Mac OS X 10.4.8 update and Airport problems

Many people are reporting that after updating to Mac OS X v. 10.4.8 their Macs are dropping their wireless internet connections. (I'm one of them. My Intel iMac can see our wireless network, but I have to manually reconnect every time I awaken the computer.)

The folks at MacFixIt have got some advice for fixing this.

Are you married?

Chances are this advice on being married to a photographer will ring a bell, no matter what professional or avocation your spouse pursues.

Blogging tips

Everyone has blogging tips. A few people have good ones. Like these.

And here's an entry, from a political blog, that's an example of a good, provocative teaser and call to action.

Keeping kitty cozy

My cat Betaille is 17. (I think she's "our cat" but both she and Zorg think she's my cat.)

She's old. She's frail. She's grouchy. She communicates by glaring rather than meowing. We sometimes think she's losing her sight or her hearing, but tests indicate that when she wants to, she can hear and see just fine. And, being lightweight, she can move at an astonishing rate of speed and even leap onto things (though I think the leaping is a bit painful for her).

Betaille has always been fussy. She doesn't sit on laps. She loves to be petted, though only when she is in certain "Designated Petting Places." If we say "DPP?" to her, she'll lead us to one.

For some reason, Betaille insists on living outdoors. She makes her home in a sheltered storage alcove that's just outside the basement and underneath my office. (If I get out of my chair to go into the kitchen, she hears the chair and the footsteps overhead and often meets me at the back door.) We have fabricated some shelters for her out of cardboard boxes and equipped them with hard plastic heated pads (used for barn animals) topped by faux-fleece cats beds. (Two boxes because our pushy cat Zoe kept nudging Betaille out of the first heated box and occupying it herself.)

Despite these efforts, there's something pathetic about going down to visit Betaille on a cold, rainy winter afternoon and seeing this skinny cat huddled on her heated cat pad while the wind howls through the yard.

Each year, Betaille gets frailer. And each fall, I find myself trying to engineer warmer and more sheltered environments for her. I've lined the cardboard boxes with fleece rugs; I've covered the sides and tops of the boxes with thick slabs of styrofoam.

Today I ordered this inflatable, insulated dog house that was apparently used by some teams in the Iditarod races. Equipped with the heated pad and cat bed, it could be the perfect home for Betaille this winter. If she agrees, I'll post another picture of it with her inside.

The Corkscrew Hazel, Contorted Filbert...

...aka Harry Lauder's Walking Stick...is one of the stunning highlights of a winter garden. Never mind that in the summer the tree looks like a haystack covered in ugly wrinkled dull green leaves. In winter it drops the leaves to reveal a fascinating structure of twisted, nearly coiled, branches.

My Contorted Filbert, purchased a year ago, sent up some vigorous shoots from the root stock this spring, and these are straight, not contorted. I suspected I should cut them off, but wasn't sure. Paghat's Garden website provided an apparently exhaustive description of the plant and how to handle it (cut the straight shoots; they take energy away from the desirable contorted branches), along with interesting background about its names.

The Paghat's Garden site, apparently a labor of love by a couple of gardeners across the Sound in Bremerton, has similarly detailed pages on a great number of popular Northwest plants. Highly recommended.

Creative retirement

My mom is currently looking for a condo or apartment that's part of an independent living retirement complex. She got the idea this summer after we visited a few of her 80-something friends back east who live in elegant and secluded retirement villages. My mother thought those places were delightful (so clean! so new!) but they threw me into the kind of depression I associate with a long dinner at a Republican country club.

Clearly my expectations for retirement differ from hers!

At last, some heartening news, reported in the New York Times: In Burbank, CA, The Burbank Senior Artists Colony has created a senior apartment complex with amenities including a digital film editing lab, drama classes, and art studios -- all available round the clock. The developer, Meta Housing, is apparently planning similar complexes in other cities. (Thanks to Rebecca's Pocket for the link.)

Serious pizza

Seriously great pizza means seriously great equipment. This fellow explains how he gets his oven up to 800 degrees.

Excellent crust recipe, by the way.

Source: LifeHacker

My search string identity

Doug Plummer ponders the most common search strings used to reach his popular site Dispatches and concludes "A poetic mix, don’t you think? Maybe I should try reading it at a slam."

I'd been wondering what to blog about today. Here it is, the Mysterious Traveler's search string identity poem. (I like the way it starts with home repair, moves on to food, then back to home repair and finally into online activities.)

pet locator
kitchen aid error messages f2 e1
remove plastic wall anchors
kugel recipes noodle apples prunes dried
brandied pears
san marzano tomatoes of italy
waring ice cream parlor instructions
do it yourself bathtub caulking
reconditioning leather
palm mac file busy
create your own south park character

Only 65 more cooking days until Thanksgiving

Roasted turkey or deep-fried? Herbed stuffing or cornbread with oysters? Cranberry relish or cranberry sauce? Yams, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, or all three? Will there be enough gravy? Store-bought pumpkin pie or homemade?

Ah, yes, the first days of fall mean thoughts of Thanksgiving. And the announcement of the release of Joe Kissell's new ebook Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner. The downloadable ebook, complete with Print Me files of recipes and schedules, brings method to the holiday madness.

Kissell, a San Francisco technology writer and longtime foodie, has taken a step-by-step approach to preparing a classic Thanksgiving dinner. You read the book, consult the ingredient and equipment lists, follow the recipes (including detailed instructions on techniques for brining, stuffing a turkey, and making gravy) and the schedules and Kissell promises you'll not only have delicious food, but all the dishes will be ready to serve on time.

He offers a customizable schedule if you want to substitute in your own recipes, or have guests bring some of the food, and there's a "Last-Minute Thanksgiving" section to help people who find themselves throwing together a feast on short notice.

Find out more about Joe and the book at his website GeekyGourmet.com.

TAGS: Thanksgiving; cook turkey; Thanksgiving dinner

Kitchen essentials

I've been belatedly reading the September issue of Martha Stewart Living, with an article on Martha's new kitchen. The kitchen is huge (of course) and very cool and classic, with stainless counters and black, off-white, and cafe-au-lait walls and trim. One picture showed a massive stainless steel restaurant-style prep table. The top was bare, but the bottom shelf had a pair of wicker baskets filled with towels. And in one of the baskets, nicely color-coordinated with new the kitchen, was one of Martha's Himalayan cats.

The September issue also has a very helpful and well illustrated article on identifying, choosing, and installing various types of wall anchors.

Pears and plums

We have a lot of each and Cookbook 411 has a nicely illustrated recipe that combines the two.

Don't go in the garden shed!

Within a hour of waking up this morning I chewed out and "fired" a subcontractor who turned out to have been lying to me for the past three weeks, apologized profusely to two of my most valued clients (the end-victims of the lies), begged a favor from one of those clients, and then drove like a mad woman to Capitol Hill to meet with a new subcontractor who is going to do the piece of work on a "rush" basis. Bless his soul.

I've been working doggedly since then (I'm due to touch base with the new subcontractor at 6:30 tonight) and a few minutes ago decided to step into the back yard to enjoy the balmy 72-degree weather before evening. It was then I noticed the door to the garden shed had been left open during the night. I walked across the yard to close it -- walking carefully, because our elderly cat has taken to using the lawn as a litter box.

Then I discovered that the cat had found an alternative to using the lawn in the rain. She'd turned the garden shed into her own personal feline outhouse. Unfortunately, there's no hole in the flooring.

So, how's your day going?

New pizza; dark dining in Seattle

Suddenly, there's pizza everywhere. Or at least a tantalizing whiff of it. Tutta Bella, which has been serving some excellent thin-crust pizza in Columbia City, has opened a place on Stone Way, just south of 45th St. I've driven by a few times and it always seems to be packed.

There's a mysterious storefront under construction on the south side of Market Street in downtown Ballard with a sign that says "Snoose Junction Pizza" (will there be lutefisk toppings?). And now Seattle Bon Vivant reports that Tom Douglas (Lola, Etta's, Dahlia Lounge) will be opening a pizza place at 4th and Virginia called Serious Pie.

Speaking of food, I'm interested in Dark Dining, happening Oct. 3, 4, and 5 in Seattle. I'd be particularly interested in the Oct. 4 dinner at Nell's at Green Lake. If you'd like to do this dinner thing with me (I'm afraid we're talking $135 a person here) get in touch and we can see if there are still spaces available. (Is Zorg going? No, Dark Dining is not a Zorg thing.)

