change at a moment's notice): I have NO idea what this means. It could be a masterstroke. It could be the end of Apple. I'm hoping that it will mean Apple will continue to plug along since the Wintel side seems seriously light on the innovation side and the world (yes, the world) is better off for the thing Apple pioneered. GUIs, WYSIWYG computing, laser printing, image manipulation (i.e. PhotoShop) and, despite Microsoft's claims, the integration of the 'digital lifestyle' into the computing experience.
But I am a partisan. I prefer to use my Mac because it just works. I can get things done with it I find agonizing on the PC. However, I'm sure there are plenty of people who are are as conversant with their PC as I am with my Macs and wouldn't want to swap platforms for love nor money. Well, maybe money.
So I'll just sit here with my iMac, my PowerBook, my Athlon box and the G4 tower now relegated to fallow status. I will wish Apple and Intel great good fortune and wish I'd bought Apple when it was selling for 14.

Michael Jackson verdict. Neal Boortz makes every point I would want to make about the trial. I just want to note a couple of things: First Joe Jackson is one ugly sumbitch. I mean he makes Michael's freakshow appearance look tolerable. Hideous toad of a man. Not that I should talk, mind you. Second, MIchael thinks, I'm sure, that he got away with it. He is too much the sad, sick freak to give up his attraction to little boys and he's going to get caught. Somebody, hungry for a big payday for certain will make it a point to get the physical evidence that will put the ... I almost said 'smoking gun' ... in Michael's hand. Monica saved the dress. Some boy will save his jammies and then all hell will break loose.
My favorite MJ joke lately: How does Michael Jackson pick his nose?
Out of a catalog.

And for the annoyingly quotidian: It's hot here in NoVa. Ugly hot. And my AC does not seem to be up to the task. My office and bedroom are on the top floor of my townhouse. If I didn't have fans in both rooms, it would be intolerable. I need to have my HVAC system checked. Argh! I don't have a 'usual guy' to go to for these things. Time to drag out the paginas amarillas.

Added To The Roll
"Anywhere But Here" has PoW on the blogroll and I always desire to return the favor. Welcome to the sidebar Kris. (BTW for you readers, that means go visit and enjoy another view of the world.)

By The Way
If you don't own this CD, you are either missing something or making a mistake. I leave it to you to decide. C'mon! You can get it for under $7.50 from an Amazon seller. You have $7.50 lying around. Of course you do.

OS X Tiger
Wonderful OS. Still liking everything I've used. And I did a test of the "Spotlight" search feature where I started typing the name of a friend who sent me an e-mail. Her family name was sufficiently unique that I didn't imagine I would have any other instance of it on my machine. I didn't have to type but five characters in before Spotlight brought up a list of the e-mails. Please keep in mind that I didn't have the Mail application loaded. This search was done from the Finder and, as I said, it was completed before I could fully type the name. Just damn.
I also downloaded a copy of Delicious Library which I am going to pony up for as soon as I get my next MasterCard bill. I prefer to use other cards or PayPal but the folks who put the program together only list MC & Visa as payment options. I've sent them an e-mail. But I will pay for this program. It's impressive.
What does it do you axe? It's basically a database for movies, music, books and video games. What makes it special is the automation. First, you can scan in any of your items by the barcode if you have a webcam. The program reads barcodes out of the webcam image stream. Cool. But I don't have a webcam. So I start by typing in the title. The program then sucks info out of Amazon.com into the entry pane and one clicks on the particular version of DVD or CD (all I've dealt with so far as I'm using the demo mode which limits the number of items). The rest of the info, even a capsule review of the movie, is pulled into the database. Bing bang boom goes the dynamite.
It's like having iTunes automatically access the Gracenote CDDB to get title and track info on a CD when it's first inserted. Magic. Beautiful. Beautiful magic. It's the sort of automation that computers were supposed to be doing for us way back when. I look forward to having my Mac do more things for me. Spaghetti carbonara for dinner would be nice. Oh. OK. That's nice but I want you to make it for me.

Word of the Day
Cryovolcano.

More TV Foolishness
I watch ABC's "Supernanny" with a sense of mounting horror. These children are monsters in human form. If they shouldn't be wiped off the face of tyhe Earth then their parents definitely should be. For the offspring to be this hideous, the parents deserve great blame. Great blame.
Jo Frost, the Supernanny herself, does amazing things with these families. I am actually in awe of her abilties. The trouble is she's so darn cute! I love the accent. She is that perfect example of a woman who can be criticized for carrying too many pounds but who is just adorable nonetheless. I think she makes the show worth watching. And not just because she's cute but because she does the job. I wouldn't run the TiVo on it but it's a good show.

