OK, so I really need to get out of the house, so we decided on barbeque. I'm a Kentucky Greg's man but the place is a bit small and I'm feeling a bit cooped-up already, so. There's always Fat Bob's and although their sides are excellent I'm not a fan of their ...um... ribs. We'd gone to BW's once but my memory of it faded behind my memory of driving the hell around Blasdell trying to find it. So BW's it is.

In an effort to avoid getting lost again I looked up the turnoff from Rt 5 on Street View. On one side: an unmarked garage; on the other: an unmarked factory. Great. I backed up the street a little: A sign that says mumblemumble ... POGS? Zoomed in. Sure enough, ALL ADULT POGS.

What is the deal with Blasdell.

- Z

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ps. Yeah I know, it says 'All About Dogs,' but you can't stop me from believing there's an entire store devoted to selling fifteen-year-old porn-pogs.
pps. BW's ribs are cooked perfectly but KY Greg still wins on sauce.
ppps. All About Doug definitely looks like the kind of place that sells porn-pogs.

Back up your hard drive. Like right now. Read the rest of the post once you're done.

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You didn't do it, did you? Today was the second time my MacBook's drive failed in the 2 1/2 years I've owned it. They said it was a known issue and the replacement was free, warranty or no, but my last backup was Friday so I'm out a week. Could have been worse.

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Now that you're back from actually backing up your drive, here's some other MacBook problems that are covered out-of-warranty:

1) when your power cord shorts, melts the insulator, and starts shooting sparks
2) when the outer edge of your top case cracks and falls off
3) the repair for 2) will also replace your touchpad and mouse button, which may have become unreliable in their age.

- Z

You read the news, you get what you deserve. These ads are on rotation at the Boston Globe

This ad campaign is so great, they've even got puns about Oven Mitt Romney. I wish I'd thought of it first.

- Z

but I really like this houndstooth pattern. Apparently 217 other people do, too. I guess it attracts the kind of person who would have the tenacity to look through sixty four pages of themes but then totally just give up.

Last night, it was potatoes. Tonight, my nonpartisan campaign coverage hits musical endorsements. At the event where John McCain brought out Daddy Yankee to announce his endorsement, somebody asked Mr Yankee what his song 'Gasolina' is about. His answer: 'energy independence.'

Meanwhile Barack Obama's got Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, and, depending on your interpretation of this runaway inflatable pig, Roger Waters.



But now that we've finally got a black guy from Chicago on the ticket, where's all the blues singers?

Wow, I wish I hadn't seen that. He's got Al Gore rhythm.

- Z

I was feeling adventurous last week so I managed to install Windows Vista Ultimate on my MacBook. It's certainly got its share of annoyances but I don't understand why everybody seems to hate it so much.

Installation was much less painful than xp. In particular, that first software update after a fresh install was a hundred times easier- only had to update & reboot once rather than a half dozen times.

Graphics performance: I've got a totally weak Intel 945 'integrated graphics chipset.' I'm running the full Aero interface and, weirdly enough, it hasn't exploded yet.

Memory consumption: I've got 1GB, the minimum recommended. Memory usage is pretty high but it seems roughly comparable to Mac OS X. If I were doing more than testing websites I'd probably be more concerned.

This is a weird one: it keeps 'asking for permission.' When you click 'more details' all it shows is a UUID. I know from context what it's doing, but seriously people. In general, though, I've noticed much fewer weird geeky error messages than xp.

Graphics design: one thumb up for improved controls and icons, one thumb down for the over-the-top window decorations. I like how the folder icons are stuffed with the actual icons of the folder's contents.

Graphics technology: much improved over xp. Text is super-crisp, and that frosted glass effect, while annoying, is pretty impressive.

Screen savers: What happened to the series of tubes?

- Z

...or, an easy way to waste one hour, three minutes, and 49 seconds of your life.

There's actually a lot of pretty cool stuff on YouTube. But how come when I'm bored all I can find is Japanese gameshows?

First we've got some Scottish dude with a pianozookelele singing Europe's 'The Final Countdown.'

Which led me to these Latvian dudes rocking out with their cellos out. [Yes I've heard of Apocalyptica.]

Here's some other Latvian dudes for whom walking is just too boring. [fast forward two minutes]

And then I spent like a couple hours watching Flight of the Conchords videos.

This guy over here isn't on YouTube but he listened to 'Dancing Queen' on Repeat One for an entire four-hour road trip -- and then got stuck in traffic for another hour. I don't know why.



- Z

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You wanted Japanese gameshows? Like for reals? Fine, here's Marshmallow Eater, What a Cool We Are, Silent Library, cat weightlifting, Door Runner, and Brain Wall keeping the treadmill and ice water industries in business. I can only imagine what kind of poor life decisions turn you into a recurring character on these shows.

You can make hot dogs in the Toast-R-Oven. If I'da known this ten years ago, college would have been very different.

- Z

This is a jar of store-brand whole black pepper.



1. Why a shaker top? What kind of deranged individual shakes whole black peppercorns onto their food? I can think of two recipes* that call for whole black peppercorns, and when I make them I usually just pour them out of the top of the pepper grinder.

2. The copy on the label which is probably too blurry to read, says

These are the highly regarded Tellicherry peppercorns from India...

You don't mean the highly regarded Tellicherry peppercorns from India?! You mean the ones everyone has been talking about down at the Pepper Club? You mean the ones that won Pepper Spectator's most prestigious "Highly Regarded" award in 2003 and 2004? Wow, that must be some pepper.

- Z

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* Corned beef, and poached salmon.

I think the thing about Mac OS X is it doesn't have the same sense of humor about itself that Windows does.



Like seriously what does this even mean? Does it go into a larger Recycle Bin? C:/Windows/Dumpster?

Maybe it puts the Recycle Bin into itself, and you get Mobius trash.*

- Z

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* For those who thought: 'wouldn't that make it Klein trash?' I bring you Acme Klein Bottles home of the Klein Stein and the Mobius Scarf

but Google News wanted me to.



I went down to the Apple Store this morning to finally fix my dang Airport card. I can only get reliable reception if I'm in the same room as the base station, which is seriously starting to cramp my style. e:dragonlady7 came along to get her top case replaced since we discovered it was covered under warranty. While we were waiting for Geniuses [genii] I wandered around to the Edutainment department and picked up this gem Wandering back to the Genius Bar I told her I needed it. She was like: ok honey if you want to. Then when I read the back of the box I said yo, this shit is like a total ripoff of LEMONADE.STAND.



And she was like, wut. And I was like yeah it was actually kinda difficult because you'd get different weather and stuff and then the genius who was serving someone else was like yeah and then your mom would cut off your sugar and your costs would go up. And then the other genius was like yeah and then your road would be closed for construction. And I know the other people who had serious problems were getting kind of annoyed but we were taking it back old skool. Long story short, they want my box for 24-48hrs for diagnosis. Not today.

Here's an image I drew yesterday for reasons that are not anywhere near interesting*. I thought it was funny but couldn't come up with anything to say about it. No you can't buy this cap.



- Z

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* We needed an image of a cap with a placeholder everywhere a logo would go.