I started having DSL problems a week or so ago. I'd lose access to sites, or my DNS server wouldn't know about certain domains, or my router would get kicked off, or things would just be slow. Most of the time power cycling the modem would take care of things, although I've also had to pull the power on the router, wait for it to forget everything and then try again. Annoying, but survivable.

Things went from bad to worse pretty quickly. Suddenly my modem would lose sync. And then it would come back. And go away again. Coming home from a trip to Southern Cal last night I was having nothing but grief. And I was remembering the last time this happened, the endless conversations with Earthlink in India or somewhere before they'd finally let me call the DSL provider and get them to kick the DSLAN card back into behaving.

But then I had a thought: that one of the outages happened while I was on the phone. (For anybody who isn't DSL savvy, the computer shares the phone line via a simple splitter. And you put a filter on the phone line to keep the DSL from interfering.) I'd had a problem a year or two ago where my DSL worked but the phone didn't. And I discovered that it was the DSL filter that was at fault; it had died and took my phone line with it. Replacing the filter made everything work again.

So, hoping that was the problem this time, I disconnected my phone line from the splitter. And the DSL modem was able to connect and everything was wonderful. So I pulled the filter from my bedroom phone line and moved it to the splitter. That worked; I had both DSL and phone service once again. Which was wonderful news, not just because everything was behaving, but also because I didn't have to deal with the ironically named Earthlink Customer Service.

Oh, and I went out to buy another filter. Just in case.

I have to be grateful that no one was following me around with a video camera during my many meltdowns. Sadly, a Student Body Vice President at the University of Spoiled Children (as an alum once called it) hasn't been so fortunate. I'm surprised the walls didn't dribble away from all the heat he was generating. Enjoy.

(Thanks to The Consumerist for this one.)

At work we use a web-based service for time sheets and expense reports. I've been filling out my time sheets dutifully every week, even though they don't actually say anything interesting. They're really useful for people who have billable hours, a group that doesn't include me. But no matter; if they'll keep paying me, I'll keep filling out the forms.

But with that, you can understand my surprise when I got an email from my manager about a missing time sheet. I went into the reporting system to look for the missing week, sure it must be a mistake. And what I discovered is that the programmers who built the system had missed something. The system records weeks within months, so if a month ends in the middle of the week, you have to fill out one sheet for the first part of the week and a second one for the rest. So there are more than fifty-two weeks in their accounting: five in January (one partial week at the end), five in February (a partial at the beginning and another at the end) and so on. And it turns out the first week in April this year consists of a single Saturday. For which, of course, I neglected to account. Hence the automated message that claimed to be from my manager. So I went in and submitted an empty report, which I assume will keep them off my case.

Which reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story from my college days. In the dorms at RIT, we all had phones. And Rochester Telephone gave us accounts for our phones, so they could bill us for any long distance calls. The story is that one student only made local calls. And each month he would receive a bill for zero dollars. After several months of this, he started getting threatening notices. It seems the system noticed bills going out, but no payment coming back in. The notices got more and more hostile, until he decided to take action. He wrote and mailed a check for zero dollars and zero cents. And that was the last time he heard from him.

Good story, I thought. Even better if it's true.

It's strange to think of Sun Microsystems without Scott McNealy at the helm. I'd been hearing rumors for weeks, which turned into a confirmation on Friday from someone well connected in the Valley. Scott was a great CEO once upon a time, probably the best I've ever had. He cared about the company, and about its employees, in an era when terms like Human Resources are used to equate workers to raw materials that can be replaced or junked as needed. He also knew how and when to reinvent the company, as well as how to get us all behind the concept du jour. Sun wasn't without its problems, even in its heydey. (Way too much managing up going on for my taste.) But it was a good place to work and a force for creativity in an industry that needs as many of those as it can find.

