Net radio goes silent on June 26th.

Transcript of a phone call I had this morning:

Genius: Apple Store Bethesda Row, Business Sales. How can I help you?

Me: I just got a call from an unhappy client; he’s got a MacBook with a dying battery and just discovered that his MagSafe power cable is still at home. Do you have any lying around in the service area that we can rent for the day?

Genius: No, but you can just come in and buy one, then return it within 14 days.

Me: Great. 15% restocking fee, right?

Genius: Actually, there’s no restocking fee on that item, so just bring it back.

Incidentally, the last time I was at an Apple Store on behalf of this client, it was to set up a Mac mini for headless operation. They let me use a half-dozen peripherals for as long as I needed. This is at least the tenth time that Apple has acted as a free business center for me, and it’s at least part of why most of us feel like part of a club with concierge service.

Perhaps the start of a new series of blog posts, wherein I note a turn of phrase I coined while describing a technical issue, using a series of words that have probably never before been strung together.

The entry for June 21st, 2007: “thanks to a locally stored Emperor cookie.”

Arrived at my usual Barnes and Noble café to find more than the usual hubbub; Ralph Nader is speaking here in 2.5 hours, and already the sidewalk is sprouting police and local news trucks.

My being here is pretty much coincidence, which is also how I saw Michael Moore and met Terry McAuliffe a few years ago. Ralph picked a really inconvenient day to show, as I’m here with a stack of research and work I wanted to knock out tonight. He really should have checked with me first. That being said, I’m likely to wander downstairs, because it seems wrong not to.

Either way, this is the closest I’ve been to Nader since 1992, when our proximity was documented by the Daily Pennsylvanian. Front page photo, that crowd? That left arm and ear in the lower right hand corner? Mine.

Update, 7:04 pm: I can think of at least one loyal reader who’s going to get a kick out of this. Check out where in Barnes and Noble we’ve been seated for Nader’s talk.

Winnie the Pooh, Babar the Elephant, and the Cat in the Hat are here too, in the clouds on the walls, but were unfortunately cropped out of the shot.

Call me a bit surprised there are still seats available with 20 minutes to go. Nader got 12,485 votes in this county in 2000.

Update, 7:13 pm: I just burst out laughing really loudly, and I’m getting strange looks from the people sitting in front of me. An employee just came over the PA with: “And what goes great with free DVDs and Ralph Nader? An orange mocha cappuccino from our café.” She had trouble keeping the giggle out of her voice, too.

Update, 9:05 pm: Wow, wow, wow. Damn, I’m glad I showed up for that speech. One of the best public speakers I’ve ever heard. Several blog posts to follow from my notes. Disregard my comment about the empty chairs; they brought more and it was SRO before he started.

I live in a house that backs onto a park, which connects to a white-collar complex, which in turn faces the road that goes to the Starbucks, the Metro, and the grocery store. (Which my father bought for two zuzim, had gadya, had gadya.) The complex is private property, but it’s 2/3rds of a mile to Starbucks according to satellite mapping when takin’ it to the streets, versus a half-mile cutting through the park and the complex. Easy call.

Even then, my shortcut takes several cutbacks and u-turns, and it was 95 frickin’ degrees in DC yesterday, so I did some exploring to see if I could find a better way.

I wandered around to various other entrances to the complex, meandering through a few parking lots.  Noted that these parking lots had trees and shade, which is already a bonus over my usual route. Found a break in the hedges and fences that surround the place—apparently to protect the houses behind it, including mine, from the dangerous white collar workers. Walked around a tree, wandered up a short path, and found a fence with a gate—directly in front of my house.

The gate, of course, was locked.  With a particular brand of padlock.  Which, as was documented last year in various places on the Internet, I could learn to pick with about a half-hour’s practice, using tools that I probably carry around anyway. (Innocuous tools, mind you. Nothing shady or even techie.)

Next up was the long walk around the locked gate in the fence, to get home and simultaneously see if I had any better options. That trip was 3/4ths of a mile to get me from point A to point A plus a smidge, as illustrated in the accompanying photo. This just annoyed the heck out of me.

(If you’re wondering, yes, there is a huge difference between teaching myself how to pick a lock, and just climbing over the fence right then and there. One is a clever hack. The other is doing something you clearly aren’t supposed to. This goes without question.)

