Category: Life

To all of those participating in the Tour de Cure this weekend, good luck, and don’t do this.

You can support my beautiful wife‘s attempt to stay on her bike this weekend here. I know you’ve all got extra money because none of you has hit my tip jar.

On the day of Atari Party 5.2, I convinced my beautiful wife to come to a couple garage sales. I don’t know why she agreed, as we were holding a large party that evening and anyone who cares about others’ impressions of her domicile would have been stressed about the “presentation layer” of the home, and she doesn’t even like yard sales.

But came she did, and it was wise that she carried the bankroll. Because I encountered a deal. A Commodore 64 C in a refurbisher’s box with the Commodore 1541-II disk drive for $25. I looked it over; no software, even though GEOS was supposedly included (for you damn kids, Graphical Environment Operating System was a graphical operating system, a la Mac or Windows, for the C64). At $20, I would have snapped it up, but since it broke the double-sawbuck territory, I couldn’t do it.

As we were in somewhat of a hurry (the Atari Party had a scheduled start time, and we did have some interface tweaks to perform on Honormoor, the Noggle estate, before the party), I didn’t even pause to offer a single sawbuck. Besides, I already own an original C64 with a working 1541 drive. So I couldn’t justify the expense to my wife, although perhaps if I had the cash in my wallet, I could have.

So we got home, and I wanted to hook up a Commodore 64 for party decoration. Sadly, that’s all it’s become; the party goers don’t tolerate the load time on the 1541, we discovered in Atari Party IV, when we connected a Commodore 64 and preloaded Castle Wolfenstein; after the first death and reload, the party members wandered off while the old machine spinned. But I wanted one hooked up for Atari Party 5.2, since we had space for it and we have a monochrome monitor for it. When I opened the cabinet where we keep the Commodore 64, but never the Commodore 64 C we passed up, I realized I might have a problem:

I already own five Commodore 64s, including the one I took to college as my primary computer (a gift from my mother), and three in their original boxes.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am an old computer hoarder.

Whenever I find an old computer at a garage sale or an estate sale at a reasonable (or irrational) price, I must buy it. I’m not talking old IBM clones whose processors I’ve made into geek-amusement magnets, I mean old 1980s computers.

I own:

• 5 Commodore 64s, including 3 1541 drives.
• 2 TI 99/4as. I don’t have the Dataset, but I do have the Speech Synthesizer module, which I haven’t actually tested yet. I don’t have a working set of joysticks, yet, which sucks since most of my dozen cartridges are games. Also, note that the two TIs I have now are the latest in my possession; I’ve owned 4 in my life; the preceding two also came in the 1990s, after the TI was way obsolete.
• 1 Laser 200, a computer I never heard of until I bought the one which languishes on my closet shelf. It booted, though, and I paid a couple bucks for it.

Most of these machines, not to mention my 4 Nintendo Entertainment Systems and 5 or so Atari 2600s and 2 Sega Geneses, languish on my closet shelves for 364 days a year or, in some cases, for 729 days every two years. I want to own these machines because I don’t want other people to throw them away.

I am an old computer hoarder.

Admitting this is the first step in receiving help. I know that now.

So if you know of a Commodore 64 C with 1541-II or Commodore 128 with 1571 that I can buy for under $20, please pass along the information.

Within a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch entitled “Zippy craft, young riders are making waves” (subtitle: “Missouri has joined Illinois in focusing on boating education certificates for younger boaters.”), we find an entrepreneur abdictating his responsibility to the state government, and to the taxpayers.

The business problem:

Another pair of wrecked Wave Runners. Just the latest.

One of them – a $3,500 machine that can hit 70 mph – sat with its front end sheared off outside Mike Lynn’s rental shop. The two watercraft had crashed in a game of “cat and mouse,” although both riders escaped injury.

Nine of 10 watercraft at Lynn’s Bikini Pier Rental, a shop in the shadows of the Grand Glaize Bridge, come back damaged.

Lynn lauds the solution:

But a new Missouri law effective Jan. 1 is aimed at curbing these accidents, especially among younger drivers, who need to be only 14 to pilot such a craft alone. State residents younger than 21 are now required get a boating safety identification card by passing a boater education course.

The new card is required to operate all motorized vessels on Missouri lakes, even when renting one. A card costs $15.

“It’s going to help. It’s got to help,” Lynn said. “I’m all for it.” [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Lynn favors state registration of young Seadoo riders because he is unwilling to forego renting to riders under 21 because that would cost him revenue. Instead, he wants to spend my money and add layers of government bureaucracy to license young people, which will result in a piece of paper they need to carry, and might reduce the 90% damage to his business’s property that is rented to these underage riders. Pardon me while I do the math:

.9 * (percentage of underage rentals * safer riding because of certification)

So if certification makes underage riders 25% safer, and if Lynn rents 25% of his business to people under 21 with the certification…. Crikey, man, I have a philosophy/English degree, not a degree in something useful like figurin’. Still, it seems like a small impact on Lynn’s bottom line.

