But is It Still Hot and Juicy?

Big news in the burger world.

When Wendy's decided to remake its 42-year-old hamburger.....

Why?

Wendy's is trying to boost lackluster sales and fight growing competition from much bigger rival McDonald's on one end and expanding fast-casual chains like Five Guys on the other. Part of the problem is that Americans, who are being squeezed by the tight economy, are being pickier about how they spend their dining-out dollars. But the biggest issue is that Wendy's, which hadn't changed its burger since the chain began in 1969, let its food offerings get stale over the years while its competitors continued to update their menus.

Last year, McDonald's had 49.5 percent of the fast-food burger market in the U.S. up from 41.6 percent in 2002, according to research firm Technomic. In the same period, Wendy's share fell to 12.8 percent from 14 percent. Burger King's fell to 13.3 percent from 17 percent.

Fair enough, but McDonald's didn't change its core items; it just added other stuff to the menu (as has Burger King, with smoothies of its own). But I suppose this should have been expected after Dave Thomas died.

Then there's this.....

...Wendy's polled more than 10,000 people about their likes and dislikes in hamburgers. It found that people like the food at Wendy's but thought the brand hadn't kept up with the times.

So the food is fine but the image needs an update. So they change the food. Not just a little,either.

In the end, Wendy's researchers changed everything but the ketchup.

Personally, I didn't see the need to mess with what was the best big-chain burger out there. I've said it before: if someone would open a Wendy's here, the other chains would be dead to me.

Some of their other plans sound better.

Wendy's, which just got a new CEO last week, wants to expand overseas and on the West Coast, relaunch a breakfast line that's easier for on-the-go eating, and sell more high-margin snacks and beverages. And early next year, it will introduce new chicken sandwiches.

Just as long as they don't mess with the chili.

As Fast As Possible

It's possible Jon Carroll needs to socialize a bit more.

So, see, my OnStar operator would be my invisible friend.

On a more serious note.....

There I'd be, driving along a lonely road late at night, and oops I would slip and I'd be up against the guardrail.

And then I'd push a blue button and my imaginary friend would wake up, and she'd call a tow truck and an ambulance (just in case), and soon all the benefits of a First World nation would be surrounding me in my hour of need.

This rang a bell with me because occasionally I'm the person they call for those services. They and the other roadside assistance companies like to present an image of having everything readily available at their fingertips to provide help in minutes, and On-Star seems to have an an extensive system.

But out here there are cracks in that system, and when they find one, they usually call us. Then we have to deal with the gap between what they advertise and what is possible. Sometimes response time is going to be in tens of minutes or even hours in certain parts of this state, a concept that often doesn't register with these often urban-based companies. Again, On-Star seems to be a pretty good one. But some companies seem to operate with the hope that their customers won't travel outside heavily populated areas.

School Days

Ah, September. The weather cools a bit from the August oven. More importantly, school starts, which means full-time paychecks for Wifey. She had some summer income, but things were pretty lean. Now we clean up the mess of deferred expenses and try to get a handle of things for next summer, which we rarely accomplish fully. I know, the sensible thing to do is set aside money, and I'd like to do that this year, but history is not encouraging.

Bean has taken her first step into the educational world with pre-school. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Breakfast, reading books, play time, arts and crafts, lunch, and done. She is ecstatic about it so far. I know the enthusiasm will wane when real work starts in later years, but it's fun to see her all fired up now. Hopefully she'll retain a little of the upbeat spirit.

I personally didn't mind school, probably because it wasn't very hard for me, and it put variety into a small-town life. I never felt the urge to skip. What would I have done in a town of 350 people on a weekday morning/afternoon that would have been more entertaining? The only possible enticement would have been the thrill of breaking the rules, of defying authority, and frankly I didn't think the rules were all that onerous.

A small school (the high school only has 8 classrooms) has an intimacy to it that can be comforting; as a senior I knew not just everyone in my class but all the juniors and most of the sophomores and freshmen. The fact is my friends were all in school, so skipping would have been counter-productive. Hopefully, Bean will have a similar experience.

Not Celebratory

James Lileks went on a Disney cruise to Europe. He made an interesting point about one of the themes on Day 5.

