Disorderly Content

Having crossed the threshold of fiftyhood a while back myself, I can both laugh and sigh over the superheros-past-their-prime graphics on Donald Soffritti's blog. Laugh 'til it hurts...

(Thanks to io9 for the pointer.)

I've never been a fan of Microsoft products, but this is beyond ridiculous. A few months ago I made the mistake of upgrading (a word that becomes ever more ironic) to the latest version of Office for the Macintosh, largely in hope that a native Intel version would outperform the emulated PowerPC version I'd been using up to then. It didn't. And worse, not only didn't it perform better, but it had serious bugs, with graphs that didn't display correctly or wouldn't let me change parameters, and regular crashes. An update eliminated some of the crashes, although it left me with repeated popup dialogues complaining of nonexistent problems. (If I'm out of memory, how come you stop complaining after I cancel the dialogue a few times?)

But, I thought, even Microsoft has to get it right eventually. So when I heard there was a new update out, I couldn't wait to install it. It finally showed up this morning, and it made things so much better, in much the same way that a tornado cleans up a neighborhood. Yep, now even the smallest change to my spreadsheets crashs the program. Every. Damn. Time. Excel has gone from extremely annoying to completely and utterly useless. What's the next update going to do: set my apartment on fire?

Update 05/15: A quick update. I think the problem is Excel's background error checking feature, which, by the way, complains every time I use a range that includes empty cells. I turned off background error checking and was able to get a version of the spreadsheet to update without crashing. So I'm back in business, and slightly less furious at Microsoft for selling me such a piece of utter crap.

Update 05/15: A little later... I tried updating a cell in my spreadsheet and watched it go into an endless processing loop, pegging one of my processors at 100%. After killing and restarting Excel, I discovered that the act of loading another spreadsheet had turned background error checking back on, including for the sheet where I had explicitly turned it off. So not only is background error checking hopelessly fucked, but it insists in being in my face about its fuckedness. Thanks so much, Microsoft.

Daring Fireball points to a wonderful story at Ars Technica about a joint MS/NBC screwup that's keeping Vista owners from recording some favorite shows. If we needed a good example of why DRM is anti-consumer, it's awfully nice of them to give it to us.

Here's one of those stories that ought to make you go "hmmmmm..." It seems that security guards at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California are out on strike. Their immediate beef is that their employer (not Kaiser, but a company called Inter-Con Security that provides Kaiser with contract services) won't let them form a union, which they can do under a loophole in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that applies specifically to security guards. And why are these guards so determined to form a union? Because their jobs don't give them health benefits. And there's enough irony for anybody's diet: these guys work at hospitals and they don't get health care! And the law won't let them form a union to balance the power of their employers unless that employer says it's okay. Which of course they don't want to do, because they might have to start treating these guys with respect. And that'll cost them money, which might affect the compensation of the guys at the top. (Okay, I'm inferring that last. But somehow it seems a safe bet.)

I've written before about Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, which has to do with the assumptions we make that just because things happen in a particular order, there must be some sort of causal relationship among them. Sometimes there is; often there isn't. But assuming a relationship is a failure of reasoning.

But now I'd like to tell you of a different kind of failure of reasoning. Right after Apple updated its Safari browser, I started having trouble logging into my credit union's website. It would just hang; no timeout (although maybe I needed to wait a while longer), no nuthin. When it first happened, I thought maybe their site was down. But eventually I tried some experiments, and discovered that if I deleted the relevant cookies in my browser (the stuff that remembers me from session to session), it would let me in without a pause. And so for the next few weeks I'd follow a new and mildly annoying practice: try to go to the site, remember the problem, delete the cookies for the site, try again and get in. And so I might have gone henceforth and forevermore.

Until one day I changed the process. Instead of trying and failing to access the site, I deleted the cookies first. And discovered that it still hung! I cancelled the access, looked for the cookies (which weren't there), and then just tried again. And this time it worked. Turns out it wasn't anything to do with the cookies at all. No, all I have to do is try to access the site, cancel the access and try again. The second time is the charm, each and every time. And my logic, although excellent, was still wrong.

