Wave That Flag

Boy, it's such a comfort to know that the state of Oklahoma is doing its part to support freedom and sustain our American way of life by issuing "Global War on Terror" license plates. Perusing the list of other special plates available, I see they also have NRA and pro-life plates. What's next, "Secure Our Borders" plates?

(Courtesy of the SmartRoutes "On the Road" blog.)

The Whole Thing

I had an interesting shopping experience the other night. We were in need of a few staple food items--coffee, cream, yogurt--and something to eat for supper. The Mrs. suggested going to Whole Foods because she likes their deli chicken salad, and with some fresh bread it would make a quick, easy meal. She also needed to stop at the Medford library, so after that we kept going through west Medford and Winchester to Woburn, where a new Whole Foods Market opened a year or so ago.

I had never shopped at Whole Foods. I'd been in a few of the stores over the years for various reasons, but I had never gone into one of their stores with the intention of doing any real food shopping for myself or my household. I guess I've always been content with being a mainstream grocery shopper, and Stop & Shop, Shaw's, or Foodmaster was always close enough and convenient enough for me. Also, while I'm aware of the issues surrounding food safety and the desire for food that is less processed, I've always felt that Whole Foods was overpriced, that part of what you're buying there is a lifestyle statement--I want the best, and I can afford it--that I don't identify with.

Over the past couple of years the chain has worked to undo the perception of being too expensive by introducing a line of private-label products, and by placing advertisement inserts in the newspaper showing that their prices are competitive with other grocery chains. But those inserts featured only a dozen or so items each week. and the prices on the rest of the items you'd likely need for your weekly shopping weren't necessarily as competitive.

Their produce is legendary, and yes, it's fantastic. But it's also pricey, and at this time of year, I'd much rather go to a local farmer's market. Nothing tastes as good as locally grown vegetables at their seasonal peak, and more farmers are embracing organic growing techniques. We also have a couple of very good farm stands Calareso's in Reading and Wilson Farms in Lexington, within a short drive, so the produce angle is pretty well covered, and as I think I've said before, I would rather support local farmers and businesses anyway.

Coffee is absolutely essential for me to start my day, and I have to give Whole Foods a thumbs-up for their selection. I saw packaged beans from a couple of local roasters, but what got my attention was the loose bean varieties and blends that are store-roasted. I chose a blend that had been roasted that very day. It was more expensive than the Peet's I've been getting at Stop & Shop, but I chose that out of convenience more than anything else, and I'm definitely willing to pay more for coffee if there's some clear advantage in freshness or quality.

There's a whole section of natural cosmetics that didn't really interest me, but the Mrs. could have stayed there all night until the store closed and they kicked her out.

Some of the store-brand items are a reasonably good deal, others not so much. You could certainly do most if not all of your weekly shopping at Whole Foods, but there's no question you would pay a lot more for it. To some people I guess it's worth it, but I'm also left with the feeling that there are those that do it more to show off than for any other reason, just as there are people who have to drive around in a Lexus when a Hyundai would serve their transportation needs just as well.

And the chicken salad? It was all right, but the chunks of chicken are way too big. It's harder to eat that way, that's all.

Sleep on It

Over the weekend we went back to Jordan's Furniture to check out mattresses. Well, actually we went there for some Richardson's ice cream, but our mattress is getting on in years and is a little lumpy, so while we were there we had a look around the mattress department, which Jordan's somewhat pretentiously calls the "sleep lab." Both the Mrs. and I have back issues, and we realized some time ago that our current mattress probably wasn't firm enough when we bought it back in early 1999.

On our way to test-drive some mattresses, we passed through the bedroom furniture. At one point I decided to climb on a display bed and test the mattress. It was very firm and quite comfortable, so I flipped up the covers to look for a label. There wasn't one, so it seemed logical to me to go into the mattress section and ask someone if they could tell me what kind of mattress was on the bed in question.

The "sleep technician" looked at me a little oddly, but when I asked my question a second time she seemed to understand. "Oh, those aren't for sale." Now it was my turn to look confused. She continued, "the display beds have what we call demo mattresses, they are old and they're just there to fill the space in the bed frames."

Maybe I'm suffering from a failure of logic, but this seems like a lost opportunity to me. I realize the mattress department is right next to the bedroom furniture department, but why wouldn't you want to put mattress you sell on those beds? It couldn't hurt, and might result in some additional sales. And I'm quite sure that when we bought the previous mattress and foundation (from a different furniture store), it was set up on a display bed. I guess they just choose to do things differently at Jordan's.

A Tip of the Glass: Deep Ellum

Summer weekends can be kind of a challenge. On the one hand there's the feeling that I should be making the most of the free time and the nice weather to do fun summer stuff. But if it's too hot and humid, I would much rather spend my days off in a bookstore, a coffee shop, or a dark, chilly movie theater. Or even better, a dark, chilly bar.

One thing I do like about summer is that there aren't as many people around. Many of the students are elsewhere, and from mid-July to mid-August, a lot of people go away on vacation. The city seems to empty out for a while, and things slow down a bit. There's less traffic on the Fellsway when I'm waiting for the bus in the morning, and the subway trains are noticeably less crowded, increasing the chances of getting a seat for the whole ride. Restaurants and bars have fewer patrons, meaning shorter waits and potentially more attentive service.