On the ship it was Pirate Night.... I arrred well and hard at the maitre d’ when we entered: it’s table nine I’ll be wanting, me hearties - but once Bradford, our waiter, asked me if I would be dressing up, I explained that my sympathies were with the colonial administrators, just trying to get the money to the mother country without losing it to some thieves. Pirates are interesting, but not admirable, no matter how you gussy it up with yo-ho-hoing and avast-ye-matey exultations of a life unbound from convention and oppression. As all the waiters danced around the room, wearing pirate costumes, I had a vision of a ship 400 years hence, with all the waiters dressed up for Al-Qaeda night, wearing suicide vests and waving automatic weapons.

The Al-Qaeda reference might be going a bit too far, but seeing the suffering caused by current pirates, and realizing that past pirates caused similar fear and loathing, does temper my enthusiasm for extolling them, even in cartoon form, which is what this is. I also can't help but wonder at holding such a party on a ship.

Cheer Up As Best You Can

Once again, Jon Carroll hits it.

It's been a gloomy few weeks, hasn't it?All that nonsense in Washington, followed by that nonsense on Wall Street, followed by rioting in London and most of the nation baked so badly in crippling heat that one is surprised their brains were not fried right there in their skulls like eggs on the sidewalk.

We've had all that, plus a summer of steady flooding, which brings up a thought. What can you think about flooding caused not by natural calamity, but by conscious decision? Yes, the motivations for the decision were natural - heavy snow pack in Montana - but there was something very odd about the Corps of Engineers saying, "We're going to cause major flooding in your community, by releasing a certain amount of water, starting on a certain day, for a certain length of time." That cold precision has not gone down well. The Corps has made a few enemies around here.

Anyway, Jon says to take heart.

There is pleasure all around us, and while we are suffering from the News, the not-news should give us comfort. You know, rubber ducks and old dogs and tall trees and tomatoes (They're in! They're fresh! I have mentioned this already!) and good-looking members of the human race. Also wisdom and Rembrandt and jug band music. So many things.

It won't just happen,though.

The bad news is always with us; we have to make the good news.

This or That

A recent issue of Car and Driver had a number of short two-car comparison tests, some traditional (Mustang vs. Camaro) some, well, seemingly based on whatever cars they had on hand (BMW 1-series vs. Mazda RX-8?). This got me to thinking (uhoh) about the preferences in my own life.

Since Car and and Driver started this, I'll lead off with them vs. Road and Track. I've subscribed to both for longer than I care to ponder, and each has a distinct character. C&D has always been edgier and bawdier, especially during the David E. Davis era (RIP sir), and a bit more willing to be critical of its subjects. R&T has a generally mellower tone and, more importantly, it has Peter Egan. My taste tends toward C&D, but as long as I can afford both (and Egan is still writing) I'll read both.

McDonald's vs. Burger King. Again, I patronize both, but in this case it's because neither really sets me off enough to justify exclusivity. I've begun using the McDonald's value menu because (1) I'm cheap and (2) the burgers on it have a certain old-fashioned minimalist flavor that I've been finding refreshing as the main offerings seem to be trending toward gigantism. I have yet to try this at Burger King, largely because the Whopper is a fine sandwich, especially in Angry form. Burger King's lack of a children's play area can be a factor if we've got Bean with us, since she's more likely to sit still and eat without the looming temptations. It's to the point that we alternate, if we can recall the place at which we last ate. We do make occasional spontaneous stops for waffle cones at Burger King on Wednesdays and Sundays when they're on sale.

(Important point: On a recent trip to Sioux Falls we ate at Wendy's, which reminded me that if someone were to open one here, the other burger joints would be dead to me. The burgers, the chili, the frosties....the place just hits the spot.)

Coke vs. Pepsi. This has never been a real contest: I've always been a Coke guy. Unlike some people I know, though, I will drink either depending on what's available. It also depends on what form the beverage takes; I drink regular Coke from fountains, but lately I've been buying Cherry Coke from the machine at work. I also keep some Caffeine-free Coke (non-diet; I have not yet found a diet pop that doesn't leave an aftertaste, although Diet Squirt isn't bad) at home for those times when a Coke sounds good but I need to be certain of getting to sleep.

Old Looney Tunes vs. reruns of The Simpsons. This one comes up because they are on opposite each other at 11:30 am weekdays. This one can put wear and tear on the remote control depending on what is being shown. I'm a big fan of most Chuck Jones productions, but certain classic Simpsons episodes (The B-Sharps, The Last Temptation of Homer) can hold the tuner in place. Usually, it ends up as a click-fest during commercials.