I had another studio photo shoot last night, thanks to my friend and mentor RJ, who has a talent for finding and giving us access to the most amazing models. Anyway, while it was someone else's turn to shoot, the conversation turned inevitably to equipment, by which I mean cameras and lenses. (Why? What did you think I meant?) I mentioned that I'd been lusting after Nikon's new 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, an excellent but very expensive piece of glass that's in rather short supply. And of course I returned home to an email from B&H Photo in New York, telling me that they finally had some in stock. I had my order in before I could consider my decision to spend so much on what will likely be a small incremental improvement to my images. I mean really: how much difference could it make? Then again, how could I hope my head up at our next shoot with an attitude like that?

Yep, boys and their toys. It only gets worse as we get older.

This is one of those "too much time on their hands" things that's more amazing the more you think about it. A guy named Román Cortés created a portrait of Homer Simpson using the artistic medium of CSS. Then another guy named Ned Batchelder created an animation, so you can watch Homer get rendered. And suddenly, an okay portrait of the Pillsbury D'Oh! Boy is shown to be the work of genius and dedication it really is! Although I have to ask why Ned reversed the accents in Román's name. Carelessness, I suppose.

(Thanks to John Gruber of Daring Fireball for making me aware of Ned's efforts on Román's behalf.)

I recently became addicted to Corner Gas, a Canadian comedy series about a combination gas station/coffee shop in a nowhere town in Saskatchewan. I'd caught most of the episodes on WGN, but finally ordered DVDs of all four seasons to make sure I hadn't missed any. While listening to the commentary on a season two ep, I heard mention of the town where the show is filmed, and where they built the titular gas station. That led me to Google, which got me to the town's home page. Where I learned virtually nothing, since way too many of the site's pages say the same thing:

Help... we need information for this page!

If you are a resident of Rouleau and would like to help out, please submit accurate and detailed information to:

info@townofrouleau.com

So I'm not a lot wiser about the "real" Dog River, although there's a pretty good virtual Dog River on the show's website. And isn't that what really matters?

Spring is late in Alberta. As I mentioned in my previous post, I spent last week in Calgary for the day job. Nice town, Calgary. But the weather... You see, I decided to take a day off to drive out to Banff National Park, an hour and a half west in the Canadian Rockies. Unfortunately, what started as cold but clear weather turned into pearl gray skies and a bit of snow. Not enough to make the roads treacherous, but enough to turn my color pictures rather more monochrome than I'd planned. As I looked out of my hotel room window at the snow blowing around, I wondered if I was crazy to head to the mountains. But the weather service said it would be okay, and when are they ever wrong? So I got pictures of gray rivers and white snow and off-white skies and gray-green trees, or at least that's what my camera captured. And listened to the locals complain that they were sick of winter. I can of course relate; winter in the Bay Area sucks. Having to wear a sweater. Having to carry an umbrella. Awful.

Last week I was in Calgary for work. It was my first international trip since I got my iPhone, and only my second since I started carrying a smart phone (the dreaded Nokia E62). Not wanting to get slammed with roaming charges, especially given the amount of surfing I do on my phone (not just email, but maps and weather, and browsing - lots of browsing), I forwarded my phone number to my BlackBerry and left Data Roaming turned off. And for four days I lived in a colder, less interactive world. Turns out there are a couple of interesting problems with the BlackBerry. Like the fact that it doesn't come with any ringtones at all, so I had to feel or hear the vibration when a call came in. And worse, voicemail doesn't work at all outside the US of A; when I tried retrieving voicemail, it would just hang up on me. I had the same problem with an older phone in Australia; apparently, AT&T doesn't believe the phone is really mine when I call in via one of their partners. Fortunately, there was nothing critical in the two messages I received. And even more fortunately, I'm back in the Land of the Free, where my unlimited data plan really is unlimited. Not that Canada wasn't nice and all, but it can't compete with an iPhone and a good data plan...

This is why I loved the Intertubes! Boing Boing introduced me to Untooned, the work of the blogger on Pixeloo. He's been creating real world versions of 2D cartoons, starting with Mario and Homer, but achieving true brilliance with Jessica Rabbit. I am in awe.

At Romantic Times (yes, I'm still going on about that), I'd introduce myself as Barry Eisler's entourage. At first Barry was uncomfortable; he thought I was underplaying the help I provide him. But it wasn't long before he started playing along. I'd describe myself as his entourage, he'd say I was the best he could afford and we'd agree that was a sad state of affairs. Not Abbott & Costello, but we thought it was funny.