But it’s a free impact since we the Missouri taxpayers are paying for it. Were I a strict entrepreneur, with nothing but the betterment of my business as my highest principle, goal, and directive, I would be all for it, too.

Hopefully, the boss won’t catch this line item on the budget and question why QA needs an imposing, slightly sinister Imperial TIE Fighter workstation.

Although perhaps I should hold out for the fully-functional Death Star model.

Gentle reader, you might have noticed that I did not post but once over the weekend. Well, you might have, my regular gentle reader; those of you who have stopped by based on a Google search for missouri lottery murder might not have noticed. However, my wife and I took a trip to San Francisco to celebrate our anniversary. I know, I know, good bloggers always warn you that when they’re going on a brief hiatus, but I do not, because I want my fellow St. Louis bloggers and blog readers to wonder if I am out of town or am just suffering from writer’s block and spending the day cleaning my guns and filing my rottweiler’s teeth to razor-sharp points.

Such as it is, I offer this humble review of the city of San Francisco.

San Francisco, dear friends, is a city at the northern tip of the southern penninsula in the pair of penninsulas that almost pinch the San Francisco Bay off from the Pacific Ocean. It’s a small, compact city, with about seven square miles of streets amongst which Karl Malden, Michael Douglas, and Richard Hatch earnestly ran, Bullitt sped, and Harry Calahan fired his guns. It’s got plenty of pop-culture familiarity, from the Rice-a-Roni street car to The Presidio. Coming to San Francisco, one would almost feel like one had been there before. Well, maybe not, but one knows what one will get. However, going to the city provides the fine grained detail you don’t get from The Maltese Falcon. Unfortunately, the movies and television shows airbrush a lot of graffiti and litter, prevalent even in the better blocks of San Francisco.

And let’s talk about the better blocks of San Francisco. It’s truly an urban environment, which means that the whole city has a lot of foot traffic and a lot of people moving around in it. It has the plethora of little shops at the ground floor level or parking beneath buildings with office space and residential space above. It completely mixes use throughout, and the difference between South Beach and North Beach and Nob Hill and SoMa was not as pronounced as you get in other cities, where the lush environs of Lindell Boulevard dim to the Central West End, which dims to Forest Park Southeast, which really dims to the southwestern corner of St. Louis City. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that the city’s elevated to a nice, middle class or better level like one would expect in the People’s Republic of California. Instead, all ground level windows and doors in all parts of the city have iron, albeit decorative wrought iron, bars over the windows and doors.

Still, my beautiful wife and I had a good time. We spent Thursday evening misinterpreting a tourist pamphlet map (and by we, I mean “I”) and walking due south from Nob Hill to find the Fisherman’s Wharf. Somewhere before the Mission District, we wisened up and turned left (easy to do in San Francisco) and found the San Francisco Bay in South Beach. We had fresh seafood in the first place we found. With a bit of luck and without the map (shredded and discarded as useless somewhere about Fifth and Folsom), we found our way back to our hotel.

We spent Friday on a tour of Sonoma wine country with a tour group and everything. Gentle reader, I shall never again sample chardonnay….well, unless I am really thirsty, or it’s all they have, or if I have a bottle of chardonnay. My beautiful wife and I had more wine than can taste good, but oddly enough, the wines from the fourth (or fifth?) winery we visited were so delectable that we ordered somewhere north of a million dollars’ worth (or perhaps somewhere south of….I didn’t have a good map yet). We’re expecting the tanker truck sometime this week. On Friday night, we took a cab to Pier 39 and had seafood because it is supposed to be fresher on the sea than on the plain. Brother, when fried enough, who can tell?

On Saturday, we hit the used bookstores (and A Clean Well Lighted Place for books), walking a number of miles from the Hilton to points on Van Ness, Post, and whatnot. Fortunately, we had a map this time, which eliminated some of the randomness from our wanderings. After noon, we took a streetcar (impression: it’s just mass transit, with kitsch overtones) to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we had more seafood. Afterwards, we walked along Beach Street, looking into the galleries to see the original art works which are still out of our price range, but close enough that we can dream. Heather wanted to visit the temple of the chocolatier, so we did. We then debated streetcar versus cab, and cab won when we saw lines of tourists waiting for the streetcar. Saturday evening brought a burger and a beer in the Hilton pub, and then we returned.

It was an interesting visit, definitely worth a quarter at a yard sale or the vast sums we spent. Besides, it was our anniversary. While some husbands dole out thousands of dollars of baubles to their wives for their anniversaries, I got on an airplane (which, in retrospect, is no where near as thrilling as a San Francisco cab, which also zooms, twists, and cheats death in three dimensions). Cumulatively, I got onto four airplanes. But I love you, honey, and the following latex tentacle wig thing is a joke. Really. Unless you want to.

C’mon, baby, it was your idea to see the Revenge of the Sith movie. Can’t you just this once put on the latex tentacle wig and plead, “Sith Lord, spare me! I will do anything!”