Updating software

I spent much of this evening updating software and placing serial numbers into Yojimbo in the hopes that I'll later be able to find them there.

There are a few developers who make updating software a painless process. Unfortunately, I spent only a few minutes with their products, and long periods of time with the convoluted and poorly documented work of their less talented brethren. Software updates that tell me to restart my machine post-update are irritating -- but not nearly as irritating as one measly little app that requires post-installation restart but doesn't tell you that.

Grrr.

But I want to close with kind words for the brilliant VersionTracker Pro service, and its "lite" incarnation, VersionTracker Plus. Whichever of these you choose, you'll be able to go to the VersionTracker website and see real-world user reviews, rankings, and advice on using every piece of software, shareware, and freeware imaginable. Outstanding for both Mac and Windows.

Hey! Broisma is back

"Numa Numa" video guy Gary Broisma is back with a "New Numa" video.

I know too much

Zorg likes to say that you can take me anywhere in Seattle and I'll run into someone I know.

Turns out, he's right. And, boy, is this embarrassing.

Andy Baio at the tech site Waxy.org blogged about a Seattle web developer named Jason Fortuny (who I do not know) who recently ran an experiment using the local Craig's List. Posing (er, literally) as a "submissive woman" Fortuny advertised under "Casual Encounters" for "an aggressive dom." His hidden agenda was to find out how many men would reply with the requested photos and contact information within 24 hours.

When the answers arrived...178 of them, 145 accompanied by photographic evidence... Fortuny then posted them on a web page [WARNING: this link leads to explicit content]. As Baio notes, many of the victims of Fortuny's hoax had provided names, addresses, phone numbers, email accounts (even work emails!), photos, and other details that made them immediately recognizable.

Baio's post goes on to explore the social, ethnical and legal issues that may be involved.

Now I've lived in Seattle for 22 years; I was single for more than a decade of that time. Quite frankly, I was, well, curious to see if I'd recognize anyone.

I did.

There was an email address on Fortuny's list that I recognized immediately. And, sure enough, when I clicked on it the photo that appeared (not explicit) matched up with the email address. When my surprise and dismay wore off, I read the full text of the reply and was quite amused to see that the fellow had adjusted his age downward...by about 12 years. Oh, vanity, thy name is...probably about to become public.

Hilarious. Depressing. Human.

Photo of the day (Harrison Hot Springs, BC)

It's school, not business school

Dismissing Guy Kawasaki's list of "10 things you should learn this school year" as "advice on how to be a business toady," educator Stephen Downes goes on to propose his own list -- and it's one that puts Kawasaki's rather glib suggestions to shame.

Net lingo

Today I sent an email that contained all its info in the subject line. To indicate that there was no text in the body of the email, I ended the subject line with "n/t".

Thanks for the fish. n/t

When the puzzled recipient replied "n/t?" I realized the usage wasn't as common as I'd thought.

Apparently the placement of "n/t," to denote no next in the body of the email, dates back to the days of Usenet. (I found the reference at UserFriendly.Org.)

Also worth checkout is NetLingo, The Internet Dictionary, which talks about an email/chat adjunct I'd love to try out, called a Zaplet. Ever used one?

Before and after

Buyer experience vs. user experience. The picture says it all.

Caught in the glare

I like to get the cats in by 10 every night, but sometimes it happens that one of the Stripe Sisters is still out roaming around at midnight. Tonight I went down the front steps in search of Kaylee, headed toward our driveway -- and froze, as a high-intensity search light snapped on and caught me in its glare.

No gun-toting security guards appeared to order me to put my hands in the air, and, squinting at the beam, I realized that the next door neighbors had installed a set of motion-detector security lights on the edge of their roof. The lights are positioned so they pick up any motion on our front lawn, the street, or the alleyway.

Yikes.

I've always liked the quiet, almost rural atmosphere of our street. We have a few streetlights and most of us have dim porch lights. You can sit out front at night and not see a car, or even a person, go by for an hour or two. I've never heard of a burglary or an assault, though once this year some kids drove down the street and tossed some beer bottles (full!) out the window.

I am trying to imagine why the neighbors installed security lights of the intensity one usually associates with isolated commercial warehouses. (These are not the sort of motion-triggered soft-glow lights people put up to give guests some lighting as they walk up the driveway or front steps.) It seems doubly odd, because there is a streetlight right in front of their house.

I'd like very much to say something to them about the lights, except I can't imagine what would do any good, now that they've invested in such an expensive system.

The ins and outs of pet doors

Considering a pet door? Moore Pet Doors has a site that sells and exhaustively explains every type of pet door imaginable -- ones that fit in overhead-type garage doors, ones that can be installed in screens, "bite-guard" doors (for pets who chew on regular flap doors), heavy-duty plastic dual-flap doors, and our favorite, the raccoon-proof door ("Keeps out: Raccoons, snakes, rodents, opossums, skunks, alligators, monkeys, scorpions, other pets"). They also make custom pet doors, and replacement flaps.

And, for those of you with indoor cats who want to keep the cat box in a closet, the Cat Hole -- a very attractive wooden doorway with an optional brush attachment that, yes, grooms your kitty as it goes in and out.

We've installed, tried out, and modified cat doors for years, but I've never before come across such a comprehensive online catalog of doors, complete with ratings and reviews. (Speaking of which...we own the Solo raccoon-proof door, and I can testify that we have never yet had an alligator get into the house!)

Getting creative with bamboo

I'm in the midst of so many projects that I can't seem to get any substantive work done on any of them. Frustrating!

I'll spare you any further whining and instead feature the creative work of a North Seattle neighbor. He carted away all the bamboo poles left over from our annual bamboo thinning and turned them into garden art:

"Zefrank thinking, so you don't have to"

(Warning: Some pungent language, possibly not for the office.)

If you think the concept of "branding" is fluff, this in-your-face explanation by video-blogger Zefrank could make you think again. (Thanks to the SEOmoz Daily Blog for pointing out this one.)

Curious about pub quiz nights in Seattle?

I am. I keep thinking I want to go to one of the triva/quiz nights at the Old Pequliar or Conor Byrne in Ballard. But I'm not quite sure how it works with teams and all that. The thought of polling my friends, forming a team...aieee!

I was delighted to discover the new QuizNight.net (beta) site, with maps, calendars, and forums (by venue) to help people to put together quiz teams and find out about the venues. You register, create a profile, and...you know the drill.

(Thanks to the folks at Metroblogging Seattle for the tip!)

Fat cats and the internet? Hey, no problem

Ronald Holden's link-laden post about net neutrality is well worth clicking around in. You particularly want to see John Hodgman ("I'm a PC") of The Daily Show explaining the Internet -- which he says was founded not by Al Gore, but by Eisenhower. Really.

Rain. Rain! RAIN!

For the first time since June, it's really raining! The forecast shows it continuing through Wednesday. I can hardly wait to see what the garden will look like by Thursday!

Western swing at the Tractor Friday

The folks who run the Tractor Tavern in Ballard must have a genuine love for roots music, because their calendar has plentiful infusions of The Real Thing.

September starts off with a visit from Wayne "The Train" Hancock, the definitive purveyor of the Texas honky-tonk tradition.

Details: Sept. 1, 9 p.m. Tickets $12 (available in advance at Sonic Boom in Ballard)

Opening: Marshall Scott Warner (rockabilly)
DJ: rockabilly expert DJ Tom LG

"Tk'tk'tk" wins a Hugo Award!

Last February, right in the midst of my departure from Apple, I took Anita Rowland's sage advice and got myself to Potlatch 15 in Seattle. This convention for science fiction readers and writers is pleasurably intense, and by the end of the con Sunday afternoon I was pretty much in a daze. I'd offered one out-of-town participant, who was staying with friends in Fremont, a ride out from downtown. We were collecting our coats in the hospitality suite when a man I'd heard on some panels walked up to me and introduced himself. We started chatting, and it was one of the most enjoyable conversations of the weekend (which was saying quite a lot -- it was a fascinating group). This fellow was David Levine, the editor (with Kate Yule) of the fanzine Bento, and an up-and-coming short story writer. I'd read David's distinctive story "Tk'tk'tk" in Asimov's in the past year, and was delighted to learn it was up for a Hugo Award, one of the highest distinctions in SF literature.

Just heard tonight that "Tk'tk'tk" has won! Congratulations, David! A memorable piece of writing by a very talented -- and inspiring -- writer.

The story has been available on the Asimov's site, but I believe it may be taken down now that the awards have been announced. Try this link!

Back to...what?

