Holy mother of God! Sox win the World...kaffkaffkaffKAFF

Monday, November 1 7:52 PM

I think I'm just going to type for a while, if that's OK. My wetware's CPU is fairly underclocked at the moment and I'm not really at the top of my game, for the following reasons:

1) I've just gotten home after five days in Santa Clara for the O'Reilly O'Macintosh O'Conference. As after any really good conference, sleepy-time was mortgaged against time spent hanging out at the con and trying to keep up with my office work and going out with pals;

2) The Boston Red Sox seem to have won some sort of World Series thingie, and as such I was up super-extra-late last night, making rather merry;

3) "Making Rather Merry" includes staying up extra-late writing a piece for the Sun-Times about it;

4) And drinking triple my usual amount of alcohol, as well;

3) The national shortage of flu vaccine has got me pretty concerned and I wasn't willing to stand idly by while my friends and family back in New England were left so vulnerable to infectious disease. My Brilliant Fix for the Flu Epidemic, for which I expect to be awarded with multiple Nobel Prize (Medicine, Peace...and Literature, which is the one which'll give me a bit of added leverage when it's time to squeeze a few ducats out of my newspaper): I contract a cold in Northern California, and bring it back home with me. See, that virus is has had a soft life, infecting the sort of people who keep the kids home from school when the temps dip anywhere below 58, and who call their lawyers three minutes after they learn that there's a better HEPA filter on the market than the one that's installed in their workplace's ventilation system.

A New England-bred immune system can kick that virus' ass, no problem. I'm pretty sure that after you get one cold or flu, you're good for the rest of the year, so: problem solved.

In fact, just to demonstrate that this theory of mine isn't just a draft proposal that's awaiting research funding, I should say that 24 hours have elapsed between the preceding paragraph and the current one. "I ought to write the rest of this from my bed," I thought, and the next thing I knew it was 10 in the morning. "Boy, I should get out of bed and start the workday," I thought, and this carried me all the way until 5 PM, when I awoke and discovered the hole in my theory. Catching a cold in San Jose was a waste of good effort if I didn't start spreading it around the moment I got home, and here I was, lolligagging in bed when I was at my most toxic.

Still, what the Nobel boys don't know, won't hurt me. If they start poking around and asking stupid questions, just tell them that you saw me all over town, carefully sneezing on doorknobs, railings, sophomore cheerleaders, and other fixtures that receive frequent hand contact.

I'm actually a little sicker now than I was yesterday. It's just a cold, of course, but that doesn't mean that I take pleasure from a runny nose, heavy eyes, and a throat that feels like I've been gargling roadkill. My pleasant baritone has dropped another half an octave, upgrading it to Super-Sexy Status, but what woman's going to come near me in this state, I ask? "Unshaven, lethargic and haggard," I mean, not "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

The one bright spot here was a bit of exceptionally good timing. A few weeks ago, I ordered the

So instead of the full weeklong dog-and-pony recap, allow me be yet another blogger waxing euphoric (illness notwithstanding) on the experience of being a Bostonian at this moment in history.

It's really very weird; the Red Sox's dramatic path to the World Championship was a highly erratic one and yet, I managed to be away from home on nearly every night that really mattered. The Sox played a

It's really weird that I've managed to be out of town on so many nights when the Sox were playing a critical game. When the Sox were threatening to enter the post-season as the division champions instead of as a wildcard, I was out of town when the Yankees were at Fenway and out of town again when the Sox were at Yankee Stadium. I was out of town during Game 6 of the ALCS,

...and I was in Santa Clara for all but Game 1 of the World Series.

This World Series filled me with an intense dread. The uncertainty of the outcome didn't so much scratch the varnish on my sang froid, you understand. A certain serenity drops over we Sox fans during the postseason, and we count on nothing but a thrilling monument to the continued glory of baseball...win, lose, or asteroid strike. No, it was the logistics. I got to watch Game 2 in my hotel room. During Game 3, I was up on stage giving my talk. This led to a noticeable softening of my turnout, and contributed to a certain level of ongoing distraction on both sides of the podium.

