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The weekend was full and overstuffed. On Saturday, Charles and I spent all morning doing yard work in a vain effort to tire him out so he’d have an early nap. We dug, and mulched (“melched,” as Charles puts it), and trimmed, and planted. The “early nap” plan was an utter failure, of course; he went down at 10:30, talked to himself until noon, and finally get maybe an hour’s sleep before we woke him to go to a party.

Luckily, sleep or not, homeboy is always up for a party. We met a bunch of our musical theatre friends at one of their homes, out in West Chester, where we got our barbecue on and watched as the Flyers gained and lost a three-goal lead in a deciding playoff game. There was much anger, which was calmed by drinking large amounts of Canadian beer.

On Sunday we were able to sleep in a tiny bit, then got some breakfast at Bob Evan’s, followed by a trip to Sarah’s old church for the baptism of children belong to some old high school friends. I spent the afternoon mowing the lawn in temperatures approaching 90 degrees, and then sitting around drinking water so that I could stop looking like a dessicated husk. (Is it just me, or are temperatures in all seasons getting a little crazy? It’s not unheard-of to have 90 degree days in April, of course, but it seems like year after year we got a bunch of really hot summer days, a bunch of really hot winter days, but we also get some oddly chilly days in early August, and of course last winter there were at least five separate days when I had to chisel frozen saliva from my lips just by walking from my car to the office. That was a really long sentence, which will stay in place because I have no editor. Huzzah!)

After making the lawn look reasonably tame, we went to the in-laws’ for the brother-in-law’s birthday, at which I ate so much chicken-fried steak that I couldn’t effectively breathe for the rest of the day. I tried to stuff some birthday cake in there but it wasn’t happening. I went to bed 4 hours later in a semi-coma, still thinking there was no way I’d ever eat food again.

Turns out I was wrong, which happens sometimes.

My day so far: Charles woke us at 6:15 by falling out of bed and initiating Maximum Tears. Then on the way north I got the bird flipped at me by some dumb broad from New Jersey who was in the left lane holding up traffic all the way through the city. So let’s star the day off with a dose of awesome:

Meat Cards

Business cards made of beef jerky, embossed by laser. Salient quote:

MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

I know what you’re asking: do they have Twitter? of course they do.

In Lancaster, California, Honda decided it would be fun to carve grooves in a road such that when you drive over them, the vibration of your suspension plays a song. They decided, for unknown reasons, to use the William Tell Overture, by Giaochino “Joey Chinos” Rossini. In case you haven’t watched the Lone Ranger recently, listen to this.

Then, go watch and listen to this.

Notice anything? Am I the only one? They spent heaven knows how many man-hours gouging grooves into that road and did it to produce the wrong fricking notes. This commercial gets played at least once every time I watch a Daily Show online and it makes me insane.

Just so you know.

Andrew Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow all took Karl Rove to task for this stupidity. I might as well join in! Let’s break it down like En Vogue:

What the Obama administration’s done in the last several days is very dangerous.
What they’ve essentially said is, if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors,
what we’re going to do is, we’re going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses . . .

Hey Karl, you know what else is popular among South American dictators? Torture. They LOVE the stuff.

. . . and what we’re gonna do, is prosecute, systematically, the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Policy differences? Really? Not, you know, criminal acts?

Is that what we’ve come to in this country? That if we have a change of administration from one party to another, that we then use the tools of the government to go systematically after the policy disagreements with-that we have with the previous administration? Now that may be fine in some little Latin American country that’s run by, you know, the latest junta. It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that’s not the way we do things here in America.

You know what, Karl? Your mom’s a junta. (I should probably look that word up.)

Ignoring for the moment that I think Chicago is technically located within the borders of the United States, Mr. Rove apparently thinks that the matter of torture, which is against federal law and various international treaties, is merely a “policy disagreement,” like arguments over tax rates or deficit spending.

Hey Karl: shut the hell up. You’re a buffoon. What we’re talking about are crimes. Crimes that hopefully will be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Shepard Smith put it best (warning: uncensored F-bomb, if that bothers you).

It’s all Gerald Ford’s fault, I think. When he infamously pardoned Richard Nixon, he set a dangerous precedent that a Presidential administration should not pass judgment on the crimes of a previous one. Which is fine, if we were some kind of banana republic in which every new dictator spends the first week slaughtering everyone associated with the last one. I can’t remember any incoming President immediately telling the Department of Justice to go after the last guy because he didn’t like him. What would the benefit be? It’s not as if last guy is going to come back. The time of Grover Cleveland is gone, people.