I haven't gone to school since 1980 (when I completed my M.S. at Columbia) but the last two weeks of August are still all about getting ready to rededicate myself to some kind of work routine.

For a few years in the '90s I worked as a campaign manager for United Way. Late August was when we held boot camp for volunteer fundraisers (loaned executives). This experience probably reinforced my end-of-summer instincts to revamp my wardrobe, reorganize my desk, get up earlier, and generally get psyched for a new, life-changing endeavor.

Thus far this year I've signed up for a September fiction writing seminar at Richard Hugo House and purchased a new backpack. OK, I'm ready. Are you?

Pear season

The pears are ready. These are sweet golden pears, which ripen three days after they are picked. Come visit, and you will leave with some pears!

(Recipe for pear coffee cake also available. Possibly also some coffee cake samples, if I feel energetic this evening.)

Italian recipes

The website for Mario Batali's Ristorante Babbo in NYC includes some wonderful recipes, many of them hearty, rustic dishes from the Italian countryside. You probably already have all the ingredients you need for the Panzanella Salad.

Lunch in Ballard and just beyond

Not to turn this into a food blog...but came across two great new places in the Ballard area this week:

Egan's Ballard Jam House. A jazz club by night, this place on NW Market has a short but distinguished menu of lunch offerings. You can't go wrong with the gumbo, and the vegetarian I had lunch with gave a "thumbs up" to the Mediterranean wrap. The cheesecake looked impressive, but we weren't doing desserts. Egan's was pleasantly quiet, with a bluesy soundtrack in the background; I suspect it will soon be hopping as word gets around about the wonderful food.

The Barking Dog Alehouse. This surprising large restaurant is tucked away on the west side of Phinney Ridge, on NW 70th. We didn't check out any ales, but their halibut breaded in panko was a knockout. The friend who brought us there had the mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich -- lots of beautiful little open-face sandwiches on baguette slices, drizzled with olive oil. Superficially, this looks like pub food but there's a much defter touch and better flavors. (I've seen some online reviews complaining about the service here, so apparently things go downhill when it's busy. On a weekday at lunchtime the Barking Dog was barely half-full and the service was very attentive.)

Ferocious strawberry shortcake

As a rule, I live vicariously through the dining adventures of The Robotic Gourmand and Cookbook 411, but in the past two days I've had the chance to eat at two of the city's favorite small places: Via Tribunali and Kingfish Cafe.

Both are legendary for their long waits as well as their vivid food, so Zorg and I made a dash for Via Tribunali early Sunday evening. Indeed, we were seated immediately and service was swift. We started with the excellent Salumi antipasto (meats from Salumi), followed by a Quattro Stagione pizza. Some reviews of Via Tribunali say that their ultra-thin crust pizza can, at times, be limp in the middle, and unfortunately that was the case. Since ultra-thin is not Zorg's kind of pizza in the first place (he favors the thick Chicago style, with extra cheese) the sub-par crust took the zing off the main course for him. (I was purring, he was looking puzzled.) A dessert of tartuffo (chocolate ice cream drizzled with espresso and crushed expresso beans) cheered us up, though.

I'd been to Via Tribunali once before, but tonight was my first time at the Kingfish Cafe -- also a good place to arrive early. The food there is rich and Southern, with hot, spicy and sweet the prevalent flavors. (Salt is noticeably underplayed, which is a little disconcerting initially but by a second taste, this absence really lets some other great flavors come forth.) The house salad has lot and lots of bacon. Very good bacon. Our friend Mary ordered the shrimp (spicy and sweet), I had the crawfish/crab cakes with a delicious tartar-aoli, and Zorg got the near-perfect macaroni and cheese -- an immense, tangy block of it.

We all ended up getting much of our main courses boxed to go, and Mary and I decided to split an order of strawberry shortcake. It turned out to be massive, and ferocious, with layers of fresh, sweet berries their own juice, fresh fluffy whipped cream, biscuit-style shortcake that really held up, and a transparent carmelized sugar glaze over the whipped cream on top. We each ended up take a box of that home, as well.

Eat well. Eat early.

Deconstructing the IKEA catalog

Percolating has some amusing and disturbing observations about the latest IKEA catalog. Plus a great photo of some IKEA product testing by a couple of finicky customers.

Sorry I asked

Blogthings' Quick and Dirty Career Test thinks I should be a book editor. Oh, very funny.

Did it get you pegged as well?

My friend in Hangzhou

While editing this evening, I had my iChat (Mac instant messaging) window open.

I'm listed on a couple of Mac sites as a contact for people who want to try out text, audio, and video iChatting. So I wasn't surprised when I was called into chat by an unfamilar person. I quickly Googled his (her?) mac.com email address (which is also an iChat buddy name), and was taken to a translation of a Chinese site.

It appeared that he (she?) was from Hangzhou, China, so I quickly began to look up info on Hangzhou (in Eastern China). Meanwhile, my new buddy asked where I was, and what time it was there. It turned out he had never heard of Seattle. While I explained that it's between Vancouver, BC, and San Francisco, he reported he'd spotted it using Google Earth. I opened my copy of Google Earth and was soon looking at satellite images of the enormous apartment buildings in Hangzhou (it's one of the largest cities in China).

Some quick Google searches revealed that Hangzhou is renowned for its traditional green tea, called Longjing. Longjing is picked by hand and pan fried (rather than steamed). I mentioned this, and quickly copied and pasted in the characters for it: 龙井.

Then I added that I like Lapsang Souchong, a highly fermented black tea (正山小种 or 烟小种), and Yunnan tea.

My buddy explained that black teas like Yunnan are rarely consumed in central and eastern China, where green tea is preferred. Then he apologized for his "bad English." Good grief, I can't even type in Chinese much less communicate in it!

Anyway, it was great fun -- and pretty much typical of the encounters I have with folks I meet in the Mac online communities.

AJAX explained

If you lurk at the outskirts of website design the way I do, you may have wondered what AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) does. SEOmoz's explanation still had me squinting, but the five examples he gives of how AJAX coding changes (and improves) the user experience on well-known websites (such as Netflix, and Flickr) were just was I needed.

Not bloggish

I feel distinctly unbloggish, and that, combined with a work crunch, may lead me to take the rest of the week off from blogging. For your amusement, here are some links to bloggers who do have something interesting to say:

A beautiful picture from Doug Plummer.

A photo-illustrated review of a delicious-sounding new Phinney Ridge bakery, Fresh Flours.

Political humor

Barry Levinson's 1997 black comedy "Wag the Dog" (Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman) was far-fetched to some, but all-too-believable to others. Now Levinson is back with another film likely to get those same disparate reactions.

Robin Williams stars in "Man of the Year", the story of a Jon Stewart-type TV host whose campaign for president is not just outrageous, but outrageously successful. Opens mid-October, just in time to prepare us for the November elections. The trailer has more laughs than most full-length comedies. (Thanks to Boing Boing for turning me on to this one.)

Blogger beta: Bait, but no switch

There is apparently a new (beta) version of Blogger.com, and when current users log in, you are asked if you want to switch to it.

I said yes, but was then told my blog couldn't be switched at this time. Bet it's 'cause I'm using a Mac. (However, it's not browser-related because I'm using Firefox, not Safari.)

Weekend roundup

My weekend activities had something for everyone and more than enough for me. Saturday I got a fabulous haircut from Ross at Habitude; swung by a great yard sale at an old Ballard farmhouse and picked up cookbooks, pie pans, and cookie sheets; then came home and baked rhubarb-and-berry pie which we took to a dessert party.

Sunday Zorg cleaned everything out of the storage area outside the entrance to our basement; I then pressure washed all the mossy concrete and wound up looking and smelling like something from the Flying Dutchman scenes in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean. After a shower it was off to a neighborhood party, and then up to Capitol Hill for a friend's 50th birthday party.

The weekend needed one more day.

Important to whom?

Discussing Seth Godin's analysis of the successful communication of new ideas, Guy Kawasaki says "Notice that ideas never spread because they are important to the originator."

Amen.

I tried for years to get that concept across to my PR clients, but they simply refused to believe that something important to them wasn't important -- or even mariginally interesting -- to the audience they were targeting.

I remember trying to get one CEO to articulate the core message of an article I was supposed to be ghostwriting for him. "What is it we want your readers to come away knowing?" I asked. He thought a moment and replied "We want them to know that I'm very intelligent."

(I still can't believe he said that.)