Game 4 and Game 5 terrified me. To be honest, I wanted my beloved Red Sox to lose 'em both. I wanted them to win the Series, yes, but if you weighed both this desire and my desire for both the team and myself to be home in Boston when it happened, and you wouldn't have figured the difference unless you had a druglord-grade scale that goes to three or four few decimal places. A Game 4 loss meant a Game 5, which meant that there'd be a very real possibility that those dreamt-of words, the words that every New England boy longs to hear, the words which, if spoken to any bookie in any April will surely result in barks of laughter and a ready promise of 180-to-1 odds, the words "The Red Sox are World Champions!"...well, it was possible that I'd hear it over the passenger intercom of a Boeing 757. And that simply wouldn't have done at all.

If I didn't get to see it happen in Boston, at least I got to see it. A couple of good friends invited me out to dinner on Wednesday night. I readily agreed. I didn't have any fellow Sox fans with me to enjoy the game with, after all, and I'm certainly highly-evolved enough to value real experiences with friends over vicarious ones with strangers. Plus, I calculated that I'd be back in the hotel by the 7th inning, and if the restaurant had a TV, I could probably watch the game there, provided that all the yap-yap-yap didn't completely drown things out.

Okay. More napping and more working need to be done. Why don't we stick a pin in this amazing tale until tomorrow?

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Rock the Whorls

Tuesday, November 2 7:11 PM

I have never bubbled anything so carefully or deliberately as when I bubbled in the circle denoting my choice for President.

To put things in perspective: as a writer, I have reached that wonderful level of fame where I have been asked to autograph a section of womanflesh. It hasn't happened frequently, mind you — honestly, can such requests come in as often as one would wish? — but it's happened more than once, often enough for me to appreciate that there's a real knack to it. You have to operate the pen with enough pressure to draw ink, but not enough to draw blood, and which I certain steadying of the writing surface is quite necessary, there's a line that all true Gentlemen must observe.

Yet I did not take nearly as much care or time with the writing implement as I did this afternoon.

Then there was the time when I was brought to a fabulous city to give a talk, and I was put up in an ultra-fabulous hotel suite. It was far too fine a suite to enjoy alone, and my then-girlfriend was far too fine a woman not to be kept in luxury — for four or five days, at least — and so she came out and kept me company. A full explanation would be needlessly cumbersome, but on the third day, she devoutly wished me to draw on her. So: water-based markers were purchased and I spent the better part of an hour designing and executing a complicated back-tattoo that began at her collar and explored a number of themes, styles, and motifs until I reached the end of the canvas, so to speak.

She was a most eager subject, and I was given carte-blanche — perhaps I should say postérieur-blanche — to indulge every whim imaginable, with "artistic" merely being a launching-off point. But while I spent more time on this particular canvas and Lord knows I had far more fun with this particular canvas, the stakes today on that ballot sheet were far, far higher. And thus, when we factor in the investment of care and deliberation, I think we can declare this one a push.

No. Today's marker-job was the most careful and cautious one of my life. No kidding. I read the names and affiliations of every candidate, and I hovered my marker over my choice. But wait, was that the right one? Was my candidate really fourth on the list? Better count 'em again: hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. Yup, that's the baby. And then I read it again, word for word, identifying the names and the party, and I proceeded to bubble.

It all came back to me, the classic SAT technique that served me so flawlessly back in high school. Some folks will begin by outlining the oval in its entirety; that's for chumps. Tight little whorls, that's the secret: the tip danced in little epicycles until it blackened the entire region.

And then I tapped the tip here and there to cover up any areas of white that the whorls might have missed, just in case the scanner was looking at a specific sector instead of eyeballing the oval in its entirety.

And then, I gave the oval a second coat, just in case it was ink density that would set the counter off.

Then I read the ballot again, to make sure I was voting for the right guy.

Then I put the tip of the marker back on the oval again, just to be sure, before worrying that perhaps the ink would weaken the paper and cause a hole to mush through. Would the ballot still work? Was it looking for reflective light? What was the backplane of the scanning surface made out of?

At this point, I slapped myself hard and moved on to the crucial question of which candidate, of the following one names, would receive my endorsement for the post of Sewer Commissioner.

It's a pretty giddy process, and I don't mind admitting that. It's the one chance we have to see the words "President of the United States of America" printed without any names next to it. It's an interactive document. George W. Bush isn't the President, he's merely the Incumbent. It's up to me to decide — through an act of cautious, deliberate, judicious, and flawless bubbling — what name gets slung next to that word for the next four years.

