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The weblog of Andy Ihnatko! Possibly not the least-beloved technology pundit in the land! |
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My Tiger book is now shipping! A third bigger than the Panther edition! Five bucks cheaper! Includes a recipe for flawless scrambled eggs! Intel AsideMonday, June 6 5:24 AMTwo quickies, sensation-seekers: On Saturday, I braved yet another day of warm weather and blue skies and drove down to Newport for their Great Chowder Cook-Off. A thrilling photo-essay awaits you over on Flickr. And let me tell you, the hourlong drive damn-near killed me. My commitment to competitive chowder-judging was put to the extreme test, as we passed by yard sale after yard sale on way down, each one seeded with multitudes of riches (judging from my furtive glances at 40 miles per hour). I passed by a driving range and two — two — public golf courses. They had signs out front reading "Public Invited," in fact, so by just sailing on past them I was probably committing some sort of social slight that must now be repaired with a handwritten note on linen stationery. The last straw, the sight that forced me to bite my lower lip and just keep on driving, was the sighting of an absolutely awesome-looking diner. And it wasn't a Worcester-style diner, either; it looked like it could have been in operation since the 1910's, as a private home that slowly but surely has expanded to a full breakfast-and-lunch establishment over the decades. But we had to pick up a pal at the Amtrak station. No, I don't know why that means we couldn't stop, either. Like it would have killed him to cool his heels for ninety minutes or so. And I've gotten so much email about the Apple/Intel rumors that I probably ought to just say something here on the blog. I'd be shocked if there wasn't an Intel announcement at Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote today. I'll be surprised if this announcement is "All future Macs will use Intel chips." I think it's far more likely that a (rumored) Intel deal has to do with a specific product line or even Some Other Device Entirely. UPDATE: Or how about "Intel will start manufacturing PowerPC chips under license"? In an event, I'll be tuning in to the webcast of Steve's keynote with a cold drink and a bowl of crunchy things close at hand. email me | link to this | related websearchClick & StickMonday, June 6 8:13 AMTry accessing the iTunes Store this morning. Let me know if you can't get in, or if you see anything unusual. UPDATE: I stress that I'm only asking you to email me if you can't get in, or if you get in and you see something that makes you point a quavering finger and shout "What the hell is that?!?" Messages of "Looks fine to me. What should I be seeing?" are unnecessary (but thanks for emailing, anyway!). email me | link to this | related websearchFunny...this doesn't LOOK like New York...Thursday, June 16 3:28 AMWow, today's agenda did a 180 with the sort of speed and panache that would have caused the stunt coordinator for "Starsky & Hutch" to wipe away a proud tear. Friday and Saturday are the days that I'll be a guest at the Big Apple Comics, TV, Art, Science Fiction, Movies About Rubber-Clad Psychopath Crimefighters Et Cetera convention. I'll be there autographing copies of my new Tiger book. After I've signed the two copies that I brought in with me and returned them to my backpack for the trip home, I'll be writing letters for charity. And do stop by and say howdy if you're there at the Con. I'll have some copies of the Aunt Estelle Minibook to give away, partly to promote the Tiger book but mostly to create the illusion of traffic at my table. I'll have some squirrelled away especially for people who actually know who I am and don't seem to be hiding some sort of subpoena behind their backs. You'll find me at a table in the Artists' Alley section. I'm actually pretty excited about this. I don't know if I and Ellen will raise five bucks for our charity or five hundred (we're donating all proceeds to the Red Cross) but either way, it'll be an Adventure. And I'm all for Adventure, so long as it doesn't involve either getting chased by bears or having to use the sort of toilet whose operation is not immediately apparent. So as of 10:50 AM Wednesday morning, I was all packed, all of my various bits of techno-wienery were 100% charged and holstered, and all that remained for me to do was to shower, shave, get dressed, and make the 11:54 train to New York. A veritable snap. I've fully mastered the subtle art of dressing myself, and the nearest Amtrak station is just 20 minutes away by car...or 11 minutes, if you don't care who lives and who dies. My last act before heading for the showers was to respond to a final chirp from my PowerBook. Aha! An email had just arrived from one of the pals that I'd be meeting up with in NYC. This is why I was arriving two days before the Con. Trips to New York tend to telescope outward. There's That Thing I Came To Do, and then there are the meetups-with-friends