At another company, a senior executive invited a couple of us to a brainstorming session to decide how to communicate a particular policy to customers. The company had tried brochures, letters, and posters, but there had been virtually no change in customer behavior. The latest plan was to launch an expensive newsletter to get the policy message, and others, to the intended audience. We asked if it was possible that customers had ignored the previous communications not because the vehicles were wrong but because the policy message itself was boring -- in which case it was likely that they'd ignore the newsletter version of it as well. I'm afraid that one of us pointed out that if something truly interesting happened at the company -- such as the CEO being caught in a compromising position with a summer intern in the parking garage -- 50 percent of the customers would somehow manage to hear about it within 24 hours.

Nervous laughter. And, of course, they went ahead and launched the (terminally boring) newsletter.

Three hidden Ballard treats

Tiny beachfront. If you follow 28th Ave NW south across Market Street, alongside Habitude, and across the railroad tracks, you'll come to a tiny public dock with a little sign in the midst of a marine industrial area. Nice place to sit and eat lunch.

Inexpensive fresh ice cream. The ice cream truck that sells popsicles and other commercial stuff at the entrance to the Ballard Locks park also has very nice homemade vanilla ice cream for just 75 cents a cup. (The menu says it's "soft ice cream," but it's not.) (I'm still in shock about the 1 small scoop of gelato in Fremont that cost me $4.)

The gift shop at the Locks. Great selection of high quality toys, ornaments, kids books, coffee table books, travel guides, clothing, and more.

What comes after Web 2.0?

According to Tim Berners-Lee, we're ready to start thinking about "the semantic web." (Thanks to Crawford Kilian for this info.)

Creativity break #1

This is a 20-minute video of marketing provocateur Seth Godin at the conference Gel 2006, talking about several types of "broken" communication. Sometimes I don't agree with Seth, but, boy, can this guy ever spark a discussion. Let's just say that you'll get a whole new perspective on Edward Tufte's famous favorite graph -- which Seth presents as a special type of "this is broken."

All in all, a great content-focused presentation that will send you back to your workday energized.

A different view

We live in a small neighborhood of 1-1/2-story houses. In the four years that we'ved lived here, enjoying a view of the water and the mountains beyond, no one downhill from us has raised the roof. Until last month.

New owners of a house one block west -- the house directly between us and the water -- ripped off their roof and began to build upward. Rumors were they were going to go up 36 feet. As it turned out, they went up only five feet, but that five feet neatly erased the view of the Sound from our livingroom, kitchen, and front porch.

We can still see the mountains, but I will miss sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and watching the freighters coming and going.

Upstairs, the view from our bedroom and balcony remains pretty much the same -- theoretically. But in practice, that's compromised as well. The remodeled house has a new dormer that looks right into our bedroom, meaning that we now get a choice between open drapes and a view and closed drapes and privacy.

Food associations

I'm involved in a cookbook project, and over the past few days we've been testing Thanksgiving recipes. Last night several adventurous friends were guinea pigs for a beta test of turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and candied sweet potatoes -- plus a salad and strawberries. Those last two weren't part of the official test menu, but I added them for nutritional balance. I couldn't even begin to imagine serving pumpkin pie in August!

Bottom line: There was lots of food, most of it with more carbs, sugar, and fat than you'd encounter at the average dinner. (This is not a diet cookbook.)

The weird thing was that after we'd eaten and cleaned up (more pots, pans, and dishes that you'd encounter at the average dinner, for sure) I realized I wanted pumpkin pie. Apparently the taste of pumpkin pie is somehow hardwired into my personal Thanksgiving equation:

Turkey + stuffing + cranberries + pumpkin pie = Thanksgiving

Fortunately, I don't like most store-bought pies, and wild horses couldn't have gotten me back in front of the stove again last night, so there was no possibility of getting a pumpkin pie. Still, it kept appearing in my thoughts all night long.

And you thought parking was tough in Seattle

Thanks to J. LeRoy for pointing out this story about an automated parking garage that apparently turned vengeful after a contract dispute with the city of Hoboken.

What a pair (Seth and Guy)

Guy Kawasaki interviews Seth Godin, who disses Ann Coulter and calls Guy a Purple...well, you'll have to read it.

BlogHer? Not her

I didn't go to the blogHer conference in California last week, but I suspect if I had I might have had the type of reaction Kathy Sierra did...

iConfess: Less than thrilled about podcasts

Today someone asked me if I'd listened to a certain podcast from CNET. I mumbled that I'd heard of it but hadn't listened yet.

The truth is, most podcasting leaves me cold. I love reading blogs (which I track using NetNewsWire), and I often look at video clips. But I have little motivation to spend 15 minutes listening to someone's podcast when I can read (probably skim) the same material in their blog in less than 5 minutes.

Sure, I'd devote time to listening to Garrison Keillor or David Sedaris podcast--but their performance skills are far above those of the average podcaster.

So, for the most part, I still want to get it in writing.

The silence of the fans

I'm not a morning person, and 10 minutes of loud roaring sounds from the bathroom fan while I shower doesn't help matters much.

Installation of a Panasonic WhisperCeiling Ventilation Fan (who thinks up these names?) has been on my list for a couple years now. Upgrading to a quieter version of a NuTone fan two years ago was a detour of sorts; we paid to have the "better" NuTone installed, and discovered it was just as loud and disturbing as the original one -- though it did a much better job of venting moisture from the bathroom.

Turns out the mistake had been trusting the electrician two years ago to pick out a "better" fan. It seems there is no such thing as a quiet NuTone. And he'd just switched fans within the NuTone housing that had been installed by the nincompoop who previously owned our house and liked to do his own remodeling work.

When the electrician installed the Panasonic Friday, he pointed out that the original NuTone housing hadn't even been attached to the ceiling beams. It was just sort of shoved in there and left dangling by wires -- and, of course, rattling like crazy.

There was a small explosion and sparks when the old NuTone came out, which astonished me and the electrician. "That shouldn't have happened," he said in that deadpan tone they teach in contractor school.

Turned out all the wiring in the bathroom had been done incorrectly. Now, at last, it's fixed. I got up at 7:30 this morning to rush downstairs and try out the new fan with a shower. It works! It's silent! I may become a morning person yet.

Farewell, Steve

Our 91-year-old neighbor Steve, who shared ownership of our cat Smokey, died Saturday at the north Seattle nursing home where he had been living for much of the past year. A former Seattle homicide detective, Steve enjoyed playing cards at the Eagles and Elks, socializing with other police department retirees, watching the Mariners' games, and raising raspberries.

We miss him.

East Coast time

I'm still on East Coast time, so off to bed in a few minutes.

The trip to Cape Cod and other parts of Eastern Massachusetts was primarily to give my mom a chance to visit old neighbors and schoolmates, most of whom are, like her, in their late 80s and not traveling much these days.

Our visit took us to our old neighborhood in Dennisport; here's a picture of the beach at the end of our street. It looks exactly the way it did when I swam there 30 years ago. We later drove off-Cape and up to Wrentham, where we visited a friend of my mom's who has the best retirement set-up I've ever seen. It's 1930s-era cottage right on the edge of Lake Archer. Literally--this woman's back porch is a dock. Here's a shot (taken rather too late in the evening) of dusk, seen from the kitchen window.

The Seattle I left is not the one I came back to

It was weird to be back East last week and find Seattle in the international news because of the Jewish Federation shootings. Very few of the people we visited in Massachusetts (many of them Jewish) have visited Seattle, and this certainly gave them a strange impression of it. Both my mother and I are familiar with the Federation offices and it seemed like the last place such a thing would happen.

Perhaps this is an inappropriate reaction, but I was relieved that the shooter was an isolated local nut case rather than some political extremist or terrorist whose acts might have implications for other cities.

I'm sorting through all the photos and stories from the trip, plus all the mail and messages that piled up while we were gone, and will probably blog a bit about the trip later. I'm still wandering around petting the cats and checking on the plants.

On the road in Massachusetts

So little has changed on the street where I grew up in Dennisport, and along the beachfront of our old neighborhood, that I repeatedly hallucinate that I'm 16, and going to get in big trouble if I'm not home by 11. The weather has been fantastic: Warm, hazy, breezy, and nice waves to ride. Tonight I went over to a friend's cottage and we watched the Red Sox blow the game against the Angels. As I said, very little has changed.

Boston

I'd forgotten what "muggy" meant, but as soon as we stepped out of baggage claim into the Boston evening it came back to me.

After dinner (lobster at Legal Seafood) I settled my mom at the Hilton and went out for a long walk. While Boston is a good deal sleeker and more international that I remember it, it is still distinctively Boston, and very proud of its identity.