Not that Scott was always right. I lived through the planetization, when he had the brilliant idea to break everything up into self-contained and autonomous business units. Most of those units failed miserably, and even the ones that didn't spent foolishly, on advertising (with three or more full page ads from different units in the same magazine), on packaging (the box for Sun's development tools cost more than PC vendors charge for their product!) and on trade shows, were so focused on their own success they ignored what was right for the company. More recently (and long after I was gone, thank god) were flex-offices; instead of assigning an office to employees, you would show up and check a terminal for an available space. I knew I was right about how bad an idea this was when I heard several directors talk about how glad they were it didn't apply to them.

But still, brain farts and all, Scott made Sun the cool and creative place it was. That he couldn't get it through its latest troubles shouldn't take away from his accomplishments; maybe no one could have done better. I don't envy Jonathan Schwartz as the new CEO.

Boing Boing points to a LiveJournal post about the economics of paperback book publishing. Part one of an alleged two parter covers the costs and revenues for an original novel published in paperback, one that doesn't succeed in the market. Part two is supposed to deal with a successful hardcover book that moves to mass market. Which is interesting and all. But what caught my attention is the realization that the author of the piece is a kindred spirit. I always enjoy finding those.

A bunch of years ago, a friend of mine was wondering why nobody made a VCR equivalent for radio. I didn't think much of the idea, opining that there wasn't much in the way of appointment radio in those days to create a market for a radio recorder. Now I'm not so sure, both because of all the NPR shows I listen to regularly (and on my own schedule, thanks to those that offer podcasts). But I had a moment today when I recalled our discussion and decided I'd missed something.

I was in the car on Interstate 280. There's a stretch of highway where interference from power lines make my iPod's radio transmitter useless, so I was tuned into KQED FM. And a show called City Arts & Lectures had a recorded session with foodies Calvin Trillin and R.W. Apple. It was a great show, full of wit and wisdom about good and bad places to eat and changes in American culture, not all of which were cause for distress. But right around the half hour mark I had to choose whether to stop for groceries or head home to answer the call of nature. And I hated the idea of missing the second half of the show. Which made me wonder when somebody's gonna build a TiVo equivalent for cars, something we can use to pause the audio of an interesting program so we can pick it up later.

It is purely coincidental that I'm in the market for a new car. But boy, if somebody offered an option like that, I'd pay for it. It'd be right behind an iPod hookup that doesn't involve radio. (Damn power lines!)

Apologies to Jim Croce, although he's past the point of caring. I was just reading a post on one of the Scaper forums about a writer of fan fiction who somehow talked Amazon into carrying her Star Wars fan fiction. From the comments, it's obvious that her literary skills are a match for her legal acumen. And I have no doubt her book won't be available for long, on Amazon or anywhere else.

It's the larger concerns that I find interesting. At least a small contingent of fanfic writers are doing their Chicken Little impression, expecting this woman's stupidity to unleash a plague of lawyers who'll descend on anybody who writes about their favorite genre characters. Personally, I think that's unlikely. While I agree that this book is a stunning example of stupidity, and that if you're going to violate trademark and copyright, Lucas is the worst possible company from which to steal (okay, maybe Disney would be worse -- maybe), I seriously doubt there will be any effect on fanfic writers as a whole. We've seen a lot of rights protection stuff since the birth of the Web, with Paramount going after Trek fansites and the like. But most everybody seems to get the value -- and the lack of harm -- in letting fans get creative. As long as money isn't being made, and as long as there are no claims to ownership of their property, most firms have been willing to live and let live.

But I do have a classic example of just this kind of stupidity from my own career. During the height of the dotcom boom, I went to work for a small startup that was building on-chip acceleration for Java code. They called themselves JEDI Technologies, and assured us all that their lawyers said Lucas wouldn't have a case even if they were to claim trademark for Jedi. JEDI was an acronym, you see; it supposedly stood for Java Embedded Devices for the Internet. (Small problem, though: Java is a Sun Microsystems trademark. And they protect their TMs too. So we couldn't publish that explanation for the acronym, which kind of ruined that argument.)