But I have to remember that not everybody sees Barry as I do: that cool guy who shared the misery of a startup that didn't, and who's now having a well-deserved success. Talking to reps from a local Pittsburgh entertainment publication called Lux, I did my best to calm the young interviewer's nerves about meeting Barry. Not that she had reason to worry; among his many skills is the ability to make you feel he's as pleased to meet you as you are to meet him. Sincerity, in other words. And as George Burns so famously said, if you can fake that, you have it made.

Still, it's a surprise, and a nice one at that, to be acknowledged in their blog of their RT experience. And not just Barry, but me too. Maybe I should upgrade my title to sidekick...

One of the many amusing aspects of Romantic Times is/are the giveaways. I mean, when was the last time a computer company gave you a vial of strawberry flavored personal lube? (Seriously, when? 'Cause I really want to know...) Much more interesting than the stacks of books; I think my bag was ten pounds heavier on the return flight, and that's because I turned down half of the volumes I was offered. But my favorite tchotchke had to be the felt puppet in the gift bag from an erotica publisher called Ellora's Cave. (The one in my bag was a sheep, although there were also bunnies, elephants, whales and other creatures.) I couldn't figure out the point of the puppet. I mean, who has a hand narrow enough to fit into the thing. Then I found out it wasn't my hand that was supposed to go inside. And suddenly all was clear, if rather intimidating.

(Ellora's Cave was responsible for another... umm... feature of the con: a bunch of overmuscled, sweaty guys they call the Cavemen. The women went gaga over them. But I don't know why. Heck, I don't think they're even real cavemen. I mean, not a mastodon cloak in the bunch. Although they did provide a nice proof point for my belief that the only difference between men and women is that we admit we're shallow.)

They should warn you about the post-con crash. They really should.

I got home last night from The Happiest Place on Earth, after a mere twelve hours in transit. Disneyland? One of its many siblings? No. And no. Not even Burbank, home to my annual Farscape weekend. No, my new candidate for THPoE was the Pittsburgh Hilton, itself an unlikely candidate thanks to remodeling that wasn't nearly as far along as was promised. (And why are you not surprised?) And what made it so happy? It was home to Romantic Times, a convention for people who write romances, people who read romances, and people like me, who never do the former and only occasionally do the latter, but am perfectly happy to spend time around both. Try to picture something over a thousand women: tall women, short women, old women, young women, large women, small women, loud women, quiet women... well, I think you get the idea. Now imagine fifty or so women to every man. And imagine them all having a girls' night out, only for four straight days. And nights.

And no, nothing untoward happened. At least not to me. (Dammit.) Just lots of conversation, and lots of laughter, and some world class hugs. It was quite remarkable, and unlike any of the hundred or so conventions and conferences and trade shows in my storied career. I'm already looking forward to Next Year in Orlando, as my people are wont to say every Passover. Or at least we would if we were being honest. I mean really; Jerusalem doesn't even have a theme park...

A blog post on The Consumerist pointed to a finance quiz on U.S. News & World Report, which is a sampling of questions posed to 12th graders. The average on the test is 52%; my score on the six sample questions was 6. Which led me to wonder if that was good or not. Is that 6 out of 6? Or 6 out of a hundred? I worry about these things, you see.

Turns out to be six out of six, by the way. Which I guess means I am actually smarter than a 12th grader, about some things at least.

As much as I like to think otherwise, I am in many respects shallow. One example is my choice of travel guides. I have many volumes produced by Dorling Kindersley. Not, I hate to admit, because their guidebooks are the best, but because they're so pretty. Shiny pages with lots of pretty, pretty pictures. As a photographer, I guess I got sucked in. And usually it's not a problem, given the degree to which I depend on guidebooks. But every once in a while...

Like this weekend. I had an about-to-expire free ticket on Southwest, which I used to fly to Phoenix. But what to do when I get there?, I thought. And then, the day before, I went to my DK Guide To The Southwest, which told of the wonders of the Apache Trail, a road that winds its way through the mountains an hour or so east of Phoenix. Perfect, thinks I; that's where I'll go.

And it started out pretty well. Lots of twists and turns through hills full of saguaro cactus (cacti?) and yellow spring wildflowers. Some nice vistas, when I could find a place to park that wouldn't risk losing the car, or me. Until... about an hour in... there was a sign. With words. The kind of words to give one pause:

Pavement Ends 500 Feet

Ulp. Okay, so now what do I do? I wasn't ready to turn back, but did I really want to risk whatever lay ahead, especially in a rental car, especially in a place with no cell service and maybe not that many passing cars? I suspect a wise person would have done exactly what I didn't do. Me, I forged ahead. Slowly. Over a combination of corrugated dirt road and what must have been pavement a long, long time ago. Twenty-two miles of it. Up and down and up and down again. And, although I certainly enjoyed the views, and got some good material in my camera, I have to say that I was more than a little pleased when the asphalt reappeared at the Theodore Roosevelt Dam. Which, if you will pardon the pun, I was dam glad to see.

