Sleet? Really?

I tend to get information about the weather the old-fashioned way: you know, peer out the window to see if it looks like rain; open the door to feel how warm it is.

I don't watch local TV news, listen to news radio or read a local paper, so those sources are out.

But I do look at the little forecast box on my Yahoo home page to see what it's going to do that day. But it turns out I've been preparing for the wrong weather for, oh, the past year or so.

And while I was dreading going out into a 30-something degree chill just now, it's actually a quite nice 60-degree day. So, I'll be seeing you later.

tick...tick...tick...

You know it's going to be a long week at work when you're thinking about the end of the week before you've gone in for your first shift. That's where I find myself at this moment, a couple of hours before I'm due in the office for the first time this week.

It's mostly because I'm headed on vacation Sunday, and what better places could I pick to go in early December than Dallas and Portland? I probably should be headed to a warm beach somewhere for a carefree 10 days ahead of another New England winter, but if you recall, I also thought it was a swell idea to head to D.C. in July. (And I'll have you know I'm hoping my next trip will be to Central New York in late December.)

The only bright spot in the next four days, I think, will be the long-awaited new laptop I'm getting Thursday. (Again, you might recall -- and I know that's a big "might" given this blog's readership -- that this is a piece of equipment I don't plan to secure properly.*)

So if the new machine is properly equipped, I may be able to provide updates on how my vacation is going. If not, it's back to my old friend Kinkos for far-less-frequent and far-more-expensive updates.

* If I were smarter, I'd have set up this blog so I could link to individual posts in the archive. But I didn't, so find the posts yourselves, if you're so inclined. And you're probably not.

Bah?

At the risk of sounding grinch-y, there are a few things that annoy me about this time of year:

1. People who camp out for Black Friday
2. Radio stations that switch to all Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving.
3. Folks who put wreaths on their cars.

Minor annoyances that are easily avoided, yes, but annoyances nonetheless.

But I believe today is the earliest I've ever bought a Christmas present for someone, so maybe the spirit is rubbing off on me.

aaargh...

Had a very nice day trip to New York yesterday. Hung out with a friend in Brooklyn, went to my first game at Madison Square Garden. Even the trip was easy*, as I managed to catch express trains both ways.

So I arrived home last night ready to plop down on the couch and watch to of my favoritist TV shows ever, only to find that my DVR had recorded ... well, nothing. Not even an error message saying my recordings had been interrupted. It's as if my DVR just decided, "Nope, not working on a holiday weekend."

Lucky for me, the Internets are filled with sites that are happy to oblige my cravings for "The Amazing Race," and HBO will replay "The Wire" about 2,341 more times this week.

But I'm watching you, Motorola DVR, and you better not try to pull any of this crap when I'm away for 10 days starting next week.

(*Well, aside from a brief struggle with weekend subway service. I won't go into the boring details, but for those of you who know the New York system, it involves track work and the annoying 6 train to F train transfer oddity.)

Asking for trouble?

Forget global warming and nuclear proliferation.

Scientists have created a robot that can sense when it's injured and figure out how to adapt.

I think I've seen how this one ends.

(As Slate points out, scientists say the robots going all evil on us is out of the question ... or is it?)

And although self-aware robots might get us closer to the future we all envisioned way back when, I still see no progress on the flying car front.

Can I at least get a jet pack?

Breaking from the norm

I haven't discussed sports much here. Because, y'know, I gets paid to do that, mofos.

Anyway, Off The Curve's favorite sports site is Deadspin (home to the greatest commenters on the Web, BTW), and they've launched their Sportshuman of the Year tournament.

I just point this out because if you missed the Joe Mikulik clip over the summer, it's priceless.

Introducing the Sportshuman of the Year Tournament [Deadspin]

(cont.)

To get back to what I was talking about -- and to try to get to some sort of point -- it's just interesting seeing a lot of these changes in my hometown, particularly since I've given some thought to returning.

A lot of folks will lament that my hometown is losing its small-town charm with all these big-box stores and chains moving in, but I also see that having the stores around can make life in a relatively rural area much more convenient. But it is impressive how quickly this has all occurred. Heck, we didn't even get Taco Bell until 1994 or so.

I'm just hoping the next step isn't someone buying up the old warehouses and factories in town and turning them into lofts that go for $300/sq.ft.

And, man, this is much too serious and not at all in keeping with the tone of every other post here, so I'm going to stop now.

Weekend musings

There's a scene in the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Xander refers to Sunnydale as a "one-Starbucks town," which I think is a great description for post-suburban life in these United States.

My hometown (pop. 30,000) has never lacked for coffee shops, but I was still a bit stunned when I rounded a downtown corner during a visit this past spring and blurted out to my friend the TV Goddess, "They got a Starbucks!"

I shouldn't have been that surprised, given the various multinational retail outlets that have popped up in recent years, but there was a time when having a Starbucks was a barometer for how hip your town was. (Yes, that era has come and gone, but things filter down to my hometown at a measured pace.)

Anyway, I was just getting used to the idea of the city having one Starbucks when I learned there will be a second one in January, and heard rumors the plan is to have four (!) in the not-too-distant future. But having formerly lived in a city where there were 73 Starbucks within a 5-mile radius, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

I promise I'm going somewhere with this, but having just looked at the clock, there's somewhere I need to be.

But it's just work, so I'm pretty sure I'll get tired of that and get back to this in a bit.

Come up with a story and stick with it, damn it

Back in grade school, the Choose Your Own Adventure books might have been my favorite series.

Or maybe it was the Encyclopedia Brown books, but there was always a huge sense of anticipation when the big box arrived from the book company.

I also remember that it was a nice scam for teachers on book day, because they got a full morning of distracted-kids time.

It's also an excellent way for writers who are too wishy-washy to stick with a plot to earn a living.

If I remember right, the points in the book where you had to choose how your adventure would proceed usually involved some sort of choice between "right" and "wrong." Pick "wrong" too often, and your story came to an abrupt end. So you weren't allowed to be the bad guy, which might be all idealistic and all, but isn't very realistic.

Anyhow, Something Awful found a bunch of books in the series that didn't make the cut.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books That Never Quite Made It [Something Awful]

Fun in a closed booth

I was in a voting booth for the first time in about a decade yesterday, which is not to say it was the first time I had voted in that span.

As easy as it is to poke fun at Oregon for being a backward, crunchy state, it did have the neat feature of requiring people to vote by mail. I did think it was odd that they began accepting ballots weeks before Election Day, and I concede that there are questions about a process where you can't really confirm that the person whose name is on the ballot actually did the voting. But I'll still take it over the e-voting machines.

Anyhow, Oregon also manages to put together a fairly decent election guide that is mailed to everybody. (Though, because Oregon is a dreaded initiative state, the guide often tends to resemble the yellow pages.)

So I realized last week that I didn't have a clue about what I was supposed to be voting on this week here in CT. I did some quick research on the major candidates and was able to make some relatively informed decisions there, but I apologize for any poor choices I might have made when I was randomly pulling levers for the other offices.

I know I should have not voted for those positions, but I was overcome by my giddiness over being in an actual voting booth. It's fun to pull levers!

And now that I think about it, they should add flashing lights, bells and whistles to voting machines. Because if I represent the average American voter, that's pretty much what those booths are: democracy slot machines.