Anyway, we went along happily for a few months. Right up until the day we announced the company and our product plans: press releases, the website and so on. Within a week we'd received a Cease & Desist letter from Lucas's lawyers. And within a couple of days our lawyers wrote back, saying we weren't violating their trademark. A few days after that came a second letter: they certainly did think it was a trademark violation. And more to the point, they were willing to go to court to test it out. At that point we folded like a cheap card table.

Which demonstrated why both my company's management and their legal advisors were a bunch of morons. Because legally it doesn't matter if you're in the right unless you are willing to defend yourself. And even then, what's the point? Having the JEDI name was fun, but it made very little difference to the success or (eventual) failure of the company. Maybe if you're a consumer product company, where a lawsuit might give you good publicity. (I could just see the Murky News headline: LITTLE JEDI BATTLES THE EMPIRE - IN COURT!)

The lesson is obvious: consider risk and reward. If the risk is high and the reward isn't, why in the world would you bother?

I was watching the latest episode from The Ministry of Unknown Science in iTunes. This particular episode presents three marketing concepts for Gud, a better God than God. And, well, I really think they have something there with that third concept. Granted, Gud is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. Then again, who is?

I'm beginning to think we need a certification program for industry analysts. Yeah, I know; most of them are already certifiable. And it's hard to tell when they're making outrageous predictions just to get attention (in this corner we have John Dvorak, whose every utterance reeks of natural fertilizer), when they're just plain ignorant (Rob Enderle, I'm talkin' about you) or when they're shills for their masters (like that MS ho, Paul Thurrott). I used to think better of Robert X. Cringely, or at least of some of the people who have used that pseudonym over the years. But not any more; his latest column has pushed me over the edge.

The column's about Apple and what they might be doing with Mac OS X and Boot Camp and support of Windows in one fashion or another. Which is all well and good; he speculates, gives reasons behind his speculation and doesn't insist on the utter truth and inevitability of his utterances like Mr. Dvorak. But it was when he suggested that, rather than supporting Windows using dual boot or with a virtualization layer, they could just support the Windows APIs themselves, I was stopped dead. It was this particular passage that did it:

"This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5.

"Huh?"

Huh, indeed. Because what does Mr. Cringely think Wine is? And why does he think implementing the APIs directly is any easier than converting them to the native APIs? Here's the part where he goes off the rails:

"Wine is great, but it is also a moving target subject to Microsoft meddling. If Wine gets too good, Microsoft can "accidentally" break it at will. But Microsoft can't afford to do that with its own Windows API."

Uh, yeah, they can. They're called undocumented APIs. And sometimes they're called undocumented behavior, which Microsoft's own apps have a nasty tendency to rely on. Years ago when I was at Sun, they had a Wine-like Windows emulator. Worked pretty well for the handful of apps for which it was tuned. But Windows is so big, and even today so poorly documented regarding the behavior and dependencies of its massive APIs, that writing a full emulator is still a huge challenge. One, by the way, the Wine folks are already taking on. Why wouldn't Apple use all that work?

My point is that whether or not Apple uses Wine, supporting Windows apps is still as big a challenge as ever. Supporting Windows, and making supporting the applications Microsoft's problem, is still a whole lot easier. And as long as MSFT collects their tax, they don't have a lot of reason to try to break it.

But that's just my opinion. And nobody's paying me a ton of cash for it. Anybody?

Update 04/22: Ever since I wrote the post above I've been trying to remember the name of that Windows emulator at Sun. A little Googling came up with the answer: WABI. Which probably stood for "Windows Application Binary Interface", although we liked to claim it stood for "We Are, Bill Isn't". All of which is irrelevant to the point I was making. But so is much of what I write, right?

