Monthly Archives: October 2007

We ran out of candy tonight for the first time I can remember. Though to be fair we weren’t actually giving out candy, we were giving out little ‘goodie bags’ stuffed with bead necklaces, monster teeth, whistles and whatever else looked fun in the Oriental Trading Company catalog back when we placed the annual Halloween order. But anyway.
I could see it was going to happen. Started with like 100. Now down to 5 little bags. Then 2. And of course the next group is a 3. Two girls and a boy. Probably 6-8 years old. And how does it shake out? The boy mans-up and says “girls first”. I know! The 30-pound pillowcase of candy he was carrying probably helped grease the skids of his chivalry, but still, so not what I expected. I said “nice work, kid” then I hustled back inside and turned off the lights and ran to the back of the house. Problem solved.
All that’s left to do now is sit back and wait for the local punks to smash my pumpkins. On the street. Where the city will come by and sweep them up with a big street sweeper machine. Um, thanks?
Also: best worst costume has to go to the kid who showed up in white t-shirt with “wii” written on the front in black magic marker. I think he was supposed to be a wii. Great stuff.

A few weeks back I picked up one of those network storage drives at the local computer megastore. I went with the Buffalo LinkStation but I didn’t do any real research so maybe that’s the wrong one to get. Don’t do what doodle does just because doodle does it.
What it is: 500 gigabytes of network ready web-browsable media servin’ ass kickin’ network storage. And it worked as soon as I turned it on. Bam. Right on the network. A little light set-up – via the web-based admin console – and it’s like I’ve never been with out it. A couple of hours later I’ve got all our photos and music and stuff up there and I couldn’t pat myself on the back hard enough. Genius. Seriously. I was so pumped. I’d [d]evolved our house into a dumb terminal world. We basically use the web for everything now – mail, calendar, documents and spreadsheets, whatever else google is offering yes I’m a tool so save it – and once I offloaded our ‘media’ to the NAS, the client we use became basically irrelevant. I know!
What it’s not: friendly with iTunes. At all. And yes, I noticed that it immediately showed up in iTunes as a ‘shared’ playlist or whatever, but of course you can’t sync your player to that, because then you’d be stealing. Even though you own the music. And the drive it’s on. But whatever. Result: I ‘add folder’ from the NAS to my iTunes and it imports everything. Which takes like a week. Also: iTunes doesn’t ‘watch’ a directory like, say, Picasa does, so you have to add all your new tunes via iTunes instead of just dragging to the NAS. Which is a super bitch when you’re so proud of how you built your whole network into a dumb terminal zone and now one [literally] stupid app is ruining it and chaining you to a specific box. Gross.
And yes, I’ve already d/l’d several iTunes alternatives and will be going with one of them. Thanks for asking.
On a related note: my Deadhead buddies have finally started doing the massive HD trades I’ve been dreaming about since the early 90′s. I just knew this day would come. And I’m a little choked up by it all. Um, does anyone know anyone who wants like 1500 cassettes? Please?

Attention punk kids who think it’d be worthwhile to break into my jeep: it’s not. Here comes the inventory:

• AM/FM factory stereo
• 3 bags of baby clothes that need to get to the goodwill
• 1 roll of duct tape – used to tape rear window closed
• 1 set of jumper cables
• 4 bungee cords
• beach towel for when I leave windows down and it rains
• less than a dollar in change

Jackpot, I know. The guys at work never say it out loud, but whenever I drive to lunch I can tell that they’re jealous. I’m sure it’s mostly the bungee cords.
I bring this up because the neighbor girl stopped by the other day to let me know that her brother had been up watching tv late at night and had seen a group of kids – her words – “trying to break into your jeep”. Her brother called the cops and the cops came and I think they may have even caught the kids but she wasn’t sure. I’ll maybe call down to the station tomorrow just to see if they wrote anything down.
My favorite part is the “trying to break into” part. For one, it’s always unlocked. For two, the back window is duct taped closed. So I really hope it was more “succeeding” than “trying”. You never know with this generation, though. They probably had to stop halfway thru peeling the duct tape off to txt some updates to their myspace pages. Then sit around in a circle and wait for someone to tell them how good of a job they were doing. As a team.
Honestly, a 10-year-old starting-to-rust jeep with duct tape holding the windows closed? That’s a target? So weak.
(Full Disclosure: this happens to me every 6 months or so, though it’s been a few years since it’s happened at the house. Huh.)

If you’re one of those people who isn’t necessarily comfortable watching a stage full of braced-faced teenagers butcher your fondest Saturday morning childhood memories, be thankful you didn’t make it over to Hopkins for the Stages Theater’s fall production of ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ because wow was that community theater in its most raw and enthusiastic form. But I’m totally comfortable with that. At least I thought I would be. Turns out it was maybe a little more unsettling than I was prepared for, but what can you do, the killer 2nd row seats are paid for, the lights are out, the kids are dancing, just roll with it.
I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it – because I did, on many levels, and duh, it’s a kids theater where kids put on shows for other kids, so it’s not like I went in expecting greatness or anything – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t notice the subtle scent of tragedy wafting thru the air. Because rest assured it was there. And every other child of the late-70′s in the audience was sniffing it right along with me. Because when you feed a song as immensely awesome as ’3 is a Magic Number’ through the meat grinder that is community theater, the results aren’t always going to, um, maintain the immense awesomeness of the original. And maybe you’re ok with that, and maybe you’re kinda like “stop! you’re hurting my childhood!”
But the kids really seemed to be trying their best and having fun and jumping around and stuff, so that was cool. And the line for autographs was like a bajillion fans long, so it was obviously working for the tikes in the crowd (junior included). Also, it’s not like I know anything [at all] about musical theater so I should probably just shut the hell up.

I just made a piece of toast. Best part: I got to open a brand new jar of peanut butter. Second best part: I finished off the jar of jam. I mean seriously, how crazy coincidental is that? It’s like the intersection of two kitchen waves. What’s the term for that again? Hmm, maybe just ‘intersection’ now that I think about it, but whatever, it’s still felt like I was snacking in some weird multidimensional toast universe while rolling snake eyes 4 times in a row. I know, spooky.
To state the obvious: yes, now that I write it down it seems much less crazy, but trust me, if you would have been there watching me make that piece of toast, you would have been loving it just as much as I was. And yes, this was way too random navel gazey, I know. I’ll make it up to you later.
Or maybe now? Because I’ve been working on trying to find a good time to use this analogy I came up with the other day. At the time I was over at that Party Card Outlet store at Knollwood picking up some balloons. I parked the Jeep, opened the door, looked down, and noticed a dirty condom on the ground next to my parking space. As I carefully stepped around it I thought “Huh, finding a condom in the Knollwood parking lot… that’s gonna make a great analogy someday.” But now it’s been a few days and I haven’t had the chance to work it in and I’m starting to worry I’ll forget about it. So instead of writing it down in my Big Book of Analogies – in which it would be the first and only entry, obvs – I’ll just write it down here and then when I finally do work it in you all can smile and nod knowingly and say “good for him, he finally got to use it.” It’ll probably go something like “blah blah blah is like finding a condom in the Knollwood Mall parking lot: sure you’re a little disgusted, but are you really that surprised?” I know, it’s genius. Simmons would have used it 14 times by now. Maybe I just need to work on being disgusted more often. Lucky for me Hoffmaldo called earlier requesting a Taco Bell lunch tomorrow. My wait may finally be over.
That toast story ruled. You know I’m right.