Category Archives: Musings

Some years ago, I’d gone to San Francisco for Macworld, and I was invited to a party that happened to be at a sushi bar. I decided to go; my New Year’s resolution that year was to try more new foods, so I tried a couple of kinds of sushi. It was just as gross as I’d always expected it to be, but at least I tried it. Now there’s something that looks like sushi but is made of Rice Krispies and candy. I’m all about that.

Yesterday I finally spoke with Karin Kowalski, the Blade writer who’s doing a piece on local bloggers. She had done her homework well, which is always nice; one persistent meme in the blogger community is that most journalists are technophobic idiots. Some probably are, but people like Karin, Mike Wendland (who moved his site without me noticing), and Dan Gillmore help put the lie to that. It’ll be interesting to see the story when it comes out.

I’m happy with Verizon’s cell service; they have a robust and wide-ranging network, and I have only rarely had problems making or receiving calls (and most of those were in Alabama; go figure). I’m excited to see them accepting number portability, which is of great value to consumers but (probably) negative value to wireless phone companies. Now even more good news: VZW will provide number portability for landline numbers, too. According to this press release, Verizon customers will be able to take a Verizon landline number and turn it into a cell number. This is super cool, and I hope that Ameritech SBC offers a similar capability– I’d ditch my second landline, pass the number to my cell phone, and replace it with Vonage.

In my “info” mailbox, I got a query from a Toledo Blade reporter working on a story about local blogs. I told her to call me any time. If any of you have comments for the Blade, feel free to leave ’em here 🙂

This site is pretty neat: it’s subtitled “Up to the Minute Analysis of Ohio Public Policy”, and it delivers the goods. I haven’t read enough of the analysis to see if the author has any obvious biases, but I did note that searching for “concealed” (as in, “concealed carry”) turned up no hits. That tells me something right there; the ongoing CCW permit fight is certainly a public policy issue.

Tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day (yes, again). I am seriously considering making my computer security presentation to the Rotary tomorrow in pirate talk. (btw, accordin’ to yon pirate name quiz, ye should be callin’ this old sea cur Black Sam Flint. Arrrr!)

Continuing Car Week here at el rancho, I just had to reserve a car for an upcoming trip to Seattle. Hertz sent me an invitation to enroll in their special business discount program, so I did. That netted me a daily rate of $57 for a Taurus, or exactly $1 less than the normal non-discount rate. Interestingly, though, it also quoted me $58.99 for a much nicer car, so I’m happily paying the $2 extra. I love transparent pricing.

The station wagon is getting a little too small for the herd as they grow. That’s sparked a discussion of what we might replace it with.
What Arlene wants. Pro: available, capacious, familiar, ergonomic. Cons: booooring, slow.
What I want. Pro: supercharged 430-hp engine, wicked cool styling, 20″ wheels, nifty gun-slit windows. Cons: not available until spring 2004, likely to attract police attention, requires purchase of zoot suit.

I don’t even remember the last concert I went to. No, wait, that’s not what I meant… oh, never mind. Arlene and I are about to head up to the DTE amphitheater to see Randy Travis, the only country music performer I’d pay actual money to go see. I’ve been trying to convince her to go see him in concert at a casino, where the performance areas are typically much smaller, but he hasn’t performed near here. I’m excited. Maybe this will signal a renaissance of my concert attendance, now that I live someplace near actual concert venues. Huntsville, sadly, never drew big acts (Metallica and ZZ Top both came to town in ’92, but it was all downhill after that).

(No, it’s not on fire). Longtime readers may remember that our roof didn’t have tar paper underneath the shingles. I finally got around to hiring a competent roofer (Adam and the gang at Integrity Roofing), and guess what? There is tar paper under the shingles. Too bad we didn’t find that out until we had part of the existing shingles off. This posed a difficult conundrum:

• If we replaced just the shingles that had been removed (and the peak shingles, since they need to be removed to replace the roof vents), we’d have a patchwork-quilt-looking roof. This leads to lower resale value, which isn’t a big conern right now. However, ut takes 10+ years for the shingles to weather out, at which point…
• The existing roof was laid in 1991, and it has a design life of about 20 years. By the time the new shingles look like the old ones, it would probably be time to replace the old ones altogether. Making things worse,
• We need to replace or repair the roof over the breakfast area, leading to the patchwork problem again. And…
• Now I can afford to repair the roof. In four or five or ten years, I might not be able to, and I don’t want it to hurt our ability to sell the house later.

So, Adam’s merry men are busily upstairs pulling down the shingles and re-reroofing the house. I am resigned to the idea of buying an upgrade that I really didn’t need but that might come in handy later. Maybe I need an iPod to cheer me up. Yeah, that’s the ticket…

To the tune of You Are My Sunshine:

During the night time
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I’d bought a new iPod
When I awoke, though,
I was iPod-less
So I fired up iTunes instead

I suppose it’s a little scary that I dream about buying technostuff instead of flying, or being naked in front of an important audience, or books. I also, unfortunately, would have about zero use for an iPod, as cool as they are. I’ve been getting good use out of BeBopper, an MP3 player for my phone. Maybe when I’m rich and famous I’ll buy an iPod anyway, just because I can… nah.