Diddling With The Computers
I am now running OS X "Tiger" on my Macs. And I'm loving it in my initial explorations. I use the Dashboard all the time now. I have a stock tracker, a weather widget, a TV guide darn near instantly available to me. All these things have been available on the interweb but I don't have to load my browser and load pages. The info is just there.
The installations took me in the realm of about an hour on each machine but went just as smooth as the skin on the face of a plastic surgeon's wife. I'm in the process of backing up my oldest machine (a 400MHz G4 tower Mac - the 'Gigabit Ethernet' model if that means anything to you) to an external firewire drive after which I'll wipe the drives and do a clean install of Tiger. Then I'll remove that machine from the matrix and put my PC (a 1 GHz Athlon box assembled at home through the good graces of Lycurgus) into the mix. I need to get security up and running on the PC before it goes online of course. Yeesh.

Speaking of Ads
I see that Disney is trying to suck the dessicated marrow out of the dry bones of another of their stories. Might I suggest a better title: "A Diaper: Fully Loaded."

Sometimes I Watch Ads
Actually, I could go off on an extended rant about ads. I am the kind of TV watcher who will tune ads out after I've seen them (auto ads are the worst - utterly disposable after one viewing) but will watch them when I first see them. One ad that bugs me is an ad for a "feminine" product wherein a dorky guy is out rowing his unjustifiably hot girlfriend around a lake when the rowboat springs a prefectly round leak just at their feet. It tends to make me wonder if there's an enemy agent with a drill under the boat taking revenge against the world wherein such a dweeb has a girlfriend like her. But such speculation is unseemly.
And by the way, the products used in a gynecological sense are not "feminine." Neither is "feminine itch" in the least bit "feminine." I don't think men are targeted with products to address "masculine itch." It it itches, it's not masculine. But I digress. This is about ads.
After seeing the rowboat ad, wherein the resourceful woman plugs the leak with her way-too-handy tampon, my only thought was for the dweeb rowing. And my thought was, "You sure are lucky that your girlfriend there bleeds like a stuck pig or you'd be swimming for shore in no time at all." I don't think that's the thought the advertiser wanted anyone to take away from their 30 second drama.

Hell's Kitchen
As a former restaurateur I find the Fox TV show Hell's Kitchen a very realistic portrayal of the inner workings of a restaurant. If you ever entertained the idea of working in one this show will crush your illusions pretty quickly. In fact, I find it rather tame in comparison to some of the German chefs I worked with.

The star of the show is a Scot, Gordon Ramsay, who is both cruel and abusive to both his trainees and any customers who dare approach him while he is working. I suppose he produces some good food but that is not the point of this show. Instead, he has accepted the challenge of training 12 people with varying amounts of culinary knowledge. He vows to make them world class kitchen employees and give the best pupil a restaurant at the end of this "survivor style" elimination show.

The show is set in LA and features a beautiful restaurant seating 120 people. The show opens with the trainees being told they will be opening this restaurant in a few hours. Amazingly, LA being what it is, trendy and status conscious to the utmost degree, there are a seemingly endless number people willing to subject themselves to 2 or 3 hour waits for food just to say they were on TV.

The funniest moment in the second episode was the fellow who after waiting 2 hours for his entree began to question the education of the maitre d. He told him that since he had a doctorate in Music from UCLA that he is better educated and had the right to abuse him. He then pushed the maitre d and was escorted from the premises. The question I asked myself was that if he was so smart then why did he wait two hours for his entree. I would have drank their wine, left after one hour, and laughed at any attempts to make me pay. Of course, I don't have a doctorate so what do I know.

Common Sense Prevails!
It appears New York will not be building a football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. In the most extraordinary con game the City and State have ever seen, one reminiscent of the "Music Man," the powers that be have decided against spending billions on a venue that is of marginal use at best. The Stadium supporters said it was the centerpiece of the City's Olympic bid for the 2012 Games, but they never explained how a 75,000 seat Football stadium would be turned into a 105,000 seat Olympic stadium. I suppose this was a detail they hoped we would overlook.