I was out a couple of times today, looking for a microphone to use with my work laptop. We're doing a WebEx presentation tomorrow and I need to be able to record it. Anyway, I was listening to the Mac Geek Gab on the drive to my second electronics store. That's the podcast the Mac Observer guys put out. At the end of the podcast they mentioned a site called AmigoFish, which supposedly lets you rate podcasts and then recommends new ones. I say supposedly because my first attempt to visit got me the generic "Hi, we're the Apache server on a Red Hat Linux system" page. And my second attempt a little later claims to be somebody called Plesk:

This is the Plesk™ default page

If you see this page it means:

1) hosting for this domain is not configured
or
2) there's no such domain registered in Plesk.

For more information please contact .

I especially like that administrator email address. Looks like somebody's having to rebuild their site from scratch. And taking their time about it.

A while after I wrote yesterday's post about my dental adventure, I found myself starting to pass out. So I went with the feeling, taking a little nap. I woke up a few hours later, went into the kitchen for something to drink and found myself squelching through a soggy front hall carpet and into a half inch of standing water on my kitchen floor.

Perfect! And mysterious, since I couldn't find the source of the leak. Not the sink, not the refrigerator, not the air conditioning vent over the front door. No, turns out this little disaster had come from the utility room outside, where a check value suddenly stopped... doing whatever it is check valves do.

After I'd mopped up most of the water from the kitchen, the maintenance guys came in to deal with the carpet. Which meant vacuuming as much of the water as they could and then installing a couple of mammoth fans to dry things out. And that meant my trying to sleep to the sound of a pair of jet engines. Good thing I had those pain pills from the surgery.

But that left one more mystery. Somewhere in the moving stuff around so they could rip up the carpet, my DSL started to misbehave. And really strangely too; some sites worked just fine, but most were either inaccessible or unrecognized by my domain server. I'd hoped things would right themselves by this morning, optimist that I am. When they didn't, I returned to my long ago role as support engineer and started eliminating suspects. Pull one Mac off the router, plug it directly into the DSL modem. Yep, works fine. So I pulled the power from the router, left it off for a couple of minutes and then put all the computers back together. And now we're live again.

Lesson learned: when you disconnect the power to a router, give it plenty of time for the bits to run out the end before you plug it back in again. Oh, and Vicodin doesn't seem to have an effect on my ability to sleep, although it might have made a bigger difference if I'd been in more pain. This whole dentist thing wasn't nearly as agonizing as my plumbing issues. (No, not those plumbing issues; the apartment ones. My plumbing is just fine, thank you very much.)

This morning I had that dental appointment that had been cancelled on me a couple of weeks ago. Their mission: to yank one of my wisdom teeth before it did any more damage to its neighbor. My mission: to survive the operation. Which I grant is overdramatic, but I couldn't help at least consider the possibility that something would go wrong. Heck, my last post could well have turned out to be my last post. I even thought about blogging about it, but it seemed both maudlin and kind of cowardly.

Anyway, my friend Tammy agreed to drive me over to the office and to get me home. I was wondering how out of it I'd be, my last surgical experience having been at the ripe old age of six. We got to the office early, and I blathered on about all sorts of subjects while we waited for the doctor to be ready for me. (I'd blame the Valium they'd given me for my loquaciousness, but who's kidding whom?) Finally I was brought in and told to lie down. The doctor gave me my choice of stupor: light sedation, heavy sedation or unconsciousness. I opted for door number three. So he injected me with something, I experienced the fascinating sensation of the world going... somewhere. And when I woke up it was all over. Aside from a numbness on the left side of my mouth, I seemed none the worse for the experience.

Now I'm home, eating comfort food and watching comfort video. And waiting for the drugs to wear off completely, so I can decide whether to take the pain pills they provided. All in all, it went pretty well. Not for the first time, I was worried over nothing.

When I was a kid, I learned a valuable lesson from my friends' ultimately futile attempts to teach me to play touch football. Don't watch your opponent's upper body, they'd say. They can fool you, acting like they're heading one way when they're really going to move in the opposite direction.

Although it didn't help my football playing, there's something important and useful there. Don't be fooled by someone's arguments, it might be translated. Pay attention to the point of view they are espousing; that'll tell you what matters to them. You won't know why, since their best arguments are rarely the ones that speak to their real motives. But at least you'll know the outcome they want. Or the one they fear.