On that long walk home, I’m calculating a few things in my head:

1. The time and effort it would take to learn how to pop that lock, and in a short enough period of time such that no one would notice me repeatedly opening and closing the locked gate.
2. The extent of the risk if I’m caught, which has its own categories:
1. I could be stopped by a rent-a-cop, and forbidden to be on the campus private property again, in which case my walk rises from 0.5 miles to 0.65 miles.
2. I could be stopped by a real cop and tagged with a misdemeanor; I’m not sure what law I’m breaking, as I can easily walk around the fence, but I’m guessing that “opening locks that don’t belong to you” is on the books somewhere.
3. I could be tagged for something much worse, since I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, in post-9/11 DC, what I’m describing here counts as an act of enemy combatant terrorist trespass. (And if you think I’m kidding, I’m fairly sure I committed a felony yesterday while troubleshooting a client’s network. No, I’m not going to tell you about that.)

By the time I got home, I was absolutely convinced that the next order of business was to look for the HOWTOs on popping locks with innocuous household objects. I had a clever hack, and it was going to save me time on a daily basis; that’s my favorite kind.  But just for the heck of it, and partially to prove to myself exactly how clever my clever hack would be, I pulled up the maps to get the exact distances I was saving.

My current, annoying route:

My new, timesaving, perhaps illegal route:

According to satellite mapping, total distance saved:

(wait for it)

16 feet, 10.7 inches.

Okay. So perhaps not quite so clever.

I’ve been fascinated recently by ways in which I’m unavoidably taking on character traits of my parents. This is doubly true of traits I’m getting from my mother, as she died five years ago—every time I pick up a new Mom habit, it’s like she planted a tiny nurture time bomb back in the Carter administration that was just waiting to go off.

So no big deal that I now sneeze after every meal, like she did; I figure there’s some bizarre genetic explanation for that, similar to why I sneeze every time I walk into bright sunlight. But somewhat disturbing that, after decades of teasing her for her inexplicable love of the smell of gasoline, I now find myself unconsciously taking deep shnuffs every time I’m walking past one.

Today another one snuck up on me. One of Mom’s favorite songs was “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which she loved but always found to be incredibly melancholy. Play it on the radio and there would usually be tears on her face by the time it ended. Me, I’ve always liked it, but it wasn’t particularly stirring.

Then it popped up 30 minutes ago on my iTunes shuffle, and brought me to such a complete emotional full stop that I had to stop to write this and clear my head before I could get back to work.

Thanks, Mom. I’m not thrilled with the being short thing, and I’m not looking forward to the diabetes, but this one I can live with. I just have to be careful where I am when it starts playing.

Liking gasoline, though, that still freaks me out.

If you thought “partly cloudy” during a major thunderstorm was strange, check out tonight’s forecast according to my menubar widget.

Prehistoric ancestors found of both Pac-Man and Mickey Mouse.

Does anyone else think there’s something extremely bizarre about today’s DC forecast?

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Some storms could be severe, with large hail, gusty winds, and frequent lightning. Partly cloudy, with a high near 86.

At least the hail should melt quickly.

Every couple of years, I make a note of June 10th only because it’s exactly halfway to my birthday. Usually, this causes about 15 seconds of thinking “huh, time flies”.

Today, however, the evil subconscious demon in my head who’s good at math said, “Hey, you’re exactly halfway to 75.” He even just made me look at the clock and say, “As of about three hours ago.”

Damned evil demons….

When rapidly cleaning up after breakfast, with your laptop on the table, it is best to avoid jamming a steak knife into your optical drive.

Everyone once in a while, you meet someone who casually, in the space of a few moments, is able to make you despise humanity and hope that someday the cockroaches will create a more civil society.

The scene: Costco just before closing, in a cattle call line for the cafeteria. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, the food is cheap, good, plentiful and 90% pizza grease; before you can have any, though, you have to stand in a long line with people whose shopping carts contain the gross annual exports of Shandong province. These carts are like trucks at the tollbooth, making it extremely hard to judge which line is longer. You’ll almost certainly be wrong, so the right strategy is to pick one and try not to be in a hurry.

I’m standing in a line that ends in two different registers, longish when I get there. It’s much shorter when some guy arrives behind me, cherubic tyke in tow, and we have the following conversation:

Some guy: Which line are you in?

Me: I’m in the line.

Some guy: It looks like there are two lines here.

Me: There was a single line when I got here.

Some guy: Well (indicating the yellow stripe painted on the floor, on which I am standing), there are two lines.

Me: I thought the social purpose of lines was to allow the people who are waiting the longest to be served first. Do you intend to get in front of me? Because the only reason you could ask me which line I’m in, is so you’d have a chance to get lucky.

Some guy: No, you should just pick one.