My favorite part of this whole Real Estate grab has been the ability of these hucksters to line up rank and file support, the little man if you would, for what could be termed an extravagance even in the best of times. The hucksters showed these typical New Yorker enough money so that they would shoot their mouths off in television ads in support of the West Side Stadium. Watching these ads would have been embarrassing if they hadn't been so funny. Imagine a former fireman with an eighth grade education speaking with a thick Brooklyn accent about how we need this stadium to help improve the Public School ,and you will see the absurdity that I found so amusing. Now the whole thing can RIP.

Russell, Can You Hear Me Now?
No is the answer if your name is Russell Crowe. I believe he has lost all phone privileges at the trendy SOHO hotel he was staying at when he lost his mind and was hustled off to jail by the NYPD.

I know the hotel and the problem he had was not with a hotel employee or shoddy local phone service. The problem he had I suspect was with a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone connection. This alternative to the much more reliable Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) is how small hotels that have been recently renovated usually implement phone service for their guests. Most of the time this is good enough, but when the IP packets have to go to Australia sometimes you will run into problems like Russell Crowe had.

The obvious solution for Russell, besides some Anger Management classes, is to avoid VoIP when the call absolutely has to go through. Otherwise, you might be tempted to throw the telephone you are using at the nearest available wall or hotel employee. And that is no solution at all.

Apple To IBM: Toodiloo
As somebody who still has a Mac Classic (the BlogDog helped me buy it in 1991) with a 68000 processor I can see the point here that with each change in architecture Apple loses market share.

In the mid-1980s, the Mac captured as much as 10 percent of the overall PC market, he said. But when Apple switched from Motorola 68000 processors to PowerPC chips, the Mac's share dropped to below 5 percent. When the Mac's operating system later changed to OS X, it fell to below 3 percent.

Now somebody please help me out here. Apple still makes a better machine, right? I just don't understand what caused the current dominance of the market by WINTEL (Microsoft and Intel). Was it all marketing or just a ruinous combination of bad business decisions that produced the present situation. Maybe this is simply one of those questions with no good answer. Life can be like that sometimes.

Congress To Sick People: Drop Dead
This could also be titled, "Federal Government to States: We know best!"

The issue here is that the Federal government wants the power to prevent sick patients from smoking home-grown marijuana that a doctor recommended to relieve chronic pain.

Justice O'Connor in her dissent hits the nail right on the head:

"This case exemplifies the role of states as laboratories," O'Connor wrote.

"Relying on Congress' abstract assertions, the court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use," she said. "This overreaching stifles an express choice by some states ... to regulate medical marijuana differently."

It's a Great Month
Not only did I get to see Jake, Emm Gryner is coming to club Iota around the end of June.

Music, Music, Music - Jake, Jake, Jake And Taylor
I had a great time last night. It was a wonderful show. More about that in a moment, first some administrative details about the 'longings' sidebar. Last month I sent off a check for the Kajun Kelley CD over there on the right. Now, I've got a few days worth of mail sitting in the box (fargin' cluster boxes hatehatehate 'em) so it's possible that I might have the disc already but I'm rather disappointed that it hasn't arrived already. I will chalk it up to the nature of snail mail and the necessity of sending a check so I will keep "Moods" in the sidebar until I get it.
I've already blown my month's music budget at the show last night - two more copies of Jake Armerding's CDs. (I don't really need to make links of his name again, do I?) And yes - I got the autographs. In fact I went nuts nuts nuts with the signing. I got Jake to sign the CD inserts I brought from home and then got him and his father to sign the CDs themselves. And I'm keeping them. I'll probably give the new copies to Lycurgus at some point but for the nonce, Jake would be the only artist of whose work I own multiple original copies. Then again - he is that good.
If I haven't already told you: buy the CDs dammit! And another one is in the works. Good. PoW approves of new product. And the new songs that were played last night are good. Darn good. I expected no different. If you have the chance to see Jake, get him to play "Honda Civic EX." Very short and if you have a shred of humor in you, you will enjoy it. I promise. But don't ask for the Star Wars joke.