Flying Time

Finally, a chance to post something. This poor blog gets treated like our house plant, which somehow continues to survive despite erratic watering and being in the same pot of soil it came in several years ago. My wife says it’s the perfect plant for her.

One distraction was the commemoration of Bean (the nickname given granddaughter Whitney by her grandmother) attaining three years of age. A large crowd turned out for festivities that were held in my backyard, which is actually a common area in the mobile home park that has a picnic shelter, a concrete area with a basketball hoop, some playground equipment and a large sandbox.

Meat was grilled, and large quantities of liquids were put to use to combat the equatorial heat, both by internal consumption and in an inflatable combination pool and slip-and-slide that kept the kids entertained, especially the birthday girl, who decided to use it without changing into her swimming suit, which was only a temporary problem given the quick-drying outdoor conditions.

Naturally Bean acquired lots of swag: dolls and clothes and various other goodies. One hiccup in the soiree was the birthday cake from Wal-mart; it looked like it had been assembled by Bean herself. There wasn’t time to get a proper replacement. Grandma plans to investigate thoroughly. (Update – a full refund was procured.)

Overall, though, good times were had until the mosquitoes declared an end, leaving me to try to avoid thinking about how quickly it seems that this has become three years old.

Wiper Fluid and Hot Wheels

Once again, sound advice from James Lileks.

I made a Trader Joe’s run, stocked up on all sorts of fine things to eat, bought some enormous flagons of spirits but did not go with the plastic bottles, always a sign that the guests wake the next day feeling poisoned. If you can imagine the same bottle containing windshield wiper fluid, don’t buy it.

Followed later by a memory.

As I said, I had a Hot Wheels version, painted with sparkly metal. I loved those things, even though the tracks invariably broke and became difficult to connect. See, you had these long strips of track connected by flat pieces of plastic that fit into grooves on the bottom. The grooves split. The tracks were not seamless. You sent a car down the track, it hit a groove, flipped. Which was cool because you make explosion sounds and pretend everyone was on fire and screaming – you know, innocent boyhood play. But eventually all the tracks were ruined. This may have happened for everyone who ever had Hot Wheels.

As I recall the tracks made fine weapons, emitting a loud SLAP and leaving a distinctive red mark when applied to skin.

It Depends On Who is Watching

I’ve been periodically checking out the new additions to our cable TV with the hope of finding some reason to watch them, and I‘ve noticed few things.

The durability of film stock – and just as importantly the willingness to hang on to old productions - has apparently come a long way over the years, judging by the number of movies shown on the This channel that I thought would have disappeared a long time ago. To be fair, I must say that at least some of them are as entertaining as some of the junk that gets played repeatedly on other cable channels, and they at least add a little variety.

Bravo and E! (the exclamation point hardly seems justified based on the product) have reminded me that almost anyone with a lack of shame can get a TV show, particularly if they can add some emotional instability.

E! has reminded me of something I’ve thought about in the past, though. I’ve occasionally come across Sex in the City reruns there, and I’ve noticed that their versions are edited differently - with a bit more risqué content left in - than the ones I saw on TBS. I’ve seen this before, most memorably with Caddyshack, which I have seen edited at least 4 distinctly different ways (on at least 6 different channels, which brings up another point: these days any halfway serviceable movie or TV series is distributed so broadly you can find some of them seemingly at any time of the day or night). One of these completely eliminated the candy-bar-in-the-pool scene, which requires a level of prudish thinking that I didn’t think still existed in the television industry.

I wonder who made those decisions? I know the networks have departments that handle it, and I assume cable channels have something similar. It’s also possible with a well-known movie like Caddyshack that they just took what the distributor offered them with a description of the changes that had been made.

On the other hand, I know it can be much less organized at the local station level. At KEVN years ago I was involved a couple of times in checking out a syndicated movie before it was aired. Both times we had to do some editing, and both times it was just two people making the calls, with no guidelines other than our personal tastes and a general knowledge of broadcasting standards.

I’d like to think the big boys have a more sophisticated process, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not much more so, other than the likely involvement of lawyers. It’s never helped that FCC rules have long been “we know what is wrong when we see it”, which leads to a conservative approach, especially at local stations who can’t afford to risk the big fines.