Oh, and later I checked my guidebook to see how in my enthusiasm and my carelessness I missed the warning about the unpaved nature of most of the journey. There was a simple explanation, as there often is: they didn't see fit to mention it.

A professional blogger, that is. Why? What did you think I meant?

Last night was our monthly blogger non-meetup. A non-meetup because I would hate to violate somebody's trademark, and since Meetup.com started charging, we started deciding that we could meet just as well without their permission. Anyway, there we were in the local non-Starbucks coffee shop. (And yes, you can get coffee from somewhere other that Starbucks. Good coffee too.) And among all the usual suspects there was a new player. New but awfully familiar looking, until I realized he looks like a younger Aasif Mandvi from the Daily Show. But he's not Aasif Mandvi; he's the Silicon Alley Insider's first employee in Silicon Valley, a brand new professional blogger. And, shockingly enough, he fit right into our assortment of strangeoids and oddballs and ne'er-do-wells. (Which am I, I wonder. Or am I *shock* *horror* all of the above?) The conversation wandered far and wide, as it generally does, although new guy (sorry, I've already forgotten your name - Vox?), Elke and I talked a bit about the sad fate of newspapers, new guy being a recovering journalism major.

Oh, and how did he find us? Turns out Valleywag includes us in their little roundup of interesting things going on around these parts. Imagine! Us, interesting!

Of course, it could just be a misprint...

I mentioned back around the New Year how excited I was that the Reduced Shakespeare Company would be back in the Bay Area in June, this time at San Jose Rep. While placing my order, I noticed a play called Souvenir that I'd noticed (but not seen) on one of my trips to New York. Don't know why I didn't see it there, but this time I decided it sounded like fun, so I placed my order and sat down to wait.

That wait ended yesterday afternoon. Souvenir is a somewhat faithful retelling of the musical career of one Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy early 20th century matron who somehow got it into her head that she could sing. Opera. And who had the money and the society friends to indulge her fantasy, which went from annual performances at the Ritz to one grand finale at Carnegie Hall. A few of Mrs. Jenkins' arias were captured on record, and are available on CD. As for the play, it might be called a musical, but only if you are being kind.

But what I find fascinating about Mrs. Jenkins, at least in this dramatic version of her, is that she was a triumph of confidence and determination and pure enthusiasm over anything resembling talent. She was a joke, one the audience loved, but it's unclear she was in on the joke. And that's what makes me wonder: is it better to know your strengths and your limitations if it keeps you from doing something you love? Or is it better to be deluded, and to take joy in the activity for which you are supremely unqualified. At a younger age I was certain I knew the answer; now I'm not at all sure. No, I lie; I am becoming more and more certain that the doing, and the pleasure to be derived therein, are far more important than actual competence. And if people laugh at you, well, maybe they aren't the ones getting the real joke.

Check out http://cubo.cc/ and see if you don't agree.

Good news travels fast. We've been waiting impatiently for the option-holder on my friend Barry Eisler's books to lift the veil on their attempts to get a movie made based on Rain Fall, the first of Barry's John Rain thrillers. And now the word is out: according to an article in Variety, Gary Oldman is in negotiations to play the less than savory Holtzer for the Japanese language production. Which is great news, and not just because it gives me an excuse for that Harry Potter pun in the title. (Because Oldman played Sirius Black in the Potter films, you see. I told you it was clever.) And if the Japanese film turns out well, maybe we'll see an English language version while we're still young enough to enjoy it. One can only hope.

Macs are wonderful when they work. When they don't work, well, suddenly I'm less enamored. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

And today was one of those times. When I got up this morning, Software Update had detected and downloaded two... ummm... software updates. One is a new version of the Safari browser, the other a collection of security patches. So, once I'd dealt with all the important stuff and could move to the work laptop, I let the update... ummm... update.

Except it didn't. It just sat there, with a thermometer with only a little virtual mercury. I let it try to update for a while, until it was pretty clear something was broken. So I powered off, and back on, and let my Mac boot back to its unpatched state. I tried running Software Update again, but it hanged the same way.