If I have one problem with the web info on the show, it's that neither Jake's page, nor The Falls Church's website nor the website of Kairos (sponsor of the show) had any information about the start time. Still, I figure 7:30 is a pretty resasonable start time so I set out under that assumption. Traffic was a bit sticky (one light seemed seriously screwed up delaying the flow on only the eastbound side of a divided road) and I wasn't sure precisely where the Historic Chapel was but I got there at 7:45 just as the introduction was ending. Didn't miss a song. I had no experience with Jake's father Taylor Armerding and was I ever in luck. He is a superb mandolin player and a veteran in the music biz, being a founding member of the bluegrass band Northern Lights. He is no longer with said group and if that means he has more chance to play with Jake (also an alum of Northern Lights) then so much the better.
But it's not just the musicianship. These guys can harmonize like madness. They did a couple of fantastic gospel songs wherein their voices soared and interwove like the necks of mating phoenixes. Ecstatic and wonderful. I'm sorry that I didn't make a record of which songs they played. (The readers are happy to hear that! Ed.) In any event, they played a number of Jake's songs already out, some non, what do I say, protprietary songs and a few songs that will be on the new CD which will be coming out in the near future (before the end of '05 I think). Jake switched off between guitar and fiddle while Taylor stuck with the mandolin save for one of his own songs near the end of the show where he took over the guitar.
Jake played a fiddle tune which he said he didn't have a title for though he solicited titles from the audience. The song put me in mind of such traditional fiddle tunes as "Drowsy Maggie" and "Cooley's Reel" which I know from Mike Cross's work. I thought "Fiddler's Choice" might be a nice title, keeping that two-word rhythm, but I see upon Googling it that it's the name of a music store and the title of an album. So ... no. But it's a terrific song. I look forward to having on the new disc.
The show was sponsored by Kairos which had a presentation during intermission about its recent missionary work in India. I wish them luck and blessings as there's no nation on Earth that needs saving more. I took adavantage of the intermission to buy the additional CDs. (Hey Jake, any discount for all this shameless fawning online? ;-) Not that I missed any of the presentation.
Finally, after playing for somewhere around an hour and a half (excluding intermission), it was over. And I got my autographs. What a great way to spend a cool, slightly humid early summer evening.

UPDATE: How did I discover Jake? It all began with hearing "Ithaca" on a RadioIO stream. Then I found that Amazon had an MP3 of the song available for download. So I did. And the madness began.

My New Favorite Waste of Time
Deanimator. Kill them zombies! Word to the wise - shoot 'em while they're rising from the earth. That'll only take one shot. I have trouble with the shotgun though. I use up the ammo and then don't switch back to the revolver fast enough. I have made it past level 7. Once.
Ways I've died: zombie head butt, head and spine ripped out, arm pulled off and beaten with it and just picked up and carried off. It's all good.

Woo Hoo!
Jake Armerding is in my neck of the woods! Tomorrow in fact. At The Falls Church. I am so there. And this time, Jake, you will sign my CDs! Oh yes. Your signatures shall be mine.

Things You Do in the Aftermath of a Birthday
My birthday was last month. As was my hideous episode of ill health. Suffice it to say that I was a punk in the month of May. I got very little done apart from the usual business of living. But the usual business doesn't take care of things that are low level and annoying. Things that, if you got them as a Christmas or birthday present, would leave you resentful at the least or really pissed off at the most. To wit: I bought a toilet brush and underwear.
Having lived in my place for just over a year now, the thought finally perked through my consciousness that the one bathroom that didn't have a bowl cleaning device was the master bathroom, the room that now sees the most ... "wasted" time since Lycurgus has set me up with The Best Seat In The House in there. Besides, I had one of the 20% off coupons that Bed, Bath & Beyond spins out like Rumplestiltskin's gold.
Likwise, the good folks at Thornton Melon's Tall and Fat sent me a surprise discount for my birthday - a card with a scratch-off amount from $10 to ... some other amount. Like I ever figured I'd get more than the $10. And I didn't. But $10 off a package of underwear is nothing to sneeze at. Something about that sentence leaves me very unsettled, I'd best not parse it too closely.
Infelicitous language aside, absent the discounts, I probably wouldn't have bought what I bought. I suppose I should be happy that I got done what needs to be done but the idea of being happy about buying a bowl brush and underwear is just wrong. So is blogging about it but now I've shared one of those base, quotidian pains-in-butt with my loyal readers. How do you feel about it?

Book Recommendation:
During my recent hiatus from blogging I read Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by James Webb. I am going out on a limb but I believe this is one for the BlogDog to take a gander at.

Back From A Long, Strange Trip
It's been a while since I last posted, business obligations kept me on the road for well over a month. I did make some notes that I meant to blog but somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert the strain of traveling began to take hold. Maybe it was the six lane traffic jams during rush hour or the constant reports of road rage during the traffic reports that caused me to caste my notes to the winds, I don't remember. The notes just began to seem insignificant the longer I was away from home and the more the sun beat down on me in my fire engine red Cadillac convertible.