In one case – a topless female corpse - the decision was simple. What to do about a scene in another movie involving a (very brief) shot of a power drill being used on someone’s hand was slightly less clear. We decided to take it out since the movie was to be aired on Thanksgiving afternoon, which shows how arbitrary the process was. It also says something about broadcast TV - boobs bad, torture maybe not – about which I’d best not get started.

McGinley, Movies and Mid-Continent Service

I'm still trying to figure out how the producers of Two and a Half Men are going to make the Ashton Kutcher for Charlie Sheen thing work. Perhaps they should have gone after the master of joining a series in the middle, Ted McGinley, who would at least be right for the role of older brother and has always had a rakish charm similar to Sheen. The show has been going downhill anyway, and McGinley has experience in such situations.

I recently had a brush with peril while channel surfing. On TCM was All Quiet on the Western Front. Three channels over TBS was showing Mamma Mia. For some reason I was compelled for a short time to switch back and forth, which created a mind-altering effect that seemed to radiate from my TV. I had to stop before I did myself an injury. I can only speculate what would have happened if I had a high-definition set.

It's nice to have an experience that goes against a negative stereotype, especially one that is thoroughly ingrained, and I think I should relate mine. Our cable-company-provided Internet has long been a bit sporadic, with burps that required resetting the modem. I had always attributed it to wiring that had been done over time by various people with varying skill levels, and just lived with it as long it wasn't too annoying.Not long ago,though, it seemed to really take a turn for the worse, so I called the cable company. The lady checked the connection and detected enough of a problem that she suggested sending a technician the next Monday. He arrived right on time and did a thorough check of everything. He not only found and fixed the faulty Internet cable but replaced some other sub par connections, eliminated a number of splices, ran a new cable in the living room and generally spruced things up, all with a genial good humor.

It was enough to make me give greater thought to getting telephone service through them, though my general aversion to putting all my communication eggs in one basket will probably keep that from happening. I have some quibbles with the programming end of Mid-Continent Communications (why does the TV Guide Channel rundown only approximate what we actually get?) but their service has been top-notch.

No Argument

It happens to almost all of us at some point, and it recently happened to me. I was sitting quietly on the couch when I heard a knock at the door. Opening it revealed two door-to-door missionaries, in this case Mormons, resplendent in white shirts and dark slacks, looking entirely too happy to be there. It happened that my wife was due home with supper soon, so I used that as an excuse to put them off in the hope that they would forget about returning. But return they did, a few days later. This time I went to the rope-a-dope, being as polite as possible in expressing my satisfaction with my relations with the Almighty while avoiding any specifics that would give them an opening for discussion. Eventually they realized nothing was going to be accomplished, so they moved on.

I’ve given some thought to that encounter, especially my actions. Why didn’t I gird my loins and engage them in lively conversation? After all, I’ve read enough about Mormonism to wonder about some of its more… er…interesting aspects. I could have at least asked them what luck of the draw got them Pierre instead of someplace like Ethiopia, and whether they considered that a good thing. Instead I basically curled up like a hedgehog and waited for them to tire out.

The shallow reason is I wasn’t in the mood. I was enjoying my evening and didn’t want to interrupt it by arguing with a couple of strangers. More to the point, I didn’t feel like engaging in a discussion that had no hope of accomplishing anything other than perhaps determining who had greater patience with the other. I certainly wasn’t going to join the Latter Day Saints, and anyone who has the conviction necessary to cheerfully (at least apparently; if they were faking it they were doing a fine job) engage in missionary work isn’t likely to be swayed by the likes of me. That at best leaves agreeing to disagree, which hardly seems worth the trouble.

As for treating it as an opportunity to learn more about their faith to satisfy intellectual curiosity, that would have violated a basic rule for dealing with people with Conviction: don’t get them started. Had I popped that cork I likely would have had to forcefully replace it. The end result would likely have been general irritation, which would have spoiled everyone’s evening. Perhaps under different circumstances, such as a discussion group or a classroom-type setting, I would be more inclined to pursue an inquiry, but not one (or two) on one in my living room.

I guess it comes down to apathy. As long as they do me no harm, I don’t care enough about their religion to inconvenience myself arguing about it.

Mr. Las Vegas in Mitchell

Ah, the last day of a stretch of time off, one that originally was going to be nine days long, then became eight, then finally one day off, one day at work, then six days off. Oh well, it was quite enjoyable anyway.