I also don't mind admitting that a certain amount of spite contributed to the thoroughness of my bubbling technique. If I could have bubbled for this guy four times, I would have. If I could have spread those votes across several battleground states, I would have relished the dual opportunities to both push my candidate that much closer to 270 electoral votes and my frequent-flier miles that much closer to a free flight to Hawaii. So instead of bubbling four ballots, I settled for applying four coats of paint to the one bubble I was alotted.

I won't tell you for whom I bubbled. By now, you've either bubbled already or you have your hat and your coat in hand and a name in mind. Besides, I'm not so presumptuous as to insist that you're coming here to this blog for my advice. If you voted for my white guy, I'm thrilled. If you voted for some other white guy, well, gosh, I wish you hadn't, but I feel no need to suggest that you're a dope for having done so.

All I insist is on the Importance of the Bubble. This lesson was lost on far too many people in 2000, and the only contribution that these ghastly non-bubblers made to our Grand Experiment was to underscore the importance of One Single Vote, and ensure that succeeding elections would see record turnouts.

Still, take my advice: whorls and epicycles. That's the way to go, no question.

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From the Ambassador of Red Sox Nation

Thursday, November 4 12:17 AM

I'm now free to reproduce the piece that I wrote for the Sun-Times, from my hotel room in Santa Clara, some six hours after the Red Sox won the series...and three hours before I had to be out of bed again:

We lifelong Red Sox fans always knew it: if the Red Sox were ever going to win another World Series, it was going to happen just exactly the way it happened on Wednesday night.

Underneath a lunar eclipse; on the exact anniversary of their shattering 1986 Game 7 World Series loss to the Mets; in a four-game sweep during which they never trailed their opponent for as much as a single inning; after having beaten the wicked Yankees for the ALCS; having become the first team in professional baseball to win the pennant after being down three games to none; with their final defeat of the entire season having been a highly public pantsing-followed-by-atomic-wedgie of 19 to 8. Yes, that's perfect; the Red Sox have never lost a Series or an ALCS in any ordinary way, and their championship shows the same flair for the dramatic.

Two weeks ago I was scheduled to travel to Newark, New Jersey, deep in the heart of Yankee territory, on the night of Game 6 and give a talk to a group of Macintosh users. The hotel function hall was only half-full and I began by assuring the audience that they weren't missing anything. "The game you'll really want to be home for will be Game 7. Which, I promise you, will take place as scheduled tomorrow night."

I was equally certain that the pennant was ours, although I chose not to make that announcement. It would have been meanspirited, they would have mistaken my mathematical analysis for mere swagger, and besides, their chairs were cheap rentals and I imagined that they would have been very easy to throw.

Any astute and long-suffering fan of the Sox could have told you that the moment the Sox won Game Four of the American League Championship Series, the pennant — and even the World Series — were ours. See, the Red Sox serve a higher function: there's a fundamental force in the Universe that's enhanced and energized by the heartbreak and disappointment of Sox fans. Every Game Seven loss and each late-inning rally and every impossible error that was committed at the worst possible moment have contributed both to our suffering and to the security of the planets in their orbits. The Reagan Administration suppressed this information, but it's a fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was just sort of limping along by the mid-Eighties. Then along came Game Six of the Sox/Mets series, and the thing was fueled for the next three-hundred years. Yes, the next time you benefit from thermal energy's continual inclination to flow from areas of greater heat to areas of lesser heat, you should offer a silent prayer of gratitude to Bill Buckner, and to every Red Sox fan who took to their beds for three days afterward.

But I ask you: what purpose would have been served if the Sox had lost to the Yankees in Game Seven this year? None. We did that last season. Losing in a four-game shutout that included an 18-run blowoud would have done the job nicely, but the Yanks failed to see the importance of sealing the deal as quickly as possible and instead chose to throw a game or two to extend advertising and licensing revenues.

And after the pennant was won, ladies and gentlemen, we Sox fans were swaddled in layers of despondency-proof armor. Just as Popeye remains locked in eternal struggle against Bluto, the Yankees remain our mortal and genetic enemy. And the Sox humiliated them, forced the headline "The Choke's On Us" atop the headlines of New York City papers in five-inch letters.

Well, at this point, the Universe had to throw up its hands and concede that pursuing a Red Sox loss was a waste of valuable time and effort. "Look, at least let's make sure they don't win it at home in Fenway," one of the exasperated Lords of Order said. The rest of the table belatedly agreed that if the Sox fans didn't have to endure any sort of disappointment whatsoever during postseason play, well, it'd just weird everybody out.