Seriously, I'm glad I went to California. My assignment involved one of Corporate America's biggest problems: to defend against the harmful effects of viruses, worms and security exploits. In other words, I was trying to fix what is mostly a Microsoft-inflicted industry problem. I met with some success while using some products from Cisco and also visited Cisco headquarters in San Jose to preview their next generation of security products. I don't expect any easy resolution to the problems associated with Microsoft but it sure was satisfying to give it a shot during this road trip.

France Guts EU
That would make them "The Camp of the Aints."
What are they drinking, "Eau Contraire?"

If no one understands the first one, leave a comment and I'll explain.

A Touch of Snark
This is inappropriate for a Memorial Day weekend but the thought did strike me: Doesn't it seem blindness would be more likely to lead to the overuse of Viagra than overuse of Viagra would lead to blindness?

And in the same jocular vein, my favorite Viagra joke (as told by Harvey Korman): When asked if he used Viagra, he says, "Not much point to it. It'd be like putting up a new flagpole in front of a condemned buiilding."

One of My Favorite Politicians
I have always rather liked that Irish woman who was governor of New York - Mary O'Como.

Favorite Sites o' Snark
No finesse to this post. Just pointers to a couple of places I check regularly. First Go Fug Yourself ("Fugly is the new pretty.") for a heapin' helpin of celebrity snarkin.' And Television Without Pity for tube-y snark. You might not find a particular show but the in-depth recaps are worth the price of admission. Which is nothing of course. Would I send you to a website that charged? Not bloody likely.

Celebrating Initiative
PoW exists in awe of the inventive nature of Americans. Necessity is, in the old saying, the mother of invention. Through a bit of ingenious American laziness in to the mix and the results can be truly inspired. These facts notwithstanding, PoW does not endorse this pet carrier.

Category: Accumulated Crap
I had the horrifying realization as I did some organizing that I will never have to buy another pen for the rest of my damfool life.

Tuesday Night TV
Britney & Cletus "Idiotic" on one channel, Rowb an Ambah's wedding on another, "Trump Unauthorized" on still another. Only "House" on Fox keeps from using a bullet to bisect my corpus callosum.

Office Coffee
With a hat tip toward Sugarmama, I thought I might post about coffee in the office at a place of previous emplyment. Let's get one thing out in the open right at the git-go: coffee that's provided for employees is basically crap. It can be drinkable but you'll never get more than that out of the insitutionally provided caffeine vector. Still, we drink it because it's free. Be honest. You know I'm right.
That being as it may, my office started with those hideous glass carafe drip machines. Not that the carafes start out hideous of course. And if the person who makes the coffee takes a bit of care, the coffee can be ... acceptable. But it's bloody unlikely that the person ripping open the little foil bag of alleged coffee will put in the right amount of water and, much more importantly, it's a dead crab certainty that the carafe will not be cleaned. And therein lies the genesis of the hideousness.
That carafe is guaranteed to have, at some point, the last cup and a half of coffee burnt onto its bottom by neglect of the warming plate. And that blackened crust is also certain to be never entirely removed. It takes a bit of effort to get all the carbon off (such as putting in crushed ice and cleanser and swishing the pot around) and that effort will never be made for the office pot. The tragedy of the commons all over again. Except in little bitty scale. That persistent carbonized coffee will, if not properly dealt with, forever influence the coffee made in that pot. And by influence I mean like Tony Soprano influences law enforcement. Subtle but evil.
For the company, however, the problem is not the wretched coffee but the fact that the glass carafes break like a dog chew-toy made of cellophane. It isn't cheap to keep replacing those things. So other coffee service methods have been developed. My office got one of those machines that makes the coffee one cup at a time.
You select the strength, the measure of caffeine and the size, put your cup (aha! no carafe to break) in the little porch, a measure of coffee would be deposited on a filter belt and a wallop of hot water would womp down on the coffee and "brew" for a moment. Then with a great popping and sighing, the machine would pour a freshly (!) made cuppa into one's mug of choice. And it wasn't bad coffee really, as institutional swill goes. What I liked was the little scrolling LCD instruction window which, as the coffe was "brewing," said "Product being prepared - Watch!" Mmmm! Fresh, hot product!
What's so fun about the instruction window? I'm glad you asked. The main work with which I was involved was done in a large, fairly open room that was separated from the room next to it by a half wall with windows to the ceiling. So what's a wise guy to do? I made a sign that I put up on the glass door that said (you're way ahead of here aren't you) "Product being prepared - Watch!"
I have it on good authority that at least one other person was amused.