As usual, this vacation was coordinated with my wife's doctor's appointments in Sioux Falls, but also with a special event for her; a Wayne Newton concert at the Corn Palace (oops, that's The World's Only! Corn Palace) in Mitchell. My wife is a slobbering Wayne Newton fan. She's had a crush on him since she saw him on The Lucy Show in 1965. (Googling....yes, it's out there.) She saw him in Las Vegas just before he stopped his regular gigs there, and this was likely her last chance to see him again, so when I heard about this show and saw that the tickets weren't outlandishly expensive by today's frightening standards I jumped at it.

We got there about an hour early and there was already a crowd waiting for the doors to open. I noticed at least two charter buses of people from around the state. I also noticed that I was probably in the lower 20% agewise. (When Newton announced that a couple was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary I sensed a fair amount of "I remember when we hit 50 years" feeling in the crowd.) My wife purchased two souvenirs; a key chain with Newton's picture and a nightgown that has "I spent an evening with Wayne Newton" printed on it, augmenting her t-shirt from the previous concert and a poster for this one that she got from a Pierre restaurant.

As venues go, the Corn Palace is small, even by South Dakota standards. There are permanent seats on only one of the long sides of the main arena, with a stage opposite them and barely enough room for a basketball court in between (no seats on the ends of the court). This theater-like layout does, however, suit it well for shows like this one, when they put seats on the court. Our seats were straight out and just a bit above stage level (per the suggestion of the lady I talked to when I ordered the tickets back in December) which was just about right. The show started pretty close to on-time with a band that interestingly was over half local talent; Newton only travels with a small core of regulars.

This was my first live exposure to a Las Vegas-style act, and I immediately noticed a few things. First, Newton seemed to really enjoy himself. After so many years he could hardly be blamed for being a bit weary of the whole thing, but he came out with good energy and did his best to liven up the crowd, which responded as best they could for their age. Second, there must be certain standard songs, because Newton did a few that I had seen Elvis do in a movie of his show. In fact, I couldn't help but think about how Elvis might have looked if he had still been alive and performing at Newton's age (69).

My biggest impression was that Newton really is a multi-talented guy. He played a number of instruments, sang a wide variety of songs and told a few jokes. Like any performer of that type, though, he did some things better than others. I've never been that big a fan of his singing voice, and frankly I think he should re-examine some of his choices of material. I thought of George Jones, who we saw in 2008 and who is 11 years older than Newton. Jones is also not what he once was, but he sticks within his range and style and can still put on a good show; Newton could learn from that. On the other hand, Newton was quite competent on guitar and actually pretty good on violin. He also gave some of his backup talent a chance to show their stuff, and as you would expect they were excellent.

The show went for a little shy of 2 hours, and I got the feeling that his fans were quite happy with it. I know my wife thought it was great. That's really all any entertainer could hope to accomplish.

Getting Loaded

Sometimes I think Jon Carroll and I live the same life.

I am the chief dishwasher in this house, and I like to have some control over my territory. I like things in a certain order because (a) it's possible to get more stuff in the washer per load if Certain Rules are followed and (b) it's possible to unload the dishwasher more quickly if like objects are grouped together.

You probably noticed that when Jon refers to himself as a "dishwasher", he means "the person who sees to it that the dishes are washed" as opposed to "the person who washes the dishes".

I am the chief dishwasher facilitator (that seems to be a more accurate or at least more impressive-sounding description) here, mainly because I am also the primary cook. Somehow it feels more comfortable, more complete to do both jobs.

Unlike the manual dishwashing of old, when one person washed and other dried, this is not a group effort.

If, God forbid, someone should come in to offer help, we resist in the strongest possible terms.

I have strayed somewhat in this area on occasion, for the usual reason: Bean (Grandbaby's nickname, given to her by Grandma) likes to help once in a while, and making exceptions for grandchildren is part of The Code. Note, however, that this only applies to unloading.

Jon and I have also faced similar inquisitions.

We were sitting around the kitchen after dinner as I was doing the dishes, and the grandmother said something in French to the father, our translator for the weekend. They had a small hushed argument, and finally he said, "She wants to know why you wash the dishes before you put them in the machine that washes the dishes."

My daughters have been my interrogators on this subject, so I have been able to write it off as youthful ignorance of the tenacity of dried food on kitchenware, and the detrimental effects large pieces can have on on dishwasher innards. My younger daughter has since moved into an apartment with her own dishwasher, and with it has acquired maturity and understanding. I haven't seen her loading technique, so I haven't had a chance to offer advice, which may be for the best. As with many things, she should develop her own style.