Case in point is the recent hoohah about the French government's effort to force makers of DRM'd music to make it work on every player. Apple was particularly vocal in hating this idea. And various people, including Dave Hamilton at The Mac Observer's podcast, yelled that they were being hypocritical. Apple was insisting that they didn't want to use DRM, that the labels were forcing it as a cost of doing business. So if the French were going to make everybody play nice, why should Apple object. Unless they really like DRM. Unless they enjoy being the monopolist over the iPod and the iTunes store. Shame, shame.

Which may be the truth. But, being the contrarian kind of guy I am, I'd like to consider other motives. And the more I think about the French law, the worse it sounds. Because from everything I've heard, it's an attempt to legislate an outcome, not a process. It's like trying to outlaw racism. Fine idea, but how do you make attitudes illegal. Heck, how do you know that that's the problem in some particular case?

So let's consider the French. They insist that music bought from one source (like the iTMS) has to be playable on every device. But what they don't say is who is responsible for making sure that works. Is it the source of the music (e.g. Apple)? Or is it the maker of the device? If the former, do they have to license every single DRM scheme used by every device on the planet? If the latter, do they? Or does the government expect everybody to get together and pick one winner that everyone uses?

My guess is that that's the outcome Apple fears. Because if the industry picks one DRM scheme, I'd be willing to bet that a vote would choose Microsoft's. And Microsoft is very good at using their leverage. I can just hear that conversation now: "Of course we'll be happy to license our DRM to you, Apple. No problem at all. Of course, you will have to kill the iPod. And the iTMS. And here's what else we want..."

I may mention that I was on the receiving end of just such a conversation with Microsoft a few years back. I was at Borland, part of the marketing team for their C++ development product. Borland had a programming library called OWL (Object Windows Library) that competed, all too well, in Microsoft's view, with their own MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). Microsoft put a lot of effort into getting everyone to use their library, to the point of licensing it to every other tool maker. Borland wanted to offer it as well, since Microsoft's marketing was working with some important customers. Microsoft was happy to let Borland have it too. But only if they first agreed to kill their competing product. (If you doubt this story, I can tell you that I had emails from the responsible individuals at Microsoft stating exactly what I've described here.)

My point is that Microsoft plays hardball. (And so would Sony and Creative and Real and everybody else, given the chance.) If I were Apple, I would be deeply concerned about doing anything that plays too far into Microsoft's hands, especially in a product area that's so important to the bottom line. But I wouldn't want to have to explain exactly why I'm so opposed; it might make me sound paranoid for one example. Then again, wasn't it Intel's former CEO who said that only the paranoid survive?

Seems to me he spent a lot of time dealing with Microsoft. I'm just saying.

A few years ago (yes, it's now officially "a few years") I worked at a startup that in retrospect never had a chance. Okay, to be honest it wasn't just in retrospect; I started having doubts, and then certainties, while I was still there. But it wasn't all bad. Among the few positives was meeting Barry Eisler, then a contract lawyer turned Silicon Valley exec, now a writer of most excellent thrillers. I'm still in touch with a few of my coworkers from that job, but I'm definitely closest to Barry and his family.

Whenever Barry and I talk, the conversation is lively and far reaching. His books betray his quick mind and contrary nature, which I mean in the best possible way. I'm an unconverted small-L liberal; he'd probably best be described as a libertarian. So we don't always agree, although I flatter myself that we each gain something from our debates.

As Barry's book career has flourished, he's enjoyed meeting other writers and interacting with reviewers and readers. (I'd call them fans, but I don't want to presuppose.) I got the blogging bug early, and like every other person who gets religion, did my damnedest to evangelize him. It is to his credit (or is it just stubbornness?) that he resisted so well and for so long.

Until now, that is. I just got an email from Barry to announce that he's taken the plunge and entered the realm of bloggerdom. You'll find the first entry on his website. Like the rest of his writing, and his conversation for that matter, it's well thought out, articulate and likely to offend a fair few people. I can't wait to read the next installment.