I knew this was coming. Still, I wasn't prepared. It hasn't really hit me, yet: we all live in a baffling and glorious new world. The next time a snarky sportscaster decides to fill five minutes of airtime by finding somebody who remembers what the country was like way back around the time when the Red Sox last won a championship, well, it'll be a fairly short drive. For the record: the hit song of the day was "My Boo" by Usher, eating raw pig throats on television for money was a hot fad, and folks motored to work and play in their own personal automobiles, powered by gasoline engines, of all things.

And so, Cubs fans, as the duly-appointed ambassador from Red Sox Nation I extend to all of you the following three gifts. First, please do keep Nomar, and enjoy his considerable skills with our compliments. Secondly, be energized by the fact that in a world where the Sox can sweep the Series, all things are possible and there's really something to the power of a dumb dream. And finally — blame the giddiness of the evening and the prescription-grade quanities of Sam Adams Lager I've consumed since the final out — I offer your our hopes that the Red Sox stay home next October and that the Cubbies take it all in 2005.

You are our brothers and sisters, Cubs fans, and we want you to be just as giddy and drunk as we our on this day. More than that: we want you to do it by beating the Yankees. Kepler's First Law of Motion has been on shaky ground lately, and I think it's long-past time that the Cosmic Duracell of Heartbreak moved 200 miles southwest...from Kenmore Square, Boston, to the Bronx, Queens.

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MacMania III Cruise/Meet me in NYC Tuesday night!

Tuesday, November 9 2:11 AM

MacMania III cruise — The Virgin Islands. First report:

Well, I was thrilled to be invited to come along for MacMania III, after having had such a spectacularly good time on MacMania II to Hawaii last summer. But this year has been a terrible disappointment. The cruise started on Sunday. While others were dancing on the Acapulco Deck and getting clumsily hit on by Gopher and Doc Bricker, I was finishing up a huge chunk of my next book. Today, when the ship docked at its first island, passengers — committed to the two "B"'s of cruise travel (Blotto and Bloated) — wobbled onto an assortment of beaches. I finished a newspaper column and took a meeting with Microsoft.

This is all by way of communicating that I had to cancel out of the cruise a few months ago, when it became clear that (a) the months of October and November had just too damned much travel scheduled, and (b) the worst time for your body to be on a luxury cruise liner parked next to a Caribbean island is when your head is back in the office.

This configuration would probably give me an unfair edge in the limbo contest, too. So all told, I needed to stay home. It sounds incredible, but on Friday night the words formed in my head explicitly: "Thank God I'm not flying to Florida tomorrow to enjoy a free, weeklong cruise with many of my friends." I got to go see "The Incredibles," I went out to lunch, I put various final touches on eight chapters with plenty of time to spare. I read a "People" Magazine, in which I learned that the boys at Orange County Chopper have licensed their names and logo to a men's fragrance, of all things.

The last bit of info was actually good to know. It's polished my outlook on life considerably. It's good news for you guys, too. Congratulations! You live in a world in which J. Lo, Jessica Simpson, and Paul Teutul, Sr. all have their own signature fragrances. In such a world, truly anything is possible. I hereby inform you that your destiny sits there like a ripe plum on the tree, waiting to drop into your outstretched palm.

Today's meeting was a good one to take. It was a briefing on the 2005 edition of Microsoft's Media Center PC, which is their third attempt to build a PC and an OS that doubles as a hub of household media. Photos, music, TV shows, movies...all recorded and managed on your MC PC. This product's arc has followed the Microsoft model perfectly. Apple controls both hardware and software, plus their innovators by nature...so when they release a pocket-sized music player, it's a complete package and damned-near perfect straight out of the gate. Microsoft can only control one chunk of the answer, plus they're conservative by nature, timid to try to sell to a market that either they don't understand or which doesn't exist yet.

So they release the 2003 edition, which sort of works and shows lots of promise, but probably isn't exactly a tradeup from a TiVO and a $60 add-on remote control for an existing PC. They take a look at who bought the things, and then they produce a 2004 edition that's a little closer to the target. The cycle repeats, and now we have the 2005 edition, which is a damned fine product. For one, they're finally approaching true convergence. If you ask it "What movies are on right now?" it'll integrate its built-in program guide with online graphics and data, and display a panel of movie posters. Click on "Braveheart" and you learn that it's playing on TNT right now, and stars Mel Gibson (before his pupils dilated). Click on his name, and the PC pulls up a list of every other movie he's made. If "Lethal Weapon IV" is airing next week, it'll tell you. If it isn't, it'll link you to an online movie site where you can download a rental, or flag it to be recorded automatically the next time it happens to squirt through your cable box.