It's The Little Things Sometimes
Last Monday and Tuesday I spent a fair amount of each day at the cardiologist's office taking a dual-isotope test. I'm not going into details but it involved faux exercise, radioactive dyes injected into me and a big-ass imaging machine showing how my heart was working. The upshot is the tests showed that my heart was "normal." So my chest pain and sucking for air at the start of the month was due to something else. At least that's mostly gone.
The little thing is that I was injected each day and had a cloth bandage put in the crook of my arm. There must be latex in them because I still have a nasty, band-aid-sized red rash on each arm a week later. I use hydrocortisone cream on them so I'm not scratching at them and I think they are starting to clear up but Oy! What a lingering pain.
Unlike the short, shart jab in the wallet when I wrote them a check for the tests.

Kylie Minogue
I was unkind to the Aussie beauty in an earlier post, linking to a picture of her on the "Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong" site and I'd like to retract my earlier linkage in light of the recent news of her having breast cancer. PoW wishes her a fast and full recovery, a long and fruitful life. We may have snarked but we love her nonetheless.

I Have One Question
I haven't seen it yet and don't know when I will. But why is the title "Revenge of the Sith?" What exactly is it that was done to them that they are taking "revenge?"
I was going to go off on Lucas's naming of a previous episode but let me swipe a wad of text from the IMDB:

The title to this film is based on a false name given to _Return Of The Jedi (1983)_ , which was "Revenge Of The Jedi". In the Special Edition of ROTJ, George Lucas himself stated that they purposely leaked out the name as "Revenge Of The Jedi" in order to catch people making bootleg merchandise. He also stated that a true Star Wars fan would have known it was a false title because a Jedi would never seek revenge. The false title also caused another movie to change its title; Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) was originally titled "Khan's Revenge", but changed when word of the third Star Wars film's working title was leaked.

"A Jedi would never seek revenge." Yeah, right. So Yoda's line about destroying the Sith isn't revenge, so it's OK. "Hi. I want to wipe you from the face of the glaxy but my motives are not so base as to be (shudder) revenge, so you should be OK with what I plan to do." Oh my aching back.
This might lead to a "Why I Hate George Lucas" post. Or not.

Happy Birthday To Me
It seems as good a day as any to return to my bloggish ways. The sky is crying with that peculiar gelid rain that hangs on window screens, too cold to flow, not cold enough to freeze. The wind hustles along, thumping against the house occasionally like hands clapped to the ears. Yet it is not as bad as I make it out. This is a rain in late May which makes wearing a sweatshirt not only possible but comfortable. I like it cool. And the new roof is holding proof against the rain and wind. The shingles on the old roof would flap and wallop against the roof in a high wind making sleep nigh unto impossible.
And what goodies are under the birthday tree? A new iPod Shuffle (yay!), a Griffin RadioSHARK (yay!), Neal Stephenson's latest (see the "literature"section on the right) (yay!) and Tom Friedman's "The World Is Flat" (interesting - I'm not sure it's yay! material but I'm intrigued in reading it - Thanks to the XMBD). Mongolian Barbeque for dinner - an all-time fave I must say.
And tomorrow I wake to get on with my life. That's the part I'm not looking forward to.
UPDATE: The iPod Shuffle is fantastic. It holds 175 songs (I always rip at maximum quality), loads quickly, and I like the shuffle play. It automatically fills from my entire iTunes library (3009 songs as it stands) and I can count on getting something I like because my library is composed of music I like (That'd be a "duh!" moment. -Ed.) and the size is ... almost unbelieveable. If it weren't hanging around my neck (on the included lanyard), I'd think it wasn't on my person at all. My thanks to Lycurgus (never again to be called Festus) for the gift.

I Seem To Be On The Mend
I hope to return to posting items of interest (even if only to me) later this week. Thanks for the patience and the well wishes I've received.

Hiatus
I will have be away from posting for, most likely, the next few weeks at least. I have been made aware of a serious health issue that may result in, how does one say this without being excessively dramatic, away from the computer for a period of days.
I believe I have some cardiac problems which, if I do not get some treatment, could lead to a permanent end to my posting. 'Tis a consumation devoutly not to be wished.

I hope Paul will find sufficient reason to keep the commentary flowing. So, until we read again, I am off.

UPDATE: Not as serious as I feared. But I'll be on some meds and going in for some tests in the short-term future. Posting may continue but don't count on it.