Tomorrow morning we're visiting friends of my mother's in Brookline, and then driving down to the Cape for three days in Dennisport.

Happy ending in sight

My appeal to the head of the company that was holding our screen door hostage for weeks resulted in immediate action by the vice president to get the door delivered and installed. Things continued to go wrong at nearly every turn (the door the salesman had ordered did not have the customized features I'd requested and emailed him to confirm; the hinges didn't fit) but once the VP was involved (he actually drove over to the house to check on the installation) problem solving was the order of the day. And the fellows doing the actual installation were delightful.

Of course, I'm now wishing I'd taken my concerns about the salesman up the ladder much sooner. But when a problem is incremental (such as a delay) it's hard to decide when to turn on the aggro. (Those of you who think "aggro" is a gamer term can check out its origins here.)

So, chalk one up for the squeaky wheel.

Two types of people

People like me who think this is terribly clever, and are headed for Home Depot immediately, and people who think this blogger should get a life.

Keep cool

The temperatures in Seattle this week have been in the record-breaking mid-90s. People are miserable, but in large part that's because they're in denial. You see folks hiking around in the hot sun without so much as a hat on their heads.

I grew up in the South where people know how to handle the heat. Here's a quick overview:

1. Stay in the dark. Draw the drapes and shades; exterior shutters, if you've got them, are even better. Open only those doors and windows that are completely shaded by a roof or an awning and in line with a breeze. Don't turn on any lights.
2. Drink plenty of liquid. Really, you shouldn't be without a glass of something cool in your hand, whether it's water, iced tea, or lemonade. Many advocate cold beer, though it's advisable to hold off on the bourbon on the rocks until evening.
3. Stay low. Stay downstairs; heat rises. Stretch out on the floor (don't laugh until you've tried it).
   
4. Don't move. This is not the time to clean out the closets, vacuum the rugs, or (heaven forbid) cook something. You could, however, use the time to write a novel or compose a song. This is why the South is famous for novelists and musicians rather than for self-improvement gurus and efficiency experts. (And all the Southern politicians? Let's just say that their early experience with extreme heat prepares them not only for the political milieu but for the place most of them will eventually wind up. Meanwhile, an alter.net columnists says we can blame air-conditioning for the election of George W. Bush.)
   

Gripes and proposals

Seth Godin blogged recently about how companies "save" money by hiring unskilled, unmotivated, and untrained receptionists and then incur hidden costs in terms of customers and prospective customers who simply go elsewhere after a bad experience with reception. And, I might add, who let the rest of the world know about it.

This afternoon I'm about to try out a well-known salon/spa for a haircut. I looked up customer reviews on CitySearch and while I was impressed by across-the-board positive remarks about their stylists' talents, I noticed three seething rants -- all of them about the salon's rude receptionists. I also looked up reviews of the downtown salon I used to patronize and found the same thing. One irate patron wrote about overhearing the reception desk staff making fun of customers -- in loud stage whispers.

While Godin didn't make any substantive proposal for how to fix things, I'd like to. Thinking of shops where I've been favorably impressed with the receptionists, I realized that the receptionists were usually one of the following:

• long-time employees
• older than college age
• partners in the business, or
• employees whose jobs descriptions spanned other skilled positions in the company

If I go to our vet and the person on the desk is a vet technician, I get great service. If it's the designated receptionist, I can just about be guaranteed 10 minutes of "I don't know," and "I have to ask someone but they're busy" during which time five people stand in line tapping their feet and the receptionist just sits there, looking bored and unconcerned.

The issues here are judgment and motivation. Most, though certainly not all, people have judgment skills that improve with age/experience. Eventually the connection between dissing a customer and getting fired gets made. Eventually they get tired of droning "I don't know," and put together a helpful or at least polite answer. They figure out when to cut some slack for a long-time customer instead of enforcing a company rule intended to protect against deadbeats.

Paying the receptionist a decent salary, and cross-training him or her for managerial responsibilities, makes the receptionist much more of a engaged partner in the business. I'd suggest that businesses do away with the "receptionist" title altogether and create "assistant manager" jobs that include 50 percent time at the reception desk.

Godin on how to give feedback

I'm a big fan of marketing maverick Seth Godin. His provocative post today on feedback initially took me aback:

I don't want to know how you feel, nor do I care if you would buy it, recommend it, or use it. You are not my market. You are not my focus group.

But when you read the rest of the post, his comments not only make sense, they'll probably change the way you give -- and ask for -- feedback.

Classic summer "salads"

The past two days are the closest I've come to living the life I envisioned when I left Apple this spring. I've been meeting with fellow bloggers and writers, working with a coach on issues that affect my writing, walking with my friend Rae, spending time with my mom, having dinner with Zorg, gardening, and editing a book about cooking.

The cooking book is very impressive (more on that later). But for some reason it got me thinking about truly kitschy recipes, such as the classic "Pink Cloud" (which my friend Deb calls "Pink Shit"). Turns out there are many recipes for Pink Cloud. Most of them contain:

1 can crushed pineapple
1 small box of strawberry jello
1 pint of small curd cottage cheese
1 small container of Cool Whip
1 cup mini marshmallows

Assembly is simple: Combine ingredients, refrigerate overnight, and serve. Some people heat the pineapple and sprinkle the jello powder on that to dissolve it. But apparently it's not necessary. Do it with lime jello and you've got...Green Cloud? Well, actually it's called Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise. Here's recipe for it with a nice little twist.

While hunting down the Pink Cloud recipe, I also found a dish one of my high school sorority sisters was famous for -- the sinfully rich blueberry jello salad, full of sour cream, cream cheese, and chopped nuts. According to About.com, this is a Southern food classic.

Bon appetit, y'all.

A short time ago, in a galaxy far, far from reality

What do Star Wars and fatally trendy e-commerce start-ups have in common? Find out when you take this quiz.

Tea and coffee

The Biznik book discussion group met this evening at El Diablo coffeehouse on Queen Anne Hill. At one point, the wide-ranging discussion touched on tea and local teahouses, including the excellent Teahouse Kuan Yin in Wallingford.

Still thinking about tea, I later came across I Heart Seattle's blog entry on a new teahouse, the Panama Tea House, in the historic Panama Hotel on South Main. I Heart Seattle says they have "the city's best iced tea," though I'm not sure what criteria that's based on. OK, OK, I'll check it out and report back.

Easily amused

I found myself giggling through the Sunday comics today. I particularly liked Doonesbury, with Lacey (the late congresswoman) appearing in a dream to Joan Caucus and telling her that, of course, feminism is dead. Women today don't call themselves feminists, "just as people your age never called themselves suffragettes or abolitionists [because] there was no need. The debate was over."

"But how? How do I die as a feminist?" Joan wonders. Here's the answer.

Out of this world

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday (52)!
Happy birthday, dear Zorg,
Happy birthday to you!

Ice cream, raccoons, bamboo, and bathtubs

What do ice cream, raccoons, bamboo, and bathtubs have in common? Problems related to them are what drive most of the traffic to The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out in the summer months.

The most popular archived entry at TMTSO is one that reprints the gist of the operating manual for the 1970s ice cream maker the Waring Ice Cream Parlor. The machine is apparently indestructable, but most people have misplaced the directions.

The next most popular entries are the ones about our raccoon-proof cat door. It is, indeed, utterly raccoon-proof. The only problem with it has been that one of our cats is afraid to use it because of the whirring sound the electric mechanism makes when it raises the guillotine-style door. The rest of the cats having gotten the hang of it, though one of them had a bad experience the other night. The door was going up to let little Kaylee out of the laundry room; she failed to see her big beefy sister Zoe waiting in the dark on the other side to come in. When door opened, both cats leaped forward, and in the resulting collision big Zoe blasted poor Kaylee six feet across the laundry room.

Tied for third place behind the ice cream maker and cat door entries are entries on getting rid of bamboo and caulking a bathtub.

I've made a note to myself to check January 15 to see which are the most popular winter entries. Perhaps I should blog about cleaning the filter on the furnace...

Seattle Rhythm Festival

Ghanian drummer and teacher Saeed Abbas (far right) with members of his troupe Gye Nyame performing at the Seattle Rhythm Festival (Saturday, at Seattle Center).

"Gye Nyame" is the name of a Ghanian symbol refering to the supremacy of God.

Cat on a treadmill

Enjoy.