This is the sort of thing I was asking for at last year's briefing. The generic idea of a computer that acts as the King of All Media is a terrific one. There's a lot of power in a desktop computer, along with plenty of built-in potential for slick and innovative interfaces. A piece of software that records TV shows doesn't have to act like a $59 Sanyo VCR. It ought to act like a computer that can record television.

So they'll be sending me some hardware to play with in a month or so and I'll get to see if it works as well as it demos. Either way, I achieved one major breakthrough with Microsoft: they're finally sending me an X-Box. Finally! I couldn't ask for one legitimately. I don't review games, and I sincerely believe that the moment I request hardware Just Because I Don't Want To Pay For It, well, I might as well sign up for the full Michael Medved Industry Whore package and be done with it. Once or twice I've been at briefings where, tacked onto the end of a demo of something I'm going to actually write about, they showed me a way to integrate the thing into the X-Box. And I've consistently reacted by saying that, Gosh, that's definitely a unique articulation of that particular feature, but alas, I don't have an X-Box, myself, so there's no way I could ever really explore the potential of the feature you've just demonstrated. And then I would arch an eyebrow, which to my way of thinking clearly communicated the phrase Come ON, you bastards...!

Part of the 2005 Media Center is a $299 set-top box that will allow a MC PC to stream its media straight to a TV or stereo, with no intermediary PC required. Alas, these boxes are in extremely short supply, but they do want me to try the feature out. They've actually produced a $79 kit that transforms the game console into a Media Center streaming client, and if I wouldn't mind receiving the kit and an X-Box instead, well, that's help them out a lot with their shortage.

I told them that Halo II would be coming out shortly and as such, I was willing to summon my reserves of courage and deal with this sad reversal of fortune manfully.

Tomorrow — later today, actually — I board yet another Amtrak train for yet another trip to NYC, this time to do a two-hour author appearance at the Soho Apple Store. This is the unofficial/official launch party for my book series. It's official in that my editors and publishers will be there and we'll be pushing and celebrating this pinnacle of English letters. It's unofficial in the sense that there will be no snacks provided. But please do come down anyway. I'd appreciate it if you brought a sack filled with a few wigs and changes of clothing, so that the 8 people who show up will appear to be a healthy throng of 90 or so. 6-8 PM. Hope to see you there!

Also, tomorrow is National Eat A Big Slice Of Woefully Unhealthy Cheesecake Day, which I intend to observe in the traditional manner. Call me a square, but I believe that my Government designates these holidays for a reason. Who am I to question?

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First stop on the Andy Ihnatko 2004-2005 World Tour!

Tuesday, November 9 12:39 PM

MacMania III Cruise to the Caribbean journal, Day 3 of the excursion: I steadfastly continue to blog each day of the week. It's important that I document precisely what I was doing instead of, you know, lying on a beach, or fooling around with a mask and a snorkel, or fooling around with a shiny woman in a bikini, or fooling around with a mask and a shiny woman in a bikini and a snorkel.

So: greetings once again from the cafe car of an Amtrak train, which is currently passing through the picturesque heron-infested salt marshes that mark the transition from Rhode Island to Connecticut. Today got off to some shaky starts. This is just a day trip (on my way to the Apple Store in Soho for a gig tonight; see you there?), so it's really a piece of cake to pack up and head on out. My Macworld backpack is like a doctor's bag, always packed with the essentials (spiral notebook; charger for PowerBook; FireWire cable for iPod; headphones; something to read) so really, all I need to do is drop Lilith into its padded compartment and mere moments later, I'm in full-on vagabond mode.

This morning, I added a thing of DVDs to watch during the ride, dropped a second iPod into an inside pouch (it's a prop for tonight's talk), printed and inserted a folder of documents that I need to review before I take the stage, and then I zipped my ukulele into the pack's outside compartment, which closes around the body of the instrument as though designed for exactly that purpose.

Or it would close around the body of the instrument as though designed for exactly that purpose, if not for the fact that the backpack's cinched-down side straps have cut its interior volume by half, plus I've already dropped the DVDs and the iPod and a book in there. So instead, I board the train with a pack on my back, a uke in my hand, and a song in my heart, attracting wary glances from everybody else on the platform. Trains, backpacks, men in comfortable shoes and odd hats, weird acoustic instruments: this is precisely the sort of dark, moist environment that provokes an outbreak of folk music. I don't blame these people; I don't blame them at all.