By “closing the book” on the Watergate scandal, President Ford gave credence to President Nixon’s idea that when the President does something, it’s not illegal. Since we didn’t punish Nixon, now we can’t punish anyone, seems to be the feeling.

My ass. Mr. Holder, the only way to prevent these kind of crimes from happening again are to ensure that everyone knows they’ll be punished for it. As much as I hate the idea of “setting an example,” anyone who authorized or ordered torture tactics needs to be prosecuted and jailed. Go get ’em.

I do have to admit, however, that my judgment may be clouded by the fact that I’m giddy over the possibility that Dick Cheney might end up with a prison tattoo saying “If u reed dis, bubba kill u.”

Saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog this morning, and found my curiosity piqued. In all the arguments about healthcare in America, all I ever hear comparisons to are the Canadian and UK versions of free public healthcare, which by many accounts are kinda sucky. Apparently what we need to model our healthcare system on is the French one.

According to Wikipedia, FrogHealth^TM was

named by the World Health Organization as the best performing system in the world in terms of availability and organization of health care providers.

Sounds like “Win” to me. As I understand it, and admittedly my grasp of the situation is tenuous at best, the French healthcare system pays something akin to 80% of basic medical costs. The rest is born by the patients or the private medical insurance that a majority of French citizens have. Who’s covered? Any legal resident of France. Still, having to pay 20% of medical costs can get pricey, right? What about serious illnesses like cancer? The public healthcare system covers that 100%.

It sounds like the best of all possible worlds: serious sickness is covered completely, and treatments that are prone to being overused by demanding patients have a co-pay to deter them from doing so. Meanwhile France, as a nation, spends about $3,500 per person on healthcare, as opposed to the $6,100 spent by Americans.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me why this couldn’t work for the US. Cut costs, get everybody covered? What’s the roadblock?

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Correction: in this post, the French Healthcare system was referred to as “FrogHealth^TM.” This is inaccurate; the true title of the program is “CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeysHealth^TM.” We regret the error.

I don’t get this whole Susan Boyle thing. If you’ve been hiding in an oil barrel this week, the latest internet sensation is a 47-year-old Scotswoman who appeared on “Britain’s Got Talent” over the weekend. Go watch the video; I’ll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Are you as confused as I am? I mean, she certainly has a nice voice. Is it opera- or Broadway-ready? Of course not. She needs a lot of training, if only to try and put a governor on that vibrato, which is wide enough that a fellow could drive a double-wide through it. It’s certainly not better than several local sopranos I’ve sung with, and that’s just in the Delaware Valley.

Obviously, there’s notability in the fact that the woman is hideously ugly and has led a pretty sad, boring life (never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, never waxed her eyebrows), and yet has this semi-remarkable voice. I put a “What’s the big deal?” post on Twitter, and one reply said, “Everyone with a negative spin on Susan Boyle is missing the point. She’s a phenomenon because talent doesn’t discriminate.” Which is a bit like saying “water is interesting because it can be both hot and cold.”

Of course talent doesn’t discriminate; most everybody has a talent in one thing or another. The feeling I’m getting from the masses is, “Look everyone! Even ugly people can be musicians!” Um…duh. The point is, I suppose, that we shouldn’t pre-judge someone’s abilities based on how they look, but on what they actually do. Can’t judge a book by its cover, and all that.

What’s odd is that the reason that she is popular disproves the reason that people say she’s popular. Yes, talent should trump physical appearance. But in this case, it’s not the talent: her skill is reasonable, but it’s the juxtaposition of that skill and her disturbing looks that interest people. It’s notoriety, not musical ability. Ask Kevin Federline how well notoriety sells albums.

I hate being a “hater.” It’s not a role I do well. I wish Miss Boyle all the best, but I have a feeling that once the news cycle is done with her, all she’ll have left is her voice, which isn’t really any better than an especially good church soloist (trust me, I’ve heard dozens). That’s going to lead to heartbreak for her, but by then no one will care a whit.

I’m writing a post mostly so that people stop complaining about the most recent one; a new post will cause that one to scroll down the page.

Last weekend we wrapped up the Brandywine High School show, which was “My Fair Lady;” I would have posted about it but was far too busy working on it. I had to rearrange a lot of music, plus transpose an entire bassoon part into bass-clarinet, along with actual rehearsals and performances. I’m still catching up on sleep. It went off extremely well, and was super-fun as usual, but I’m so excited to be done that I can barely stop whistling.

