Pretty much settled in with the new Macbook, slowly adding amenities and adjustments.  Still sort of mystified by a few things, but that’s just cuz I’m suffering IT fatigue and just naturally lazy anyway.  I’ve spent my entire professional career - the part that involves software consulting, anyway - condescending to retail training courses and “for dummies” manuals.  But the PC, DOS, Windows and I grew up together much like siblings, and I learned their features and quirks incrementally, as we shared bathwater and blamed each other when things went wrong;  OTOH, I’m late to the Mac party and hence ignorant of many of the simplest things that the allegedly non-techie Mac aficionados know by rote.  So, I’m thinking I could actually benefit from trekking down to the Apple Store at University Village and sitting through a couple of courses on the Mac, even if they patronize the crap out of me.

However, Saturday morning at 9 am would probably not be the best time to try to saunter into those heady environs, because that’s when the doors open for the first day of sales for the much-anticipated iPad.  I think it would be a blast to be there, but more to view it at a distance.  It would be like watching the Battle of the Little Bighorn through binoculars. Or Jonestown.

I’m intrigued by the iPad as a piece of technological eye candy, but when I start to think about how I’d actually use it, things get a little blurry.  As I move through the world, I almost always have my Macbook, my phone, an iPod and a digital camera in my pack.  Oh, yeah, and a book or two.  At first blush, the iPad seems to represent a convergence of all of these devices in a light, pretty package. On closer inspection, however, it doesn’t have a camera; has no phone capability unless you use something Vonage or Skype; can’t run my Windows software (like my Macbook can under VMWare); and only has access to a fraction of the books in print.  The net result is, I will still have to haul my separate electronics around most of the time and, given that, throwing the iPad into my pack doesn’t add a whole lot of functionality, except perhaps the 10 hours of battery life.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the first brace of kool (aid) kids possessing iPads, and perhaps I’ll see something I’m missing.   By that time, I presume it’ll be somewhat cheaper than $700.

These guys are pretty frisky.  Makes me glad it was a piano they happened upon instead of a bed.  (They may feel just the opposite, though)

This burst of text messages I received a couple weeks ago had me going for a while. Maybe it was because I was up to no good - I don’t remember.  For my own peace of mind, and because I received no subsequent corporal harm around the domicile, I concluded it was a wrong-number text message:

10:09 pm Saturday: I know ur up to no good

12:54 am Sunday: Where the fuck r u at now

1:06 am Sunday: If u pull any bullshit with me tonight abt being late why the fuck can’t u answer me no excuse william call me

1:07 am Sunday: I am already hm where r u at

It ended there, and I never received another.  I hope William had a good story - a head wound, a totaled automobile, a dead grandmother.  I don’t remember reading anything in the papers.

Actress Lily Tomlin demands Woodland Park Zoo release elephants

By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

===================================================================================

That might be fine for someone living in California or wherever, and I’m not here to argue the merits of zoo confinement of pachyderms.  It’s just that I live within charging distance of the Woodland Park Zoo, and, just as I’d like a little advance warning if a sexual predator becomes domiciled in my neighborhood, I’d like a running start before they throw the gates open up there on the hill.

Today is Tax Day, a day I used to view with great relief when I worked as a CPA, because it meant the end of Saturdays and evenings in the office, and also a gala party hosted by the firm where people might just get a little bit relaxed.  One such party saw a woman admin manfully attempting to cure the gay male HR dude on the floor of a coat closet in the Space Needle.  For more on Tax Day and my take on the CPA life, I refer you to one of my favorite posts from a couple of years ago.

I’ve actually been a little bit busy with tax stuff, even though I’m not “practicing tax”: I have to prepare data for a few of my clients for submission to their tax preparers;  I also fire up Turbo Tax to prepare my MIL’s return, my mom’s, my own S corporation return, and I even finished our personal 1040.  It’s been perhaps a decade since I’ve filed in April - I usually file an extension and then forget about it for the summer.  This is the first year that I’ve e-filed my returns instead of printing and mailing them, mostly because TurboTax no longer charges a fee to e-file directly from their software.  Before, I just couldn’t understand why I should pay a fee to do something that would save the IRS a hundred bucks or so on each return.  So I didn’t, and now we have this deficit.

A number of businesses do tax day promotions, but one local business has a particularly creative promo (prolly NSFW).  Hint: the come-on is “No Taxation Without Stimulation”.   Finger it out for yourself.

In other news, I’ve decided to purchase the Canon SX1 IS camera, the successor to my current S3 IS.  As I’ve related before, I was trying to choose between the SX1 IS and the SX10 IS.  Both feature a 20x optical zoom and 10 megapixels, but the SX1 has a better processor and can take video in High Definition.  It’s also $250 more, but I decided to go with it for the technological headroom, even though nothing in my house currently is capable of displaying HD, unless there’s something I don’t know about my toaster oven.  I’m buying it from my camera store client, who hasn’t received their initial delivery of the cameras yet. Check back in a week for the awesome results.

No lie - I saw a car with one of these plates this morning on the 520 bridge:

but the letters in black after the “W” were ANKER.

I was amused by this column this morning, in which musicians complain that their masterpieces are being used at a volume and play frequency that they would kill for if it was proffered by Top-40 FM, except that it’s being done by the hospitality industry at Guantanamo to soothe break down selected prisoners.