My next thought was to determine which update was causing the problem. (By this point there was a third one, for Time Machine.) I applied the last update first, which worked fine. Once the Mac rebooted, I applied the Safari update, again with no problem. And finally I tried the security update, and it was hang around doin' nuthin.

Finally it was time to look for help. Nothing useful at MacFixit; nothing at The Mac Observer. Finally I did what I should have done first: check the Apple support forum. And I discovered that I wasn't the only one with a hanging Mac. Turns out I'd been the victim of a corrupted download. All I had to do was delete the update from /Library/Updates and tell Software Update to check again. This time it installed without even a pause.

Oh, and this is why I love my Mac: even when something's wrong, it doesn't get hidden in system repositories. Delete a few files and try again: easy! (Once you know which files to delete, of course.)

Last night saw the return of CBS's Monday night block of comedy shows. I liked the first season of How I Met Your Mother (both the show and Canadian teen pop sensation Robin Sparkles are among my MySpace friends - yes, I have fictional characters as friends), thought season two was okay and am still not sure about season three. So I was curious to see how they'd do after their strike-enforced hiatus. The answer: good, bad, clever, funny, a little dull. But nothing that made me want to blog.

No, I owe the impulse to blog to Two And a Half Men, and a small subplot involving Charlie trying to wangle an introduction to a cute girl for his nephew, the ever less charming as he gets older Jake. The mother of said girl is hostile, Charlie is oblivious, she takes action and pepper sprays him in the eyes. And I'm pissed.

Yeah, I know it's a comedy. But I have to ask what's funny about an unprovoked assault? Not that Charlie wasn't being a jerk, which, by the way, was seriously out of character. It was obvious the woman was getting angry, and Charlie was always presented as aware of women's vibes, even if he chose to ignore them. But my bigger problem was with the woman, and with the lack of consequences. Since when is it permitted to attack someone because they won't go away? Does this mean that the next time somebody pisses me off in the supermarket I can borrow someone's cane and beat the miscreant over the head with it? In the world I live in, pepper spray is for defense; actions like Charlie's demand calling the manager, or even a cop.

What I think makes me even more incensed is that HIMYM had a somewhat similar scenario that played out completely differently. Ted somehow decided the Universe was rewarding him for doing bad things. At one point he sneaks a couple of bottles of champagne onto somebody else's bar tab; the owner of said tab punches his lights out. Puncher gets arrested; punchee manages to avoid arrest himself over the ill-gotten booze but realizes that he's been acting like a total prick. Not so funny, but at least it comes from a world I vaguely recognize. 2.5 Men, not so much.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling better for having griped to you nice people. And wondering what next week's episodes will bring. Oh, and hoping any women I meet either missed last night's episode or know that pepper spray is not a proper way to say go away. Just in case it should come up.

I was using the Merriam-Webster dictionary site a moment ago, in response to an online debate about whether an assassin is evil if he enjoys killing rather than merely goes ahead with it. I wanted to draw a distinction between a psychopath who enjoys killing and a sociopath who feels nothing either way about the life of another. So imagine my surprise to discover that at least according to M-W, there's no difference: they define sociopath and psychopath as synonyms, and sociopathic as covering both antisocial and asocial behavior. Live and learn, I guess.

But that's not what caused me to blog. No, that was the McCain For President banner ad taking up a lot of space on the listing for sociopathic. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

This used to be a lot easier.

I'm in Cambridge, Mass this week for the day job, just across the Charles from Boston. Got in late Sunday night and have been suffering a combination of insomnia and general discomfort ever since. Okay, maybe it started on the plane; sitting in the cheap seats of a fully loaded 757 for six hours'll do that. But it's gotten worse instead of better.

Some of it's jetlag, I guess. But it's more than that. Like what's with all the overheated buildings around here? When it's 40 outside, does it really need to be 75 inside? Or maybe it's the dry air. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm gonna jump out of my skin. Only three more days and I can get on the plane for home...

Yeah, I know; what's so newsworthy about that? But hear me out.

With the release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 for the Mac, virtually everything I run on my Mini is now native Intel code. This is a good thing, since as amazingly well as Rosetta did at emulating PowerPC on Intel processors, native code's bound to run faster and in less memory. So I was waiting for the last holdout, Microsoft Office, to show up in a native version. Which it did a few weeks ago. And which, I have to say, is totally craptacular by even Microsoft standards. And yes, I know a phrase like "Microsoft standards" is a punchline.