Problem Two: I broke a nail this morning.

Normally I wouldn't care, but I was going to use that thumbnail tonight. I've intentionally been growing my plucking nails a little long for the past month or two, in anticipation of tonight's performance, and the one I intend to give in London next week. With a solid 3/16th of an inch extending from your fingertips, you can get a nice, authoritative strum going with very little effort. But all of the thought and energy that I put into nail-growing has amounted to nothing, moments before my trip to the venue. Part of God's plan, I suppose (a sentence that I've been muttering so often since Election Day that I've partly worn the lettering off it in my mental rebus). I needed to get going, so I patted my back pocket to make sure that my Swiss Army Knife (with its scissors and file) was in there.

While waiting for my train to arrive ,I gave myself a little trim and filed down the barbs. And after giving my thumbnail's edge a final sanding on the rough texture of my jeans, I played "Next-Day Laundry Blues" on the uke, just giving the new strummer a quick lap around the test track. As a concession to my fellow platform-waiters, I British Invasioned the chords up, as a nonverbal way of assuring them that I had absolutely no intention of singing a six-minute dirge about Spanish Civil War atrocities, followed by an impassioned plea to vote Green Party and maybe share any loose change or sandwiches they might not be using at the moment.

The final problem was more serious. Once on board, I assembled my mobile office here in the Cafe Car and then I deliberated a bit, ultimately concluding that it was too soon to spin up the copy of "Trekkies 2" that I rented from Blockbuster last night. So instead, I unholstered the iPod and plugged in my headphones, an action that was slightly hampered by the fact that apparently, I'd taken them out of their usual pouch a couple of nights ago and forgotten to put them back in the pack where they belonged.

Well. Well, $#*@%.

There's an O.Henry short story in this, I'm sure. Or perhaps a way-wimped-down version of that Burgess Merideth "Twilight Zone" episode. Whetever. There sure as hell isn't any music or movies in it, that's all I know.

Happy National Eat A Big Slice Of Woefully Unhealthy Cheesecake Day, and may I extend the same good cheer to your friends and family during this blessed time of year.

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MacMania III cruise: Days Three and Four

Thursday, November 11 2:08 PM

This is the third post I've tried to make since early Wednesday morning. Last night I was dining out, with Lilith as my companion, when I started tidying up my Desktop...closing unused windows, quitting apps that I don't need any more. XCode was still up, and I took a casual glance through CWOBber's code. You know, just a quick little read before quitting out.

Fast-forward to two hours later, when I clicked the "Build" button. I have finished a large, some might say epochal, update to the app. It's really a thrilling change. I've been meaning to do this for months, now, and I've always said to myself that the moment that CWOBber can do this, well, the app will have graduated from the Eastern League to the International League. Translation: it will have moved from AA to AAA-ball. Translation of the translation: while CWOBber still would be a cut below professional-class software, it'll be just a single rung away.

So last night I wrote two posts of that minty-purple "Just testing some new code, folks; let's see if this works" variety. If you look through the archives, you'll note a profound lack of recent posts that match the above description; I encourage you to put two and two together.

Alas, the changes I've made to CWOBber have more or less doubled the length of the source code, and the error is subtle enough that it presents me with an opportunity to become a far, far more familiar with XCode's debugging tools that I am right. Unfortunately, the Exact Person whom I'd badger for help on an issue like this is somewhere in the Caribbean on the MacMania III cruise. Dash it. You know who else is on that ship? Sal Saghoian, Apple's Iron Chef of AppleScript. Which amounts to just one more reason why I should have gone on that cruise, as planned. I could just talked to these folks directly, instead of waiting until next week. Except that I only started upgrading CWOBber because of that Amtrak ride to New York, so this issue wouldn't have come up in the first place; which is convenient, because if I was on a luxury cruise ship and only hours away from lying on my second or third white-sand beach of the week, the odds that I would have given a crap about my blogger would not have been entirely encouraging.