Weather,Waltzing, and Wal-Mart

The weather continues its ups and downs as we head into May. Not long ago I was beginning to notice a slight defensiveness in the tone of the local TV weather people, as though they were weary of having to constantly bring bad news. It's hard to blame them after six months.

My wife recently received a collection of country music CDs which included the Patti Page song "Tennessee Waltz", which reminded me of a question I had often thought of exploring. Is there an actual Tennessee Waltz as mentioned in the song? If so, where can I find it? Google is silent on the matter as far as I can tell.

Once again, James Lileks strikes a nerve.

Went to the local Walgreen’s, where my suspicions of the last few weeks was confirmed: they appear to have dumped the house brand of popcorn. This is a problem.....Dismayed, I put back my empty basket, hoping I could find a manager who would assure me that it was just a supply problem, the popcorn would return, but I know better. And thus are my trips to Walgreen ended. I went for a particular item, and usually picked up more stuff. No more.

I frequently have the same problem here. The local Wal-Mart regularly stops carrying items we find desirable, items which are often available at Wal-Marts elsewhere. I sometimes think that this store is at the end of the truck route, and thus gets whatever is left.

I'm also annoyed at the unwillingness/inability of other stores to step into the gaps Wal-Mart leaves. K-mart in particular seems determined to stay just a little worse that Wal-Mart, like a runner who slows down to keep a gap when the runner in front stumbles. I have noticed that K-Mart has started expanding it's appliance offerings - no doubt trying to compensate for the absence of corporate mate Sears here - which could be a good idea, although I wonder how the support will be.

Got Him At Last

I must interrupt my usual blathering to note the killing of Osama bin Laden. (I was going to provide a link, but c'mon...it's everywhere.) Much will be said about this, so I will only offer congratulations to all involved for improving planetary quality.

Disease and Death

At last, some relatively seasonal weather, or at least something that meets community standards that have been steadily lowering ("At least I have haven't had to scrape frost.") Blustery and cool beats snow, tornadoes and flooding.

I've been perusing our recently acquired new cable channels, and one in particular doesn't thrill me, that being the change of Fit TV to Discovery Fit and Health. I wasn't a big watcher of Fit TV (all workouts, all the time) but the new channel seems to be mostly freak shows, some with the word actually in the name ("Freaky Eaters"). Really large or incredibly small people, hoarders, ER oddities, people with gigantic tumors or other rare diseases....if there's an odd medical or psychological condition, it's on there. A co-worker asked me what purpose these shows serve, and I had to admit I hadn't thought about it, and couldn't think of anything legitimate. I suppose they can classified as either there-but-for-the- grace-of-God-go-I or the point-and-ridicule group, depending of your level of sympathy. Either way it seems a bit unseemly for the Discovery Networks.

My daughter recently went through one of those life experiences we all face at some point, though not usually this soon; the death of a friend, in this case sadly at only 20yo of liver disease. They had been pretty close in junior high and high school. The friend had moved to Sioux Falls after graduation, so we didn't know about the illness, which added to the shock. The poor girl had a hard life, with a father who molested her and her siblings as youngsters and a mother who was so ineffectual that the children were taken away for a year and (as I understand it) only given back to the mother after she had left him. (Frankly, I doubt the wisdom of that return. I only met the mother once, but I wouldn't trust her to feed a fish.) Even then the girl was the glue that held the household together, which is no way to grow up. She had been planning on becoming a chef when I last talked to her a couple of years ago, before the disease. Sometimes it seems some people are born under a cloud.

Technological Leap Frog

To my seemingly endless list of reasons to neglect this humble blog, I can now add equipment failure. A few days ago I pushed the start button and was greeted with only a blinking light and eventually not even that. After a brief bout of classic temporary insanity during which I repeated the same procedure hoping for a different result, I unhooked everything and took the computer to a trusted repair shop, where a diagnosis of power supply failure was reached and a new one installed at relatively low expense.

During the two days it was at the shop I naturally did some shopping for a replacement should it have been necessary, and I was reminded of the constant growth of the capability of PCs, especially in hard drive capacity. Basic units have hard drives that dwarf the one in the ancient PC I'm using, which itself is only about at 1/3 capacity. I frankly don't know what I would do with so much memory, since I'm not a big game player and I don't store a lot of video.