Me: I have. (turning back around, still standing on the yellow line)

Thanks to the magic of camphones, I can share with you the picture of the man who does so much, in his breathtakingly efficient and negligent way, to ensure that existence remains nasty and brutish, if not short. Should you see him on the Beltway, I have not the slightest doubt that he’s the type to cut you off in traffic, so drive defensively.

I got 9 out of 10 on the toughest word game on the web. Warning: they don’t tell you which ones you got wrong.

Argentine ducks have disturbingly huge schlongs.

Another very cool alarm clock, if somewhat over-engineered. (Shockwave video with sound)

New Terminator trilogy in the works, debuting in 2009 without the Governator.

Internet Explorer 7 is an accidental, yet effective simulation of peripheral neuropathy.

If I lived in NYC, I’d be going to see this tomorrow.

Perhaps I’m just being harsh, but I think anyone who really needs this software should be ordered to slowly back away from the ramen before he hurts himself.

Brilliant television: Salvador Dali on What’s My Line?.

Don’t bother to vote: AIR has already predicted the results of the 2008 presidential election.

I find it absolutely terrifying that, 25 years later, I still have the blue maze memorized.

I’m not sure if I’m more disturbed by this photo due to its combination of nudity and Linux, or because it turns out Tux is an outie. (NSFW… no, SFW… aw, hell, it really depends on where you work.)

Catching sunglasses with your face. Probably digital trickery, but well worth 107 seconds of your time.

Uri Geller is trying to suppress this video of James Randi debunking him—which, naturally, is how I heard about it.

Hey, teachers! Here’s something you can do to kids you don’t particularly like.

Or you can make them fly a plane: kid’s birthday money stolen by the TSA.

Apparently, all the literate children move to Virginia. An Amazon contest shows three DC suburbs in Virginia in the top five purchases of Harry Potter 7; at press time, DC itself and the Maryland suburbs are absent or far behind. No, I don’t have a theory on what this means.

Okay, so it looks very silly, and when full it weighs about five pounds. But after long stretches of seeing $20 thermoses at Starbucks, I was happy to find this $4 bigmug at 7-11. Posting about it because I was somewhat amazed to discover that ice left in it overnight was still frozen the next day.

Hold this, sippy cup.

Dark matter discovered. Film at 11 (on May 15th).

(Posting this on the very slight chance that a public display of pique will make me feel better.)

John B. Catoe, Jr.
General Manager, WMATA
600 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. Catoe,

I am writing to inquire about the code of etiquette, if any, to request that the last T2 bus of night actually stop at the T2 bus stop on River and Goldsboro Rds.

At 10:30 this evening (after I had waited approximately a half-hour), the bus drove past my stop in the center lane; clearly, in advance of his arrival, he had determined that he had no intention of stopping. As I was waiting at the stop using a laptop computer, I presume I was reasonably well-lit. Therefore I deduce that simply being at the stop, with my own point-source of personal illumination, at the scheduled time of arrival, is not enough to actually request a Metrobus to stop.

What did I neglect to bring? An airhorn? Magnesium flares? Perhaps a system of radio communication to trigger some sort of “please stop” alarm near the driver’s seat? (I have Bluetooth and Wifi, if that helps.)

Having missed the bus, and being woefully unprepared by not charging my cell phone prior to using Metro, I was unable to call for a cab and proceeded to walk approximately three miles home. (More precisely, according to Google, 2 miles and 4,394 feet.) Personally, I’m in decent shape and enjoy a long walk of over an hour on a nice night (70 °F and partly cloudy, thank you for asking), although I suspect that not all of your customers can say the same.

The unfortunate part is that the first 1 mile, 253 feet of that walk was along River Road; which, as you may know, is an unlit highway with no pedestrian sidewalks, multiple blind curves, and a great deal of traffic. As it happened, there were plenty of oncoming vehicles moving at high speeds to illuminate my path, but perhaps you understand why I saw this as a mixed blessing. I have made a mental note to carry with me, the next time I plan on using Metrobus, an orange reflective safety jacket in the event I should similarly displease your drivers, or otherwise fail to signal my intention to make use of your services.

Your advice on this matter is greatly appreciated. I am very embarrassed by my faux pas.

Sincerely,
Jeff Porten

cc: Elizabeth M. Hewlett
Chair, Maryland, WMATA Board of Directors
1101 Mercantile Lane, Suite 240
Largo, MD 20774

Jim Graham
Second Vice Chairman, Washington DC, Board of Directors
1350 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 105
Washington, DC 20004

Ron Shaffer, “Dr. Gridlock”
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071