and the business meetings that find their way onto the timetable. In fact, I could have left another whole day earlier. I was invited to attend what sounded like a pretty cool press event that took place on Tuesday night. One of the aforementioned New York Friends offered to put me up in his new house for the duration. And while friendship means saying "Sure, absolutely, we'd love to have you" when a pal asks if he can stay over for six days and five nights, the other side of friendship means not even making such a request in the first place, you know? I mean, I'm the Mary Tyler Moore of the technology sector. No question. Remember the episode where Mary yelled at Ted in front of the whole station for being such worthless idiot, and the one where she laughed uncontrollably during a funeral? That's me, all over. And yet even I have to admit that after Day Three of a sleepover, the cracks start to appear in my veneer. This seems like a perfect spot for that famous "Houseguests are like fish" epigram, but now the rights are controlled by ClearChannel and I can't afford the license fees. So I'm forced to make up one of my own: houseguests are like used cars. They're new and exciting and wonderful for the first few days and you couldn't be happier to have 'em. But then the black paint on the tires starts to wear off, and the FDA-controlled fragrance that saturated the upholstery and masked the unmistakable Pro Bowler smell has dissipated, and the guy at the service station points out that the aftermarket valve covers on the engine are actually just the styrofoam packing material from a new TV set, wrapped in aluminum foil. That is, there are limits to how long you can keep your imperfections masked. This particular person happens to be my oldest friend and I have every intention of keeping the streak going. My drying my underwear in his microwave for six days is incompatible with that goal. But dash it all: the purpose of the last-minute email was to cancel our lunch. He works for DC Comics, and he used the one excuse that I don't suppose that any sane man would challenge: "There's a Batman-related emergency." Because, I mean, if Batman is involved... House of cards, people, house of cards. The day before, another meeting had gotten moved from Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning. This cancellation meant that I was about to rush to catch a train that would get me into New York on Wednesday...where I would be cooling my heels with absolutely nothing to do until Thursday afternoon. Amtrak has plenty of huge advantages over flying. One of them is that you can buy your tickets ten minutes before departure without any sort of penalty whatsoever, which means that changing your itinerary at the last minutes requires that you do nothing more than absolutely nothing at all. So I got right on that, not wasting a single moment: I ran straight to my sofa and was napping soundly ten minutes later. And because I was already packed, and had already filed all of the columns and whatnot that were due for the whole rest of the week...I had traded a day of hectic travel for a true Day Off. Well, cool. The other benefit is that on Thursday morning, I'll have the unique (for me) experience of boarding interstate transportation after a full night's sleep. There's so much balderdash associated with shutting down my office for a trip that I rarely manage to get much sleep on the night before. The Getting Things Done aspect takes up a lot of time, absolutely, but I also have to find time to worry about the things I Might Have Forgotten To Do. Just working out the basic parameters of that task eats up ninety minutes and an entire whiteboard. So tonight, I only need to do one thing. I have given up on the dream of boarding the train carrying only my backpack and a small shoulder bag, and will have to transfer most of their contents to my overhead-sized rollaway. Oh, well. I fantasize about boarding a train or a plane carrying just one lightweight bag the same way that other men dream about Uma Thurman contracting some sort of skin condition that requires her to take long, slow baths in warm canola oil while people watch. No, actually, that's not true at all. I wrote that sentence myself and even I'm having trouble getting my eyes to focus. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to add a bit where she stands up in the tub every now and then and dances in a slow, undulating pirouette under a sheetlike cascade of oil, to maximize the therapeutic effects of the canola treatment. I'll be back with you in a minute or two. But even here, there's a bright side: now that I no longer have to cram my books and my portable printer and everything else into the backpack...well, hey, the ukulele is back into play all of a sudden. Let's see if that works out. email me | link to this | related websearchOf cats and tracks and sealing-waxFriday, June 24 12:20 PMI'm not entirely certain what my future biographers will make of how I spent my Saturday night in New York. I was on a sofa with a rather lovely woman and we put