Now we’re just preparing the house for “Rosie,” as Charles calls the creature lodged inside my wife’s abdomen. Her appearance is scheduled for early May, but Sarah, stressed over the state of our domicile, thinks that she’ll come early just to spite us. She’s a pretty violent little thing; Charles certainly wiggled and shimmied when he was in there, but “Rosie” is fond of jabbing feet and elbows into Sarah’s internal organs.

Less important news, although probably more germane to your interests: I’m planning another site revamp. I’ve had this weird dark wintery theme up for about 7 seasons too long, and I want some spring colors. Pastels, people! That’s where it’s at. Also, instead of the periodic longer updates, I’m going to turn this thing into a true “blog.” There have been a lot of thoughts jump into my head lately that I’d want to explore a bit, but didn’t have time to put together a complete “column”-style post, but it was too involved for a 140-character tweet. So expect to see shorter little notes, filled with the usual “humor” and “insight,” throughout the day, mostly sent through email from my iPhone, because That Is How I Roll. I might even post the new template tonight and start the new blogging paradigm, but a lot depends on whether or not Charles, who is not feeling very well, allows me to do anything.

Peace and bacon!

AISOT, this is where I sang not one, but TWO national anthems on Monday afternoon.

You can see where I would have been standing, near the red circle in the upper right, if I hadn’t been in the press box taking the picture. (I can’t be in two places at once, people. It is the great shame of my life.)

The singing went well, although My Canadian-by-birth-Korean-by-choice friend Stefan pointed out that I said “my” when I should have said “our.” Whatever. At least I didn’t fall down.

BTW: I’m posting this from my iPhone. More on this awesome development later.

I’ve never insisted that I was particularly bright. Which is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that, up until this week, I had no serious backup setup for my computers at home. What changed this week, you ask?

Computer crash.

My wife’s achy old Dell B130 would only boot to the Blue Screen of Sadness, so I got it into diagnostic mode and did some tests; the hard drive failed like a fat kid in gym. It did at least START to load Windows before it would roll over and point its feet in the air, so there must be SOMETHING remaining on the drive. I deduced that with a little genius, I could get it back to life.

This did at least give me an opportunity to do a little shopping on Amazon. I ordered a new 80GB drive for HW’s laptop, thereby doubling her original capacity. Since I’m a moron and had never bothered to do proper backups, I also ordered a 1TB, that’s 1000GB, USB drive to start doing so. I also picked up a $15 laptop drive enclosure, so that I could put Sarah’s old drive in, and then plug in via USB to my Mac. If I could get the old drive to spin up, hopefully I’d be able to recover some data.

What I didn’t have, and couldn’t easily get, was any kind of “reinstall” CD. If the laptop had come with one, we couldn’t find it. There was a sticker on the bottom of the case with a product ID number for Windows XP Home, so I bugged my dad to lend me his Windows XP Home CD, and went to town. Inserting the new 80GB hard drive was a breeze; switch around a few screws and a protective plate from the old drive to the new, and plug that puppy in. Mounted the Windows CD, formatted the hard drive, and XP Home was on its way. It prompted for the product ID number from the sticker on the bottom of the lappy, and I typed it in.

“The CD Key which you entered is invalid.”

Huh? Maybe I mistyped it. It was annoying flipping the laptop over to get 5 digits of the code, and then flipping it back to type them in, so I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote the code down, then typed it in again.

“The CD Key which you entered is invalid.”

What the heuristic hell? I checked the key I’d written down against the sticker once more; it was accurate. What I had was a Windows XP Home License that didn’t work with the Windows XP Home CD I had. Good job, Microsoft; no wonder you’re laying off thousands. (In a related story, my Mac is awesome.) I later deduced that the code I had was valid if I could have found the original Dell installation CD, but since I don’t have one, I was SOL.

I did a little poking around warez sites to try and get a code, but none worked. Finally, through A Source, I was able to get a functioning code. It might not be ENTIRELY legal, but I reasoned that the laptop has a license for Windows XP Home, I’m trying to install Windows XP Home, it’s not my fault that Dell didn’t give me a CD to match the license key I had.