The NYC trip went really well. I need to get some work done so I can't write about it at length, though. I arrived at Penn Station at 2 PM and walked 13 blocks to the Art Brown International Pen Shop on 46th Street, where I had one of the best consumer experiences of my life. Someone broke my (very nice) fountain pen back in August, roughly ninety seconds after saying "Hey, can I borrow that for a second?" and about three seconds before saying "I swear, that was totally an accident!" But while I was really pleased to have a (very nice) fountain pen once again, the purchase was almost incidental to the experience of going to The Best Place On Earth To Buy A Certain Object, and being waited on by someone who loves what they do for a living. Good story, no time.

Then I tried in vain to return to the same restaurant where I had that fabulous cheesecake during my last visit to NYC five or six weeks ago. The bastards had sent the restaurant out to be dry-cleaned, apparently, so in frustration I finally ate at Maxie's, where the cheesecake was suitably cheesecakey but didn't leave me gasping for air. I mean, what's the point of having cheesecake if every single forkful doesn't remind you of your mortality?

Plus, for slightly complicated reasons, it was very important, highly-symbolic, and a small personal victory for me to have cheesecake on that date. Good story, no time.

Two things reminded me of my oft-quoted maxim that any subway system that can't be clearly summarized on the front of a tee shirt is a system that still needs work. Thing One was my commute from midtown to the Apple Store for my talk. I was wretchedly let down by the New York City subway system and wound up being nearly a half an hour late for my two-hour talk and booksigning.

Thing Two was actually a person: a user-group president who quoted that exact line and presented me with a tee shirt printed with a map of the New York City subway system. I should point out this gift only proved my point: the map stretches from the shoulder seams all the way to the bottom hem, and only covers Columbus Circle to the Village. Incredibly cool and thoughtful gift all the same, though.

Despite my unanticipated surface tour of Brooklyn, my talk went really well. I wrote a brand-new show (I didn't want to repeat the talk I gave in September). How big was the turnout? Well, it depends on how you do the bookkeeping. The theater was only about a third full of people who had come specifically to hear me speak, but by the time I was ten minutes into my talk, nearly all of the 50-60 people who were there on the second floor were drawn in.

And it was a great throng, too. I signed some books and was asked the sort of questions that (quite happily) left me convinced that I got through to the people.

I took the Author Appearance sign with me; good story, no time. My publishers threw a small dinner party for me afterward; GS,NT. I saw the 11:30 PM showing of "The Incredibles," spent an hour in Penn Station's waiting room listening to men and women of all social stratas snore and drool (GS,NT), took the 3:15 AM train it home (GS,NT), waking up in time to watch the sun rise over the marinas and marches of New Haven, Connecticut.

Home by 8:30, discovering messages from my folks telling me that my name was in the Globe this morning. Called Dad back; was about to blurt "I been in New York all day; I didn't do nuttin!" out of reflex, but then he explained that a Nikon ad for the D70 SLR quotes my Sun-Times review. Good ol' Dad.

Hopefully, I'll have a chance to embellish these tales somewhat in the future. At the moment, I'm not in deadline hell, precisely. But I'm on a road, here, and I see a sign up ahead that says "Disneyland: Exit 28" and another one that says "Kill Tourists In The Messiest And Most Deliberate Manner Possible-Land: Exit 29" and I'm determined not to miss my exit. So: hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to et cetera.

In the meantime, check out my Flickr page. I've uploaded a sampling from my award-winning docuphotoessay on plates of restaurant food I've eaten in the past few years.

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A hearty heigh-ho as we pass above our neighbors in the Great White North

Tuesday, November 16 8:34 PM

The temperature outside my window is -51 degrees, altitude is within a nine-iron of 11,000 meters, and this Boeing 777 is passing over Halifax, Nova Scotia. Most of us are expected to land in London at 6:16 AM local time. Whether the rest of the passengers arrived earlier or later, they will have pulled off a pretty neat trick and I urge the talent coordinators for the Letterman show to grab the booking before Leno's people call.

It occurs to me that I might have entirely too many screens around me at the moment. The current count is four, if you include the big screen behind the mid-cabin bulkhead that's giving me all this information about the plane and where a gob of spit would land were we able to crank down a window and hock a gooey one out, which we can't, so I can't say that I understand what the point is.

In the immediate foreground is Lilith's screen, currently acting as the vessel for this transmutation of synaptic misfirings into written speech. To Lilith's immediate right is my Creative Labs Zen Portable Media Center, playing last night's Letterman show. Above that is the color screen built into the seatback in front of me, showing the Channel 1 movie, "Anchorman." Actually, when I first saw the trailers for this flick it seemed like the sort of movie I'd enjoy watching through the medium of in-flight entertainment; when it loops around again, I might have to pay attention.