away a bottle of wine while we watched a QuickTime of "Trekkies 2" on the screen of my VAIO late at night. You could spin that one way and make me look really, really cool, or you could go a different direction entirely and paint me as a fairly big idiot. It's a tough call. I suppose it depends on what I make of my life. Replaying that scene objectively, I'm guessing that they'll be looking to cast "A younger Eddie Deezen-type" in the TV version. And then the moment the TV me leaves her apartment, The Skipper from "Gilligan's Island" (or possibly the sheriff from "Dukes of Hazzard") will step from the shadows and smack me in the head over and over again with his hat, in utter disgust. Nonetheless, it was a swell capper to the evening and a nice capper to my (hang on...one...two...) three days in New York. So nice, actually, that although staying over until Sunday night or even Monday was an option, I felt as though I'd had a Lovely Enough Experience lo these past 72 hours, and that there was no need to let my laundry fester in my hosts' toaster oven any longer. There's a funny thing about saying the same thing over and over and over again: if you do it frequently enough, there's a point where it stops being Unbearably Tedious and it's suddenly and irreversibly transformed into a Beloved Tradition. And so, I continue the Beloved Tradition of singing the praises of Amtrak's Boston-New York service. This time out, let's focus on the lenient schedule afforded by rail transportation. I was staying in Queens, at the house of a couple of pals. On Sunday, they planned to grill up some kebabs and franks out on the patio for lunch. So instead of racing out to make the noon train or the 1 PM train as I'd sort of planned, I packed my bags and then had a nice, leisurely meal with friends. After the last of the wieners had been dealt with, I could have headed for the subway and made the 2 o'clock, but there was another Coke left and it would have just gone to waste unless I took a proactive role. There was also a kitty (a stray that had set up shop in their backyard) that needed to be photographed. Really Nifty Cats was one of the hallmarks of this trip, incidentally. The stray could have modeled for magazine ads...and not just ads for cat stuff, either. If I were casting for the role of "Cat sitting on kitchen table while trim pan-ethnic woman in exercise togs enjoys savory new veal-flavored yogurt" the search would begin and end with this specimen. And the aforementioned RLW introduced me to one of the most improbable and remarkable cats I've ever even heard of: her cat can actually play fetch. Really, I was just as amazed as you are. The cat drops a little rubber mouse at your feet and then she takes a few steps back, lowering her center of gravity and rocking from paw to paw like Willie Mays setting up shop in shallow center field. You send it arcing over kitty's head and she tears off after it. After making a quick and messy kill, she pads back and drops the mousie in front of you again so that the process can be repeated. Incredible. In my 230 years on your planet, I have come to expect housecats to take as much notice of humans as goldfish do of that little plastic diver in the tank. It was a miraculous performance and a slightly suspicious one. It occurs to me, for instance, that a Jack Russell terrier would fit quite nicely inside a cat costume. Ultimately, I said my goodbyes and chaperoned my rollaway bag down the sidewalk and into the subway station shortly after 2 PM, with the idea of taking the 3. I boarded the Regional with just five minutes to spare. But did I run from the 34th Street stop into Penn Station? No. No, I did not. Even though I had no tickets and no reservations, I strolled in at a measured and dignified pace, secure in the knowledge that if I missed the 3 o'clock then my punishment would be to walk across the street, enjoy a truly staggeringly-good slice of pizza, and return for the 4. I can't even guess how many times I've checked out of a hotel at 9 AM and jumped into an airport shuttle, even though I would have killed to spend a whole 'nuther morning and afternoon in a fantastic city. And my last trip to London ended with my running, running, running through Paddington Station, aware that a Express train to Heathrow departs every fifteen minutes and that I would only make my flight home if there was a train, like, right there, and it departed the moment after I leaped on board. (There was and it did, bless its Italian-manufactured little heart.) The Amtrak way is much, much better. I would open up this post for comments and discussion, but I don't have time to write the necessary code and re-compile my homemade blog software. Plus, the only point of allowing people to leave contrary opinions would be so that I could mock them in public, so that future generations could Google, read, and mock them as well. Which seems like a long row to hoe just for spite. email me | link to this | related websearchCheck out last month's gems of |
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