What's wrong with Office 2008? Not much, beyond the bugs, and the misbehaviors, and the crashing. Which it does. A lot. I have spreadsheets with graphs I dare not touch, knowing that they will crash Excel. Every. Damn. Time. And then there are the popup warnings about my exceeding the number of fonts in a spreadsheet. Except that I don't have more than a couple of fonts in my spreadsheet. And that when I dismiss the popup it comes right back. Up to a half dozen times before it finally shuts up about not doing something I'm already not doing.

For a second I thought I wasn't going to have to write this post. Microsoft's auto-updater told me it had something to install. Which turned out to be an update to the auto-updater. Funny; that's the one piece of Microsoft software that isn't total dreck.

Public service time, in case somebody else runs into the same problem I did.

I've been looking around for a good microphone for podcasting. I've been using a couple of headsets, one from Logitech and a better one from Plantronics. They're both USB and both convenient, except for their tendencies to pick up noises every time I move my head the wrong way. So, having done what I thought was adequate research, I put in an order for a Snowball from Blue Microphones. It's a self-contained USB mic that's substantial, cool looking and supposed to produce good recordings. It also has a minimalist aesthetic, with one slider switch to select between cardiod, omnidirectional a sort of compromise "cardioid with a little omni thrown in".

What it didn't have was enough gain; no matter what I tried, I couldn't get a loud enough recording to suit me. Going to the maker's discussion forum, I discovered I wasn't the only one who thought so. I also learned that there was an application that would adjust the mic's firmware between the default low gain (great perhaps for a loud concert) and a higher gain more suited to my dulcet tones. Unfortunately all the links led to the same place. Or, more precisely, to nowhere at all: the linked page was gone.

After some more searching I discovered lots more complaints about the lack of volume, but no solutions beyond the phantom firmware. So I sent a message to Blue's support line and waited for an answer.

Which just came. And included an explanation and a solution. The explanation is that the updater wasn't required any more, as Snowballs are now all going out with high gain firmware. Except of course for mine, and all the unsold inventory at all the dealers from before the change. (Which I pointed out in my reply to the service tech.) But that's moot, at least for me. The message included the updater, which did what I needed it to do.

So if you should happen to buy a Snowball, and it happens to suffer from a lack of volume, and you happen to Google for a solution and happen to encounter this page, now you know what to do: find the Contact Support page on Blue's website and let 'em know that they may have been premature in their deletion of that software from their site.

This weekend is Wondercon, San Francisco's answer to San Diego Comic Con, or at least the answer to the question, "What would Comic Con be like if it were a whole lot smaller, and five hundred miles or so to the north?" Since I won't make it to Comic Con this year, I decided to head to the city for a little wander among the dealer's tables at Wondercon. My walk down the aisles was going fine until I stopped at a costumer's stall, where they had the most beautiful replicas of Peacekeeper jackets from Farscape. The salescritter, resplendent in something either Victorian or fantasy-related or more likely both, tried to get me to try on one of the leather vests, a suggestion I resisted. I managed to escape, and to continue my journey. Had a nice conversation with the former host of the local Creature Feature program, which ended broadcast just a couple of years before I came to town. He was hawking his book, which I ended up buying. (They may not be my memories, but they're close enough.)

Reaching the end of the hall, I just knew I had to stop back and try on one of the Peacekeeper jackets. I figured I was safe; after all, I'm shorter and rounder than anybody who ever wore one on the show. But I didn't figure on the ingenuity of the designer. Turns out there was one in just my size. Okay, the sleeves were a tiny bit too long, or my arms are a tiny bit too short, but close enough. And after determining that yes, they did take plastic, and after ignoring the question of when I might ever actually wear such a thing, I became the proud owner of a really fine maroon and black leather jacket.

But that's not quite the end of the story. As we're dealing with the credit card machine, the designer said I sounded really familiar. Was I a member of the ScapeCast? I was and am, which led to a nice conversation about the podcast, and the show, and the cast, and conventions, and her purchase of several original costumes and all the costume patterns that had been offered for sale. Which is one heck of a small world story, except that it's not really so surprising. After all, who but a fanatic Scaper would go to the trouble of making perfect replicas of a PK uniform? And who but another fanatic would buy one?

In case it isn't obvious, those are rhetorical questions.