I’m not sure how the interrogators determine exactly what combination of the artists’ oeuvre will be most effective for their purposes, but it seems that their success in their endeavors would be closely followed by the music industry, with lucrative post-service offers for the most effective T(torture)-Jays.  I know this, though - our kid played a lot of Pantera while he was in middle school, and we never told him anything useful (just ask him).

I’m thinking I could use this theme to do something like our acquaintance and music expert KEN does over at his blog Miss Piggy Lunchbox.  His schtick is that he’s working his way alphabetically through his and his “baby’s” music collection, rating each album by awarding from 1 - 5 “lunchboxes” depending on what he hears and, probably, what he had for lunch that day (It’s actually interesting and well-informed analysis, even if he trashes stuff that you cry listening to).

I propose to do the same in the T-Jay genre, but rating the music on its effectiveness at extracting useful information from those reluctant to impart it.  Being a low-budget operation, I’d probably resort most often to our cat, Rico, as a subject.

The ratings would be from 1 - 5 “screams”:

Once I develop a palpable repertoire, I might just try my luck at being a defense contractor.

Struggling up out of the murk of sleep this morning and shedding the patina of dream residue (I usually never remember my dreams), a bit of flotsam remained that could both make my fortune and open the exciting world of video gaming to us sedentary sods who have trouble winning at MS Solitaire.

It’ll be called The Editorial Wii.  Wielding the Wii remote like an angry red pencil, the player will slash furiously as a stream of execrable prose comes at him from the console.  Points will be awarded for sniffing out “lead” for “led”, “It was a dark and stormy night”, “A pirate ship appeared on the horizon” and “share with you”.  One of the buttons on the remote will plant “awk” adroitly on clumsy passages.

An advanced version of the game, and something that will get some hardware sales going, will feature electrodes at the end of each finger and thumb.  With these, the player can indulge the play-editor’s greatest fantasy, air-typing withering rejection letters.

I think I’ve really nailed it this time - leave your congratulations in the comments, and start nursing your jealousy.

Unless I’m mispronouncing “Wii”.

I don’t consider myself a “blinking 1200 person“, but sometimes I just get worn out from the frequency that some new technical device finds its way into the house and condescends to, or gibbers at, me through the pages of its always-helpful owner’s manual as I try to discover how to use it.

No, I’m not a complete idiot.  I don’t resort to the manual first.  I resort to the manual after I have tried inserting the batteries in both directions and pressed every button individually and in all the possible combinations (except “reset” if they’ve been kind enough to label it as such).  I realize that some designer spent weeks in focus groups in order to settle on a set of graphic icons to label each button with, and sent the product into production certain that even a chimpanzee would have no doubt about their meanings.  It’s just that a) I usually can’t see them without a magnifying glass in front of my reading glasses, and b) I have no clue what to do with them because each one looks like an ecstatic amoeba doing different things with a c*alis erection, a sort of one-celled onanistic Tantra.

So, I shamefacedly open the manual, knowing that it was never intended by its authors to be read by the gadget’s users - it contains as little information as possible, perhaps to give nothing easy away to product liability attorneys.  The space on each page that could have been used to provide steady, soothing guidance (necessary because anyone who’s gotten so far as to open the manual is consumed in cardiac-endangering rage) is instead dedicated to repeating a useless English phrase in every language in this rainbow world of ours.  A 50-page manual of this ilk might be able to convey 10 simple steps, but by the time you ferret out the next English instruction, you’ve forgotten the last one.

To add to the fun, I’ve usually decided to learn to use said device about 10 minutes before I need to head out the door for some activity to which it is absolutely essential.

With that prologue in mind, consider my dilemma regarding a Garmin GPS training device that my mom gave me for Christmas.  I just never got around to taking it out of the box.  I guess I was subliminally avoiding making the effort to learn to use it.  She would call and ask how I liked it sometimes, and I’d say something evasive, and I’m sure she thought she’d screwed up and gotten the wrong thing.  I’d be out kayaking sometimes, however, and someone with me would pull out his GPS and talk about our route and how far we’d gone, and I’d think how cool it would be if I had mine along.  If I wasn’t too lazy and stupid to use it.

Finally last weekend I got sick of kicking the box while walking through my office, and I took it out and set about making it work.  Once I thought I had it, I set out on a bike ride down the Burke Gilman Trail to test it out.  As I rode along, I was equal parts excited to see the result when I got back, and sort of paranoid about being watched and how poorly someone would regard my average speed.  Provided it was even working.

When I got back, I uploaded the trip, and was fascinated with the data it provided.  Here’s what it looked like .  Click on the “larger map” or “Google Earth” link to see more detail.  One flaw - it seems to think that I decided early in the return trip to simply levitate and fly home a la crow.  I think there are parts of the trail that are obscured from the satellites, and the device presumes that you’d proceed as quickly as you could rather than meandering.

High winds on Saturday got some blowdown going on here in the Puget Sound region, and made the trail a little more interesting.

I can’t wait to take this thing out on my kayak.  But, before I do, I think I should learn to use the VHF radio I bought at REI a couple weeks ago, so I can hear the voices of the container-ship crew that runs me over on Puget Sound.

Are in the bag:

The fear is that some dyslexic drum major will try to dot the “m”.  “M” should never appear in an OSUMB formation in the first place!