The rains abated For a second Saturday in a row. So I took a little drive up to Suisun City to look at the trains at the Western Railway Museum. The museum had been highlighted last year on an episode of Bay Area Backroads, and it seemed like a place I'd enjoy. There's something about trains that appeals to kids, even the overgrown kind. And the great pleasure of this museum is that we get the chance to ride a couple. The major attraction is a few miles of track that's been re-electrified and which runs through some relatively unspoiled hills. They have plans to electrify another five miles or so, which will make the journey even more pleasant. Although I have no complaints; riding in a 1914 parlor car from the Salt Lake & Utah Railroad is a treat, even if it's only a 50 minute out-and-back. Although it did make the run on the museum's 20s Sacramento streetcar something of an anticlimax. Definitely should have done that first.

(I have a few more pictures over on Flickr.)

Not as a writer; that's happened a bunch of times, although not recently. No, this time it's as a photographer, courtesy of my stock photo efforts. Way back in November I got an email from a gentleman at Carus Publishing to tell me that a photograph I took of Coober Pedy in South Australia was going to be used in an article in Cricket Magazine, a publication for 9 to 14 year olds. Even better, he offered me some copies of the magazine to show off to friends. Anyway, minutes ago I received a visit from UPS. The sender was unfamiliar, and I was no better off when I opened the envelope. But a skim through the pages found my photograph and the whole thing came flooding back.

Thrilling, isn't it? I have a credit in the magazine and everything! Can National Geographic be far behind? (Yes. Yes it can.)

In the spirit of the holidays, I offer a little Passover tribute. Personally, I have a hard time accepting any story that involves Jews getting packed and on the road before the bread had time to rise. But it's a tradition! And I'll have a whole new reaction watching The Ten Commandments from now on. "Let me people go!", indeed.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the latest Mac OS update somehow turned my monitor from 24-bit color to 16-bit. And not the 16-bit kind that looks like a slightly pixely version of 24 either. Anyway, it turns out to have been a sign of a much larger problem: the internal drive on my Cube is slipping off this mortal coil.

But all is not lost, at least not yet. I managed to resurrect the drive, sorta, kinda. First I had to create a new bootable drive using an old 20GB iPod. Then I had to wait while a couple of hundred megabytes of updates downloaded. After that I installed a newly (re)purchased copy of Disk Warrior. Which, after a whole lot of chugging, brought the internal drive to a state vaguely resembling life, only much much slower. And noisier. And slower. Did I mention slower?

The next step was to try to copy my home directory to one of my external drives. Took a while, but it copied over. And now I'm trying to copy a few other directories that will be more work to recreate: Applications (both OS X and the couple of OS9 apps I might still use on occasion) and Libraries, mostly. That's taking a lot longer; I think the drive is getting clearer views of the guy with the scythe and wants to prolong the agony. Meanwhile, my agony is getting extended. The copy is still making progress, with an estimated 39 hours to completion. Yes, I did say hours.

And suddenly that dual core Mac Mini is looking a whole lot more attractive.

Update 04/06: I know you're dying for the end of the story, so here it is. No, the copy didn't take days. It failed an hour or so after I posted the preceding. Fortunately, I didn't lose anything important before the drive finally shuffled off this mortal coil. I'm running again, this time on one of my Firewire drives, and this time with a daily backup. At least I hope so; I plan to keep a careful eye on Retrospect. What's that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Yeah, that's the one.

Or just a weird coincidence? I speak of Mac OS X 10.4.6, an update which showed up today. And which I installed on both my Macs. Had a little trouble with my PowerBook, which refused to shut down. (I blame Microsoft; Excel wouldn't quit, so I had to force it.) Fortunately, forcing the power off and on worked, and everything came up without a hitch.