Swingin' with the armadillos

Last night's Asleep at the Wheel dance at the Century Ballrooom was just about perfect. Asleep at the Wheel is a band in the Texas Swing tradition, an aggregation of flashy sidemen (and one woman) with a repertoire polished to perfection. Ray Benson -- lead singer, lead guitarist, arranger and band leader -- is the constant that makes it all happen and keeps it rooted in the swing tradition. Benson's a big guy, with a big ego, and a big, big talent. It was just awesome to have him play and sing for dancing.

As expected, the dancers were diverse and enthusiastic. The Century's immense dance floor is perfect for roadhouse swing and two-stepping (and the balcony above is great for watching the dancers). Rae and I got a table up the balcony; John joined us a little later and we kept him busy on the dance floor all night long.

Asleep at the Wheel's set was a tasteful mix of hot classics with some lesser-known gems like "Sugar Moon." This got me thinking about the years back East when I went Western Swing dance two or three times a week -- often at the City Limits in Manhattan. Oddly, I ran into Tad, my old New Haven housemate from 1978-79, at the dance last night. And when I got home I found an from one of my old City Limits dance partners, Barry, inviting me to the annual Western Swing dance in September at his farm near Poughkeepsie.

I don't think I'll make it to Poughkeepsie, but Wayne Hancock will be playing in Seattle at the Tractor Tavern Sept. 1. I plan to be there; too bad their dance floor's about the size of a pool table.

Windows, doors, and more lousy customer service

I've avoided naming the Seattle-area company that's been holding our new screen door hostage for three weeks, but summer's half over and they still haven't called to schedule installation.

My dealings with them in the past had always been pleasant. They represent several of the better manufacturers, and have supplied our back door and our sky light, and did some outstanding work tracking down the sliding screens that fit our French doors.

That's why, in early May, I stopped by their showroom to order a screen door with installation package and didn't choke on the $1000 price. (It was a nice design, with a special type of hinges that would allow me to remove the door in the winder and pop the hinge pins back in every spring.). They charged my credit card for the full price May 10.

Then, silence for six weeks. I suspect there'd be silence still, except I called them June 27 to check on the order. The woman at their front desk told me that the door had arrived and that someone would call me later in the week to make an appointment to install the door.

No one called.

A week later, I called again, then stopped by to enquire. At that point, the salesman told me that he needed to run over to Builders Supply (a mile down the road) to pick up the correct white hinges, and after he had the hinges, the installer would schedule installation.

Silence.

A week later, I emailed the salesman to check on the status. He emailed back July 7 and said he'd been busy but "we should have everything done by next week."

Well, next week is over. There's been no call, no email -- and no door. I'm steaming.

At this point, the door has been languishing in their warehouse (just a few blocks from our house!) for three weeks. Summer -- the reason I ordered a screen door -- is half over.

I've sent off another email, and will call Monday morning. If they don't install it next week, there's no reason to believe they ever will. At least not this summer. It appears our only option is to cancel the order and demand a refund.

This is incredibly frustrating, because I'm fairly confident that this is a lovely, high quality door that we would have enjoyed if it weren't for this company's inexcusably bad customer service.

(It's not my custom to pick apart local companies in my blog, but in this case I felt that there was no option. Their website does not list a president, CEO or manager, and I have no confidence that sending a letter to their general address would get it delivered to anyone but the salesman -- who already knows my views on the matter.)

[OK, here's what happened after I called the company headquarters.]

"I'm a Mac" "I'm a PC"

Do the new Mac ads entice PC users over to the Mac side...or just annoy them? This ad spoof from Comedy Central's Nick Kroll has the definitive answer.

Where did the weekend go?

For some reason, I have only the vaguest memories of the weekend. It was chopped into little tasks, and lots of cancellations.

Friday night I completed the draft text for a website I'm editing. It's a very frustrating project because the structural and visual redesign the site needs is not going to happen for several months. It's like being asked to clean up a cluttered room without moving or removing any of the junk.

Perhaps by way of compensation, I went out and removed lots of overgrowth from the garden. Then I watered all of the various beds using soaker hoses and sprinklers. It's only the first week of July, and already plants are looking stressed, and the lawn's turning brown. Very discouraging.

Zorg took me to REI to shop for clothes for my trip back East. I wanted some travel wear that dries rapidly, and was delighted to find two pairs of pants and a pair of shorts that worked. Unfortunately, the shirts looked either like something you'd wear on safari or something you'd wear while riding in the Tour de France.

Saturday night we tried to see Pirates of the Caribbean at the Bay, but it had sold out hours before showtime.

Tonight's dinner here with my mom and our cousins from Phoenix had to be postponed due to an illness; fortunately I hadn't bought the salmon yet. Or baked the pie. Now that's all shifted over to Wednesday.

I've been scanning some books into Delicious Library and plan to watch an episode of Twin Peaks (season 1) on the iMac before bed. I'd seen the Twin Peaks film, but not the TV show. It's fascinating.

Two nights of baseball

The crowd went wild Thursday night, applauding the players and singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." That, of course, was at the Seattle Symphony's presentation of the Baseball Music Project concert -- a mixture of baseball classics and new music from composer Fred Sturm, narrated by the very engaging Dave Winfield.

It was quite an improvement over the dismal Mariners' game I attended Wednesday night at Safeco Field.

The concert was accompanied by a slideshow of vintage baseball images. Afterwards, I tried to imagine someone 50 years in the future getting nostalgic about the loud, garish, ticky-tack environment of today's ballparks, where there's more focus on the video screens and speakers than there is on the field. No luck.

Ba-ah!

I spent today visiting a family friend who raises sheep on Whidbey Island. Lambs are cute, but I'm glad I brought along my muck boots.

I lost it online

In the 1970s, there were rock music reviewers whose stars burned brighter than the pop phenomena they analyzed and criticized. So, where are the "genre-defining" reviewers for today's online games?

Writer Clive Thompson (blog: collision detection) thinks he has found them. Plus a little-known interview with the legendary pop critic Lester Bangs.

(And, please, someone tell me you know what seminal work of criticism the title of this blog entry refers to.)

If you love good writing

Several years ago, while writing for Apple's early webzine iReview, I had the temerity to review the New York Review of Books website. Somewhat to our surprise, it was one of the most fluid, transparent, and user-friendly sites around. After the review was published, we received a short and very pleasant note from their director of electronic publishing thanking us for the mention.

I visited the website today (still a paragon of clarity) to read the obituary of NYRB's co-editor and co-founder, Barbara Epstein.

If you've glanced at NYRB on the newstand, and dismissed it as overly intellectual and arcane, this is a good occasion to take another look. I found the topics timely and the writing incisive. Yes, the content verges on the esoteric and even the precious, but the writing is simply superb. Jason Epstein (Barbara Epstein's co-editor and husband) nails' Bill Buford's memoir about his mid-life plunge into cooking in the kitchen of Mario ("Molto Mario") Batali with the line:

Heat is the story of a one-sided culinary love affair pursued with only occasional, restrained sniping by Buford at Batali's unequal response.

Wonderful summer reading, lots of it free and online. And there's an RSS feed.

More reflections on customer service

I regret that I'm too sleepy to give these folks the props they deserve, but

• Rainier Industries. Installed the new awning just as I'd requested. And called the next day to make sure we were happy with it.
• High Road Automotive. Called to correct some information they'd given me yesterday when I asked about the condition of a head gasket when I picked up my car after its oil change.
• Our lawn service guy, who took action after I complained about the terrible job his new crew did on our lawn. He fired one of the two guys (I was the third customer to complain last week), and came to the house to apologize and to ask me if I would agree to have the other fellow on that crew, who he feels was not to blame, continue to work on our lawn if supervised. Plus, he re-seeded the part of the lawn that was damaged.
• The Designer Consigner in Edmonds. The salesperson listened to my comments about pants not fitting unless they were a petite size; she went and hunted down some petite capris she was sure would fit me...and they did.
• Purrs on Wheels (mobile cat grooming). Brandi, the owner, called to let me know she would be a few minutes late arriving to groom our cat Betaille today. Betaille is old and cranky and a bit paranoid but Brandi is so good with her that I think Betaille actually likes to be shampooed and trimmed! She's been purring happily all evening.

All this more than offsets the clueless door company, which received our new screen door early last week but still hasn't called to set up an installation time.

Buzzword alert: Attention

The idea behind AttentionTrust.org is that other people are tracking what you're doing on the Web (your "attentionstream"), so you, the "attention owner" should be tracking it as well. Using Attention Recorder software.

This makes my head spin. What do you think?

Do you scramble?