It's a fact of life that business is business, and to expect better than to be treated with contempt is to ask to be disappointed. We're almost proud of the lack of respect we receive from the business community, each new tale of outrage reminding us that we deserve no better. My daily reading of The Consumerist blog is a reminder that someone's always getting screwed; just be glad it's not you!

So, being the anxious consumer I am when things go wrong, I faced a leaky tire on my not yet two year old Camry Hybrid with something less than sangfroid. I didn't notice the problem; the car did. But, being at least a little prepared for such things, I determined which tire was low with my trusty digital pressure gauge (it was the right rear) and then pulled out my electric pump to reinflate it. And monitored the situation for a while, until time and complacency took its toll.

A few weeks later the warning light went on again. Same tire of course, which I duly inflated. A few weeks after that I brought my car in for service, which includes a tire rotation. So I guess I was waiting for the day that warning was set off by my now right front tire. Which happened Sunday morning, and which finally forced me to deal with the problem.

The car came with Michelins, so I went Googling for a Michelin dealer in my area. Found one too, but kept looking after I read a review that had absolutely nothing positive to say about them. A second one in nearby Los Altos sounded promising, and so I took a drive over this morning. I gave them the short version of the story (lucky them, I'm sure you're thinking), and wondered how much effort they'd put into finding such a tiny and slow leak. I'd read a bunch of customer reports, you see, and knew if they didn't find it quickly, they'd be after me to replace the tire. Or maybe they wouldn't even try...

I guess these guys didn't read consumer complaints like I did, because they spent 15 or 20 minutes inspecting the tire and applying soapy water and listening carefully, at which point they found the leak. Took the tire off the rim, repaired it, reassembled it all and charged me nothing. Zero. Zip. Okay, they did ask for my business when I need new tires. Which, in response to my question about how soon that would be, will likely be another fifteen or twenty thousand miles.

I hardly know what to think. Don't these guys know about the lack of courtesy we expect? Don't they talk to the people at Sears and all the other repair hells who cheat their customers every chance they get?

What's right with this picture? And why am I so shocked?

(Oh, and if you need a good place in the Bay Area for Michelin or Goodyear, I think I can make a recommendation...)

I watch the Hillary Clinton campaign with mixed feelings: largely bemusement mixed with disbelief and growing contempt. How can one so Democratic be so determinedly undemocratic? After everyone agreed that Michigan and Florida would be punished for moving their primaries up, Hillary and her advisors seem willing to leave no stone unturned (and we all know what's under those stones) to violate that agreement. The latest comes via Talking Points Memo, and concerns Harold Ickes' suggestion that by coopting a majority of the Credentials Committee at the convention, she could force through a rules change and get the delegates seated. This of course comes after remarks from her campaign staff that the will of the voters doesn't really matter; after all, what does winning primaries prove anyway?

My appreciation, and indeed my respect, for both Clintons has been withering away since this campaign started. As in a limbo contest, the chorus keeps repeating, "How low can you go?" And I keep wondering how much of a party will be left if Hillary has her way. I can't ever imagine voting for John McCain, but sitting the election out? Suddenly that's a real possibility.

I was reminded recently of a favorite aphorism: never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. A month ago on a vacation trip to Lost Wages, I suddenly found myself unable to retrieve work email. When I got home I asked our IT people about it, and was told that they didn't support iPhones and I'd just have to deal with it. Never mind the fact that it had been working fine for two years...

Anyway, a few weeks later I got a notice that we were all getting new Blackberries and that we could give up our personal phones to join the corporate plan. Which would be better than having to carry around and worry about charging two devices, if I weren't such an iPhone fan. (And I'm not the only one at work, for what it's worth.) But it turns out that the disabling of mail access to us iPhoners wasn't intentional; it was an unfortunate result of a new antispam appliance. Still, the result was the same.

I'd had a Blackberry before, and kind of liked it. But now that I've bitten the Apple, well, I'm not thrilled with the latest RIM model. The Curve is a nice device, with a nice screen. But those tiny-ass buttons? Not designed for my chubby fingers or my aging eyes. Punching a phone number on the Curve's micro-keys is torture compared to the big digits the iPhone throws up on its big display. And the UI? Definitely not at Apple's level. Cumbersome doesn't begin to describe it.

So now I get to carry an iPhone and a Curve. And I'll whine about it to anyone who'll listen, at least until somebody does push mail for the iPhone and I can give back the Berry. Hey, how's that for a slogan? Give Back The Berry. You can tell I used to be in Marketing, can't you?