Today’s word: Twee: Overly precious or nice.

I don’t normally do words of the day, but I’ve encountered this word twice already this morning.

Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote:

(And why don’t men garden in ads? I know lots of guys who garden, who are proud of their tomatoes. I sure am. Is it twee? Come by the office and say that to my face!)

Mark Steyn wrote:

The score gives you a good clue to the main problem: sometimes it’s grand and epic, at others it’s twee and nudging and determined to jolly along the flattest of gags.

Weird, huh?

From the bizjournals.com: Mastering meetings:

MYTH: Most meetings are a waste of time.

FACT: Every meeting — whether you’re a participant, a presenter, or the chairperson — represents a golden opportunity to increase your visibility as an effective communicator.

Remember, bureaucrat, meetings are not to do something, nor to reach a decision: they’re all about increasing your visibility.

So please pipe up with your eloquent digressions and anecdotes of personal achievement. Because that will serve the real purpose of the meeting.

You know, they say that dogs are pack animals….

When the frightening roofing salesman comes, Tristan hides under the bed:

Badly.

But, honey, look!

It’s a vitamin-fortified danish! It’s good for me!

I think I’ll have two.

Corset piercing.

Ew.

Although I don’t mind corset Peircing, wherein a woman in lingerie extols Pragmatism. Philosophy majors have the strangest kinks, ainna?

When you’re testing and you see a dog breed called Dogo Argentino, you might think that you’re seeing junk data since the Spanish word for Dog is perro.

But it’s not; there really is a breed called Dogo Argentino.

Probably junk data that became institutionalized through repetition.

Someone asserts: "Pretty (cool!) in pink", which not only offers a bright shirt with the caption Tough Guys Wear Pink, but also asserts:

What do baby blankets, bridesmaids, hip-hop artists and skaters have in common?

Pink!

In case you haven’t left the house or turned on MTV in the past 12 months, pink is hot for guys. And girls are hot for guys in pink.

Reminds me of my grandmother’s second wedding. I was an usher, blushing with the responsibility at 19. The wedding colors included pink, and the dictum would indicate I would wear a pink shirt. Acourse, as a poor boy, I didn’t own any pink shirts and didn’t have the fiscal wherewithall to readily acquire one. Besides, I don’t like pink. So I said I’d wear a white shirt, of which I had plenty because in those days, you damn kids, grocery store baggers wore slacks, white shirts, and ties.

“Real men aren’t afraid to wear pink,” my stepmother manipulated.

You see, friends, real men (of whom tough guys are but a subset) don’t follow the dictations of fashion magazines and newspaper columns. Why, every time I look at the style section of FHM or Playboy, I smirk. The guys down at Tap City would beat the cosmopolitan out of me if I tried to real the suggested clothing among them, and I wouldn’t blame them; t-shirts should come free with proofs-of-purchase or should cost under $10 for a brand name advertisement or under $15 for saying something clever. They should not cost $30 to display a fashionplate of an upscale store and should never be worn under a sport coat unless you’re Billy Joel or Billy Jack circa 1979.

You want to know what real men do? They do whatever they want, in a burly fashion.

If they want to wear pink, no one says a word. And if they think pink clothes are fru-fru, they don’t wear them contrary to the prevailing winds of fashion. And they post blog entries about it.

From an unsolicited packet, marked DELIVERY MONITORED! to appeal to paranoid occupants like me, advertising an air purifier:

Oxygen is nature’s beneficial element. It is what makes the sky blue. It is what nature uses to get rid of everything harmful on earth.

Well, oxygen is a key component in fire.

So this thing wants to pump ozone into your house to make your household air pure; it calls ozone “activated oxygen” and pretty much implies they’re throwing in an extra atom of oxygen into when you buy an atom of O₂.

What the hey, have another quote:

The electronic spark ozone air purifiers use an electric spark to produce ozone. The electric spark produces oxides of nitrogen that form an acid in the air which is corrosive and toxic. The electric spark can cause explosions and it can interfere with radio and T.V. signals.

I understand explosions can also adversely impact radio and television reception by themselves.

Perhaps I should read more junk mail. It’s making my afternoon.

Heather has a birthday coming up this summer. Want to know what not to get her?

Approximately 730 bales of styrofoam.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you if she unwraps that gift with your name on it.

Here’s a piece of on-product advertising from Frito-Lay:

The text:

America prefers the taste of Lay’s Stax® Original Potato Crisps Over Pringles® Original Potato Crisps**

Taste for Yourself!

** Among those with a preference

Among those with a preference? You mean amongst the thirty people outside of Lay’s who have heard of the canned Lay’s? Wow, that’s some bandwagon there.

In a related note, America prefers Musings from Brian J. Noggle to Pop-Up Mocker**

** Among those with a preference and who know what a “blog” is and who have heard of either of the aforementioned bottom-feeding blogs.

Hoover, the talking seal.