Not so on my ancient G4 Cube. True, it shut everything down and restarted without any trouble. But it took a loooooong time to come back to life. And when it did, things looked a wee bit strange. My Cube was on the blue side. And maybe some green. But no red at all. Fortunately, I don't use it as more than a file server, so the lack of a primary color is mostly annoying. But it does make me want to get that Intel-based Mac Mini just a little sooner.

The day we feared would never come... well, it still hasn't come. But at least now we know when it's supposed to come. What date, you ask? Why, July 25th. This year. On that day we may all forget about work and everything else and bask in our good fortune.

Huh?, I hear you exclaim. Oh, alright; I'll explain. For it is on that date that Warner Brothers is finally going to get off their large corporate posteriors and release the first DVD volume of Animaniacs. Which is a wonderful thing. Truly. Thanks, TV Squad, for brightening my day immesurably.

This weekend I caught an episode of Mythbusters in which Adam and Kari took on cell phones, or more specifically if driving while holding a cell phone to your ear is more or less dangerous than driving drunk. Their conclusion is that both are equally dangerous, which is hardly a surprise to anybody who's spent time on a California freeway. (Whenever I see somebody suddenly veer across several lanes, I'm only surprised if I don't see a phone clapped to one ear.) I was disappointed that they didn't try a less obvious question, like how much worse your driving is with a hands-free setup than when you aren't on a phone at all. Still, watching the two of them (and especially Kari, let's be honest) just on the legal side of drunk was highly entertaining.

But it all reminds me of a classic episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, where the local Sheriff's Department or whatever did an on-air demonstration of the effects of alcohol on reflexes. Except they made the mistake of using Dr. Johnny Fever as the test subject. And to the police official's growing consternation, the Doctor's response times only improved with each drink. Must be all those drugs he took in the Sixies...

Which reminds me of that wonderful line about how if you remember the Sixties, you weren't there. Which is quite a distance from my original point, whatever it might have been.

I have an iCal reminder set up for every second Sunday to tell me that Roger Ebert has a new Answer Man column up on his website. I love movies, despite the contrary evidence that I hardly ever go to one. I think it's a metafascination; not an interest in movies individually, but in aggregate. And Answer Man rewards that interest in film as a genre, and a business, and a rich source for contemplation and humor.

But there are other rewards to my biweekly visit to Mr. Ebert's site. And today's reward is his review of Basic Instinct 2. He gives the film 1¹/₂ stars, which is surely not a positive recommendation. But it's how he gives them that's worth the price of admission:

"I cannot recommend the movie, but ... why the hell can't I? Just because it's godawful? What kind of reason is that for staying away from a movie? Godawful and boring, that would be a reason."

That's why I come back every second Sunday. Heck, a few more features and I'd make it back more often.

There is a downside to working at home: you have to be at home. And you have to work, which I guess makes two downsides. And I don't really have to be at home all day; having a cell phone and a Blackberry makes me pretty mobile. Sadly, the weather here in Northern Cal has been sucky enough to keep me from wanting to enjoy the freedom working at home ought to provide.

Which meant that I was ready to go out and do something the moment Saturday morning rolled around. My plan was to head north over the Golden Gate. After that it would depend on the weather. Which turned out to be pretty nice by the time I got across the bridge. So after stopping at the overlook on the Marin side for some picture-taking (and knowing that any good shots of San Francisco have to be taken in the afternoon, when the sun isn't in the way), I followed highway 1 out to Muir Beach and Stinson Beach and eventually to Point Reyes. I'd been to Point Reyes the town before, but never to the actual point, or the lighthouse therein. Which turns out to be quite a hike; the two Point Reyeses are a good twenty miles apart over a windy, twisty cattle-lined road. But eventually I got to the lighthouse. And discovered it's a bit of a hike to the actual building: .4 miles, which I initially misread as 4 miles. And then a vertical trek, which a helpful sign points out is the equivalent of walking down (and then back up) a thirty story building. I am most definitely not in shape for that kind of thing! Which didn't stop me, of course. And the pictures are worth it. I might even show you a few if you ask nice...