Finally got it installed and booted, only to discover that the CD came with only the barest drivers, none of which worked with the network cards in the lappy. So I had to waste a CD-R on the drivers I downloaded from Dell, but oh well. These are the prices we pay. (Along with, of course, the $200 for the various components I had to buy.)

Once that was done, I turned my attention to the old hard drive, which I screwed into the little enclosure I’d bought and connected to my Mac. It immediately recognized the drive, spun it up, and displayed all Sarah’s folders. Good times! I’ll just drag and drop. It copied around 6GB of data, and then EPIC FAIL!

Whatever was wrong with the drive (corruption, bad sectors, etc.) was preventing me from copying the entire thing. I decided I’d start with just getting the My Documents directories, so I dragged and dropped those: EPIC YAY!!!111!one

Final result: $200 spent, laptop disk capacity doubled, and 1TB backup drive purchased, which also gives me the ability to back up my entire gaming/recording desktop in the basement and rebuild it from scratch without all the spyware and viruses one gets from developing a truly mammoth collection of pornography illegal music jpegs of puppies.

Since I reach a significant Age next week, I had to go to the DMV and renew my license. My car is also going to require renewal in two months, so I figured, hell, they’ll let me do it now, why not kill two birds with one stone! Particularly when those birds are massive, slavering creatures with Adamantium talons who hate me and everything that we as a nation hold dear.

So I snuck out of work for an early lunch hour, thinking I’d beat the crowds. this handy website shows the wait times for various functions, and it was saying I’d wait no more than 5 minutes for my license, and maybe 10 for my registration. Awesome!

I arrived shortly after 11, and got into a short line at the inspection lanes. As I later twittered, I, as always, picked the wrong lane, and watched as 3 or 4 cars who arrived after me got in first. But the joke was on them! I had, completely on accident, picked the one lane that could do all the regular checks (turn signals, lights, horn, etc.) plus the ODBII check (where they plug into your car’s computer to see if you’ve downloaded porn to it)! All the other lanes could do the car checks, but then you had to get into another lane for the computer read-out. This seems like a foolish way to do it, but I grinned happily as I parked and went inside, where I discovered that the South Wilmington DMV, unlike the New Castle one that is technically closer to my house but horribly inconvenient for a lunch hour visit, doesn’t actually have “line;” it has a take a number system, so you can sit and read horrific books while you wait! (I went with Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore, a book so painful that I got it at the dollar store. For a dollar.)

They were on number 202 when I sat down; I had number 222. So I read, and occasionally glanced up when the shift supervisor, the Mother Superior of the DMV, would get called over to yell at some poor soul who believed they could renew their car’s registration without having the current one, or without an insurance card, or without retrieving their car from the impound lot whence it was towed for unpaid parking tickets. (An aside: some of these people were at least fifty years old. Folks, how do you not know how this works? How do you reach the age of fifty, probably renewing at least one vehicle every two years, and not know what documents you require for this process?)

Finally I was called up to a very polite gentleman who took my documents and money and gave me a new registration and sticker in three minutes flat. I fail to understand why this is such a difficult process for some people.

By that point it was roughly 12:30, and I had to go get another number to wait for my license renewal. I was number #177; they were at #140. I shed a few silent, hot tears and sat down next to some sort of kiosk. After 20 minutes or so, they had gotten only to #150, and a young woman came out and started fiddling with the computer at the little kiosk. In a flash of brilliant insight, I deduced the following:

1. Eventually, this lady was going to open this kiosk for business;
2. It was likely that they intended it to be an express lane, meaning it would most likely be available for people with simple class-D license renewals (no truck licenses, no new licensees, no state IDs, etc.);
3. It was also likely that the line would be first come, first served;
4. The instant they made any sign of opening up, I needed to spring to my feet and sprint to the head of the line, hardly a challenge since the kiosk was approximately three feet to my left.

Sure enough, at about 1:10pm, a supervisor came out and started to announce that they were opening the kiosk for simple license renewals, and before he had said two words I was standing next to the nice young woman running the show. I think I even semi-accidentally butted in front of another fellow, but he sensed that were he to confront me, I might roll up a Driver’s Education Manual and beat him to death with it, so he held his tongue.

Because I know how to handle a drive-thru bureaucracy (just like a fast-food drive-thru; no special orders, basic meals only), I was through the line in three minutes, had my picture taken, and handed a literally piping hot new ID by 1:15. A little creative driving had me back at the office at 1:35! I think the word I’m searching for is “WOO!”

In short, the DMV is slow, news at Eleven.