I just came across a site on the Seattle Street Scramble. Sounds like fun -- and the Ballard Street Scramble is this Saturday. There's still time to sign up!

The good, the bad, and the merely adequate

Our new exterior window awning was installed today, leading me to reflect on the joy of dealing with a great contractor. In this case, it was Rainier Industries. They've been in the awning business for more than a century, and they've really got it down. (They also do banners, yurts, tents, marine window systems, and trade show displays.)

A very knowledgeable salesman came out to the house with a book of decent-sized fabric samples. He took measurements and photos, and discussed my options without any pressure. I ordered the most basic awning (hand crank, not the elegant motorized styles) but he treated me like a valuable customer.

Last week the head of installation called, told me our awning was due to arrive, and scheduled the installation for today. Sure enough, right on time this afternoon I got a call from the installers saying they were 15 minutes from the house. They arrived, did the installation (which involved a very tricky bit of work where the porch roof is close to the top of the window), and then called me out to train me on using the awning. The awning is exactly what I ordered, and performed just as the salesman said it would. Rainier Industries: heartily recommended.

(And exterior awnings are also highly recommended. With the awning deployed this afternoon, the glass on the West-facing picture window remained cool, and so did the living room! A picture will be posted when Blogger's picture uploading feature is back online.) (NOTE: Photo added 6/28. And Rainier Industries called this morning to ask if I was happy with the awning!)

The nice experience with Rainier reminded me it was time to call the company that is supposed to be fabricating and installing our screen door. I ordered the door a week before I ordered the awning, but there hasn't been a peep out of them. Of course, it took me a week of nagging them to get the door guy out here to do the measuring.

I called Door Company X to find out where the door was and their front desk woman (why is it always a very young woman?) went off to ask the salesman. Gosh, golly, gee, (she reported back) my door had JUST arrived! She told me to expect a call from their installation scheduler "in a few days." I came away with the impression that the door had been languishing there for a while and that the installation scheduler would get around to calling me, eventually. (Note that the Rainier Industries folks called to schedule the installation when they knew the door had been shipped to them; they didn't wait for it to arrive, much less for it to sit around.) Door Company X will have the opportunity to redeem themselves when the door arrives -- if it is the special material I ordered and if they follow my request that it be installed using hinges that allow us to pop the pins and remove the door in the winter.

Stay tuned...

Meanwhile, I'm waiting to hear from our lawn service (we'll call them "Gone to Seed"). We've been using Gone to Seed for four years, and had been extremely pleased with the weekly mowing and edging (particularly the painstaking edging) until this year. Gone to Seed used to be a two-man operation -- a Polish fellow and one of his friends. Apparently business has been booming, because last year much of the time the work was done by a "second team" of Polish guys who didn't speak any English. Which was fine -- we waved a lot. But this year our small yard job must have been assigned to the bush leagues: two guys, not Polish, and apparently not experienced in using an edger or caring for lawns and gardens.

They'd probably do OK mowing a large, rectangular meadow. But edging? Their edging was eating big chunks out of my plants, blasting grass clippings all over the patio and garden shed, and, this past week, they took big divots out of the front lawn where they'd been swinging the gas-powered edger in uncontrolled semi-circles. In the back yard, they were too lazy to disconnect our green plastic hose from the black soaker hose buried in the flower bed. To move the green hose out of their way, they just ripped the attached soaker hose, and all the plants growing on top of it, out of the entire length of the flower bed and threw it on the patio! (Well, they did take the trouble to throw the plants they ripped out back on top of the live plants -- so I didn't notice the savaged plants until they'd died in the hot sun that afternoon.)

I sent a letter, with a photo of the bare brown gouges in the front lawn, to the owner of Gone to Seed and explained the problems. I said the two apes would not be allowed on our property again, and that he could either send his experienced crew or let me know he no longer wants our business. Of course, we will not be paying for last week's "service," if he has the nerve to bill us for it.

So, anyone know a good lawn service in Ballard?

Free Agent Nation

In Free Agent Nation, journalist Daniel Pink documents the rise of "free agents" in the American economy. These 25 million "free agents" range from minimum-wage temps to highly paid solo-practice entrepreneurs in fields such as design, high tech, and therapy. Some people choose free agentry in order to gain control over the hours and the content of their work; others fall into it because of layoffs or reorganization of corporate jobs. Pink believes that whether chosen or involuntary, free agentry is likely to be part of the career path of more and more Americans.

Tonight I was one of a dozen members of the Seattle-area group Biznik who met in Ballard for a spirited discussion of the book. Members were uniformly enthusiastic about it; for some the book validated their own experiences as free agents, for others it raised issues they hadn't considered. If you are working solo, or planning to, I recommend this book. It's not a "how to succeed" -- it's simply an in-depth picture of free-agentry and excellent documentation on how it evolved and where it's taking us.

A rave for Pixar's Cars

I rarely write about movies because, as I rule, I find a few reviewers I agree with whole-heartedly and figure they've already made the points for me.

But when it comes to Cars, I feel like I saw a different movie than the reviewers did. This feeling was reinforced when so many of them commented that wasn't up to the standard of Pixar's previous films.

Now, I loved Monsters, Inc., which had some of the most memorable animated characters of the past decade. The Incredibles and Finding Nemo were both pleasant to watch, but I felt that Nemo dragged, and somehow both of those films faded from mind just a few hours after viewing.

Cars, however, has continued to haunt me. I agree with the reviewers who were unhappy with the central character, a smart-ass young race car named Lightning McQueen. He's allowed to be a completely arrogant brat for too much of the film before making the predictable transition to a nice guy halfway through.

However, I thought that the visual aspects of the film were so spectacular that the plot and characters could get away with being secondary to the animation. The visual artistry is even more amazing when you consider that the previous, highly acclaimed, Pixar films take place in fantasy worlds. Cars takes place in the real world, the American Southwest, and it brings that setting alive in all its breathtaking beauty.

My favorite part of the film is a sequence in which McQueen goes for a drive along the old Route 66, swooping through canyons and across a dam. Watching that scene, I felt as though I were in a car experiencing it myself. Several of the other outstanding sequences were shot at night, on the deserted streets of the automotive ghost town where McQueen finds himself stranded. Have you ever stood at night on a street corner in the "downtown" of a western town, say, in the Tri-Cities, or maybe Klamath Falls, where things were so still you could hear the street lights buzz? Cars captures it.

I love driving (not being in a car someone else is driving, mind you, but driving) particularly alone. One of my favorite memories is driving from Boston to Cape Cod on a deserted highway late at night in mid-winter. There was a full moon. I turned off my headlights and drove for as along as I dared through a flat landscape of frozen marshes.

Cars gave me that same feeling -- that special way you experience a vast landscape from a moving vehicle. I'd probably be perfectly happy to see Cars again without hearing the dialogue except that I wouldn't want to miss the fabulous music in the soundtrack.

Friday bird blogging

Two of my colleagues in the Mac journalism world reported run-ins with domestic fowl today.

In Boston, Andy Ihnatko found a turkey in a tree outside his office; in San Francisco, Joe Kissell rescued a pair of scruffy chickens wandering around in the street.

No fowl goings-on out here, but the night is young!

Asleep at the Wheel July 13

The fabulous Century Ballroom dance floor is open for Western Swing dancing July 13, and the best Western Swing band in America is playing the tunes!

Asleep at the Wheel comes to the Century Thursday, July 13. Show is at 9 p.m., with Jo Miller and her Burly Roughnecks as the first act.

The show is $28 advance, $33 at the door, and I expect it to be worth every cent. Asleep at the Wheel is the contemporary incarnation of a 1940s-style, high energy Texas swing band. About 15 years ago I had the chance to dance to this band at the old Parker's disco up on Aurora, and it was the best two-stepping I've done since moving to Seattle 21 years ago. Between the hardcore C&W dancers in the area and the new Western Swing dancers coming from Seattle's hot Cajun/Zydeco scene, this should be a fabulous time with lots of great dancing. Polish up those boots!

For more info and tickets: CenturyBallroom.com

Be useful

It's unfortunate that Blogger software doesn't include the capability to categorize blog entries by type (for an example of that, see J. LeRoy's blog or TheZorg, both done with Typepad).

This allows readers to follow not the entire blog but simply the category that interests them. The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out blog entries usually fall into one or two of the following categories:

• Lifestyle (home, garden, food, travel, shopping, clothes, dining out)
• Politics and society
• Technology
• Cats
• Writing and communications
• Local Seattle/Ballard news and events
• How-to's
• Personal stories (family, relationships, etc.)