I could go for five: I'm typing on Lilith 7, but Lilith 6 has come along for the ride. So if I really wanted to be obnoxious, I could set up a triple-plex right here in Row 33. On Screen 1, "Anchorman." On Screen 2, last night's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." And on Screen 3...hmm. I dunno. Maybe "The Conversation," or "Kill Bill, Volume 2."

To my right, a member of the flight crew is ripping sheets of aluminum foil off of stuff. So it's probably time for me to pop out my earplug-phones and be ready to say "I'll take whichever one comes with a coating of melted cheese." More later.

(Hi, I'm back. Beef or chicken, which provokes an automatic response of "Chicken." There are shoe-leather cuts of beef, whereas chicken is chicken. Always a safer choice in cafeteria or airline cuisine.)

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Sweetened with smoked fish

Tuesday, November 16 9:08 PM

Forgot to mention: I must strike the Netherlands off my list of Countries That I Could Possibly Live In If I Had To. Oddly enough, the galley on this plane is stocked with Dutch Cokes. I'm on my third. Normally I cut myself off after two, but I refuse to believe that they're supposed to be this watered-down. And it's not the flight attendants doing it! They cracked open the can, poured off six ounces, and handed it to me with the rest of the can. It's the color of iced tea and if you presented it to me as such, I really wouldn't be able to challenge you with any sort of confidence.

This trip is only a few hours old, and yet it's already presented a distressing image of the problems I'm going to have administering necessary dosages of His Master's Vice. I was deposited at a airport shuttle depot ten minutes from my home, and discovered that in the five weeks since I last flew, the facility cancelled its contract with the Coca-Cola Company: all the machines were stocked with Pepsi product.

You know, maybe I'm just going to stay in England. At least until my home nation makes sense to me again.

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Greenlandian Placenames for $200, Alex.

Tuesday, November 16 10:08 PM

"Godthab" would be a great name for a band.

"Godbath"? Better. Better.

Okay. Let's keep working on this.

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Lon-don KAWL-ling!

Thursday, November 18 11:18 PM

Greetings from Blighty, me mateys. No, I don't know why I'm talking like a pirate.

This is more of a "I'm busy working on a book while I'm also busy preparing my talks for tomorrow, while I'm simultaneously trying to enjoy being in one of the most mega of the megahypersuperginchy cities on the planet. So: not much time for sober contemplation followed by orderly blogging. Complicating things is that I've been here since early Wednesday morning and this is my first chance to get online.

The plummeting value of the dollar has been a Waterloo on many fronts. Do I use the hotel's in-room broadband connection? At...um...eighteen pounds per day? Which works out to about thirty-six bucks? Gosh. Well, how about I just make a dialup connection, just to grab my mail? Let's check the little card tethered to the phone: local calls are billed at — holy mother of God — 59 pence. Per minute. Or, about a buck twenty per.

This left me well-motivated to either walk until I found a Starbucks with a T-Mobile hotspot (two nearby, good; but neither one apparently recognized my account) or wait until Mac Expo opened today, and see if there's a free access point to be found. Plenty, but none of them designated for public use. So God knows who can sniff your traffic.

So I've knuckled under and blown the $36. I don't really go for online porn as a general rule, but at these rates I'm not going to spend one single minute not downloading something. So I'm about 3/4 of the way through downloading an hourlong fan-made porno film in which Mr. Spock gets it on with Princess Leia. Take that, London Hilton Islington!

But suffice to say that Mac Expo is a blast. It's a template for a small show. The venue is just the right size: big enough that people have room to walk around, small enough that the place feels packed. Unlike Boston, Apple has a booth here, which did much to contribute some buzz. This is also the first show in which I've seen Apple actually demonstrating Tiger — an actual build, with working apps — which has to be taken for a good sign.

Attended my birthday dinner on Wednesday, and a second one this evening. Have therefore drunk more in the past two days than I have in the entire previous calendar year.

Must get back to work. But do head on over to Flickr an check out this photo. If there's a bigger highlight of this trip, I can't guess what it'll be.

And if you're going to be here in London on Monday night, come on down to the brand-new Apple Store on Regent Street (opening Saturday!). I'll be there from 7 PM to at least 8, talking about my favorite tips and tweaks for iLife, and otherwise trying to convince the masses that buying my books would be a very, very positive step towards some goal of another.

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