I mentioned this to my professional IT brother and he said something that brought back memories. He noted that even basic software takes up a lot more memory that it used to, and that Windows 7 is noteworthy as a storage hog. I couldn't help but chuckle at this, since I'd been dealing with that since the dawn of PC time, when companies such as Osborne and Victor still roamed the landscape and Bill Gates was not yet sleeping in pajamas made of money.

There has always been the chicken-or-egg question: was hardware growth necessitated by software demands, or did software swell because the hardware allowed it? Looking back, I think it tended to be first the latter, then the former. Software developers used all the available abilities of the hardware, which induced manufacturers to build better equipment to allow better performance, which created room for software to grow, repeat to this day.

Of course, it wasn't and still isn't as sequential as that. Often someone in one camp jumps in front; HP has long been putting huge-for-the-time hard drives into their computers, and game companies often seemed to have products in their warehouses waiting for a computer that could handle them, although that has become less frequent as custom gaming machines have come back. (I wonder what the old Atari people think about the rise of Wii, Playstation, etc.? Having others stand on your shoulders is often uncomfortable.) I suppose it will eventually level off, but at what point is hard to say.

As Long As It's Crunchy

I went to see what Chairman Bill had to say about the upcoming royal wedding, and found this.

Not having his glasses to hand, the Chairman blindly grabbed a nearby open Tupperware box into which he put the bacon bits before taking it outside to scatter on the salad.

Later, when Hay and the Chairman were doing the washing up, Hay enquired how the Tupperware box for the cat’s kitty crunchies had gotten into the washing up.

Anyway, the upshot is that kitty crunchies make excellent and economical salad croutons and no-one can tell the difference.

I find that unreasonably funny. I must say,however, that I'm not sure of the economical part of that statement, based on what I've seen of cat food prices versus those of human food.

Blow, Indeed

Charlie Sheen's Tour of something-or-other continued in Chicago after complete disaster in Detroit. Jeffrey Sconce was there to see Sheen try to get back off the canvas. (via Faith in Honest Doubt)

...I felt deep inside the faintest stirrings of a long lost sensation that I believe I once called "shame"--as if I had just been caught emerging from a brothel / geek show / monster truck pull.

Sad,sad,sad....but equally unsurprising. Also unsurprising is that two drug recognition experts I know, when asked what they think Sheen is on, said without hesitation "cocaine".

Expression, High and Low

To some people I would be considered a Renaissance man - that is, someone from the 14th through the 17th centuries. I have neither a Twitter account nor a Facebook page. This humble blog and an e-mail account constitute my Internet presence. I do not own a movable music-playing device unless you count the radio - with a cassette player, no less - in my car. My chief electronic medium for entertainment and information is the antediluvian television, which I first encountered in black-and-white. My primary telephone still makes use of wires running to my house, some of which I connected myself. A cellular telephone does reside here, but it is used almost entirely by my wife when we're on the road. I have been told it has picture-taking capability but I have never bothered to investigate.

All of which is a very long way of explaining why I have no pictures of the objects I recently encountered. Both are another ancient form of communication; signs stuck to the backs of cars. The first was on the back of a vehicle behind which I was parked while waiting for my daughter. It was in the shape of a ribbon of the "Support the Troops" style, but white with a red border, and it said "Support Farting". This one induced more thought than it probably should have, probably a result of it being right in the line of sight for period of time.

My standards for humor are fairly low, but this perplexed me. It's not clever, and it's not disgusting enough to elicit a wince. I sat there trying to imagine the type of person of sufficient age to own and operate a motor vehicle who would not only consider it amusing but worth purchasing (sadly, there are a number of retailers) and publicly displaying. Then the driver of the vehicle came out of the building, and I must say that except for being slightly older he pretty much perfectly fit the stereotype I had formed, at least in appearance. I didn't consider asking him about it; it didn't seem prudent.

The second vehicle I encountered - at a stoplight - was completely different. It actually had two stickers. The one on the left said "Freedom of Religion Means ALL Religions". The one on the right said "Born Again Pagan". The license plate indicated the vehicle was from Brookings County, home to SDSU and thus slightly more likely to be a location for such thought. Still, a display of that type isn't something seen frequently in South Dakota, at least by me. Based again on a quickly-formed stereotype, and without being able to see the driver, I wish this had been the vehicle I had been parked behind. I would likely have tried to strike up a conversation. I'd like to think it would have been interesting.