I use free StatCounter software to track traffic to the blog, and it's always a humbling experience to see that the heavy readership is not for my personal rants and raves but for those blog entries with useful information (usually the how-to's). I may fancy myself a writer with "something to say," but what the Internet marketplace tells me is that my value to society is as an explainer who can present information clearly: How to use an ice-cream maker, how to caulk a tub, how to figure out what's wrong with your stove, how to care for a cat with cancer, what new products to use in your garden.

In my non-Mysterious life, I'm currently doing some writing about the direct marketing business, and have subscribed to several newsletters and feeds from direct marketing organizations. Today I came across this article by Nick Usborne on writing effective direct marketing emails. He points out that, even once we excise the industry jargon from our writing, we still end up writing copy that is so bland and, well, expected, that no one listens.

While he doesn't address one of the problems I've often encountered as a copywriter (have to write something that appeals to the marketing department head honcho instead of to the customer), Usborne presents some concrete examples of how to spice up an email. He concludes "Be specific. Be useful. And avoid saying things in the same way you have said them before."

The stats prove him right: Useful is what gets those click-throughs.

Two ways to lose a loyal customer

We go out of our way, literally, to buy Nutro's Nature's Choice Complete Care Weight Management kibble for our herd of cats. The low-calorie formula allows us to leave bowls of the kibble available at all times, so there is no whining for food because a bowl is empty, and no worry on our part if we have to leave the cats on their own in the house overnight. Another reason we like this brand is that the large oval pellets have been very effective in keeping the cats' teeth tartar free. With teeth cleaning running well over $200 at the vet (and requiring full anesthesia) we'd prefer to keep such procedures to a minimum.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to get to the pet supply store today and see the familiar light blue package of Nature's Choice now has this banner on it "Smaller kibble! Improved taste!"

Well, I don't go around comparing the taste of cat food, but I can compare pellet size. Nature's Choice is now just like all the other kibbles available, and will be no more effective in reducing tartar than any of the competing low-cal kibbles. We'll likely switch to Royal Canin, whose speciality formulas we're already using for our elderly, frail cat.

It was on to the high-end garden supply store, for more disillusionment:

Last year, Seattle gardening expert Calvin Creasey advised me to use inexpensive corn meal gluten (also called simply corn gluten) in the garden to suppress weeds. Great idea! The corn gluten, sprinkled lightly over a garden bed or brick pathway, prevents weeds from germinating. It gets applied every two or three weeks. It's cheap. It's safe for pets. And the brand I've been buying at the local garden supply store has convenient packaging: a heavy-duty bright yellow sack that opens (like a ziplock bag) at the bottom to expose a perforated shaker. Holding the top of the sack by a clever plastic handle, I simply walk along my garden beds, holding the bag at arm's length and shaking the corn meal gluten out the bottom of the bag. It takes five minutes to treat the entire yard; then I up-end and reseal the bag and store it. A bag lasts for three or four treatments.

Well, that had to be too good to be true, didn't it?

Today at the garden store I asked for the usual corn meal gluten and the fellow directed me to a shelf. I peered. "Sorry, I don't see it," I said.

He pointed again. That's when I saw small dark blue/green bags of something called "PrEmerge." I looked at the bag. It said nothing about corn gluten. Finally, in tiny print at the bottom, I read that it was "100% corn gluten." The slippery bag had neither a shaker device at the bottom, nor a handle.

Incredulous, I turned back and asked what happened to the convenient bright yellow shaker bags of Weed Prevention Plus that said "CORN MEAL GLUTEN." The fellow indicated a heap of 50-ton yellow sacks on the floor.

I pointed out that you couldn't sprinkle either bag, and asked why the small, convenient shaker bag was no longer available. The fellow proudly told me that he had changed their order to PrEmerge ($11) because it was cheaper than the Weed Prevention Plus ($22). Mind you, this is at a fancy nursery where a medium-sized glazed pot runs you about $80. I considered whacking him over the head with a bag of PrEmerge, but then realized there wasn't a handle to swing it by.

Water! Water!

Once again, the condo developers busily overbuilding Ballard remind us of their presence by rupturing a city water pipe and cutting off water to much of Ballard west of downtown. Water service went out at around 10 a.m. this morning; a neighbor who has been talking with the water department says service is estimated to be back on late this evening.

This time, perhaps the developers would like to foot the bill for our dinner out? Unfortunately, we can't patronize one of the restaurants near our house since they are -- you guessed it -- without water.

Gates' retirement news is no big deal

Someone who blogs under the name Jon Swift (his profile picture is a engraving of satirist Jonathan Swift) greets the news of Bill Gates' retirement from Microsoft with a yawn. He makes several good points, including

Gates' retirement is going to be a very slow process. Get up, make yourself a cup of coffee. Make yourself two cups of coffee. Chances are when you get back to your desk, Gates still won't be retired. In fact, the entire retirement process may get hung up and have to be restarted again from the beginning.

Father's Day

Skating with my dad on the backyard rink he built for us. (Falls Church, Va., 1961)

Solstice Parade Report

There was a stupendous turnout for Saturday's Fremont Solstice Parade, which featured a record number of nude (but painted) bicyclists and clothed (but barely) belly dancers, along with a mix of theme floats ranging from the exuberant to the political to the downright inscrutable.

The fun continues tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. with the associated Fremont Fair, one of Seattle's better street festivals.

From the thousands of photos uploaded to the Flickr photo-sharing site just hours after the event, you'd think that every sentient being in Seattle with a digital camera had been at the parade. To view them, go to Flickr.com, search on "solstice," and then click "most recent." Here's one of mine:

SuperDuper!

No, I haven't broken my own rules about avoiding exclamation points in blog headlines. "SuperDuper!" is the name of a software product — probably the most valuable software product any Mac owner can buy.

Imagine you came home one day and discovered your house had been broken into and your computer was...gone. It might have been your nephew with drug problems, or someone who worked for that shady contract who put on the roof next door.

Gone are all your digital photos, your entire digital music collection, five years worth of email, and your financial records. If you run a small business, chances are you've lost the electronic originals of all your bidding documents and estimates and most of your mailing list and contact files. Writing a novel or a thesis? Oops. You've lost several months of work.

Now...how much would you pay to be able to have the entire contents of your computer restored (except for perhaps the past week of new files) and immediately usable? Does $200 seem too steep?

I urge you to invest that $200 up front, buying an external hard drive with a slightly greater capacity than your computer's drive, and spending $27.95 on SuperDuper! backup software.

SuperDuper! is a free download for the basic version, so you can try it out and make bootable backups whenever you want. However, the $27.95 payment unlocks access to two features of the software that I'd argue are essential to hassle-free data backup: Smart Update (for faster, incremental updates rather than copying the entire hard drive each time you back up) and Scheduling.

Making a bootable backup copy of your computer's hard drive using SuperDuper! is easier than making Minute Rice. SuperDuper! keeps the directions short, sweet, and at the beginner level. (There's advanced stuff, but you'd have to dig around to find it and make a mess of things.)

Once you've backed up your hard drive to the external hard drive, you can ask SuperDuper! to schedule regular incremental backups -- say, once a week.

If you don't keep your external drive on (and I don't) you can set a reminder in your calendar software to turn the external drive on in time for the backup. SuperDuper! will then open at its appointed time, look for the external drive, and once it finds it, back up any new files.

One of the reasons I don't keep the external drive turned on is that I usually disconnect it and store it in a small cabinet in my office, particularly if I'm going to be out of town for a few days. Most burglars just grab the big, easy-to-sell stuff (like the computer) and leave peripherals alone. But just in case, it's nice to have the bootable backup tucked out of sight.

I sat down to write this blog entry on my 12" PowerBook about 30 minutes ago, when SuperDuper! came on to do the weekly backup of the 100 GB of data on the 250 GB hard drive of my Intel iMac. SuperDuper! completed the weekly backup while I wrote this entry -- in less than the amount of time most of us take for a lunch break.

Gates in transition

Bill Gates' announcement that he will be transitioning away from day-to-day leadership of Microsoft and doing more work with the Gates Foundation is bound to strike a chord in geeks of my generation.

I think it's one of the most impressive decisions I've seen him make. And I suspect he'll get more satisfaction out of foundation leadership than he ever did trying to leverage DOS, Windows and Office into some "next big thing."

His mom, Mary Gates, a much-admired Seattle-area philanthropist who died a few years ago, would certainly have been proud of this direction.

And, it's a challenge to the rest of us. What's your life after tech?