This weekend I opted not to partake in the hoopla surrounding the Police reunion concerts at Fenway Park; while a great place for a baseball game, it's far from the ideal venue for live music. I also chose not to alternately swelter in the midday humidity and get drenched by downpours at the Lowell Folk Festival. I did, however, pay a visit to the newish, beer-centric neighborhood place Deep Ellum in Union Square, Allston. The food is very good, there are something like a hundred different beers available (about twenty of those on tap), and it's a very eclectic and well-informed selection. They also have a list of intriguing cocktails for folks like the Mrs. who like to get their drink on in a non-beer way.

I neglected to get our server's name, and now realize I really should have because he did an excellent job. He was completely unfazed by the squirmy preschooler in our group, immediately picking up on his desire for a hot dog. He gave honest, informed opinions and recommendations for beer and food, paid attention to us after he'd brought our orders, cleared empty dishes promptly, and generally treated us like visiting dignitaries. He was a true professional, and that's very refreshing. We will almost certainly go back.

Dinged

The Mrs. and I went to the library, and on the way home we stopped to get something to eat. We were walking back to the car, which was parked in a lot behind the building. and turned the corner just in time to see someone backing out of a space and into the driver's side of our car. The Mrs. ran up and knocked on the other driver's window, which was a good thing because she was about to drive away. We're not sure if she even realized she'd hit our car.

Fortunately she was going very slowly, so there's only a tiny little dent no more than a couple of inches long. The other driver looked to be about eighteen and probably was not very experienced. I say this not to pick on her, but because there was a very generous amount of room between the row she backed out of and the perpendicular space where we had parked, and even as someone who doesn't drive, it was clear to me that she had more than enough room to negotiate out of her space without needing to get as close to our car as she did. Hopefully she will incorporate this incident into her future driving experience.

Oh, and by the way, Colleen's in Medford Square has decent sandwiches and excellent frappes.

Road Rage Champions

A couple of the car-oriented sites I read regularly mentioned this story about a highway project that drew so much road rage from drivers that the California Department of Transportation decided to close the road to traffic completely for the duration of the project. One worker was hit by a thrown burrito, one was allegedly clipped by a driver, and one guy threatened to climb a tower and start shooting at the road workers.

First, you have to wonder what sort of brain-damaged subhumans would commit acts of violence against the very people working to improve the road they use. The closure of the road in question has added miles and minutes to drivers' commutes.

Second, how is it that something like this hasn't already happened here in the land of the Massholes?

Verbal Jousting on the T

Yesterday I got on the Green Line at Brigham Circle to head home from work. The train operator came on the PA and said, "The other conductor neglected to mention that we'll be standing by for a few minutes."

A moment later the PA crackled again and another voice said, "Sorry about that, folks. The conductor in the other car is having some issues with his medication."

Short pause. First voice: "Once again, we are standing by for a few minutes. The other conductor's wife picks on him and beats him up regularly."

Pause. Second voice: "Folks, he's going to classes to learn how to be a better human being."

Now this might have been a bit unprofessional, but it certainly was funny. Who knew T operators had senses of humor?

Sure Don't Feel Like Kenmore Square

So Mr. Butch died last week, in a motor scooter accident. This might be news to some of my friends who read this blog from outside the Boston area. It's not my intention to pay tribute, mainly because a lot of other people have already written about it, but also because I didn't have any kind of personal relationship with him. But reading about his death did give me cause to think about how much has changed in the city since I came up from Rhode Island to start college in the fall of 1981.

In the 80's and a good bit of the 90's, anyone who went to BU, or hung out at the Rat, or even just went to Red Sox games during that time, is likely to have encountered Mr. Butch at some point. He was, in his own unique way, as recognizable a part of the fabric of Kenmore Square as the Citgo sign. The Square was, well, scuzzy would be a nice way to put it, I guess. Parents delivering their college-bound kids to school for the first time would come through the "gateway to BU" and raise their eyebrows in apprehension: this is where you're going to school?

I remember going to orientation after arriving at BU and hearing someone say, "the city is your campus," as though apologizing for the school not having rolling hills and a nice big quad. But for those of us who were looking for the opportunities only an urban college experience could provide, Kenmore Square was our quad, and we were okay with that. The grime was part of its charm and allure. It was real, authentic, earned.

Sure, things got a little iffy sometimes. There were frequently fights on weekend nights, particularly outside Pizza Pad, where the bridge-and-tunnel club kids would clash with the in-town rockers, or something like that. A friend was menaced by a crazy old lady with a knife in Charile's Cafeteria. And once when I was walking home alone after a late movie, a guy tried to "make friends" with me. But I never really felt unsafe, because there was always so much going on and so many people around.

But about a decade ago, the rumblings of gentrification started to hit the Kenmore area. BU had long wanted the area cleaned up, and as owner of a significant amount of property, eventually the school was able to exert some influence. They had managed to get rid of the nightclub Narcissus; it became a Gap and eventually a Bertucci's restaurant. Pizza Pad got turned into a McDonald's.

It's my understanding that around this time, Mr. Butch was told by the BU Police that he was no longer welcome in Kenmore Square. I suspect he knew what was to come and probably didn't want to stick around there anyway, so he headed up Comm. Ave. to Harvard Ave. in Allston, which did (and thankfully still does) manage to maintain its funky rough edge, and where he was welcomed by the community.

It was touching to read that a memorial service for Mr. Butch has been organized for this Sunday, including a New Orleans-style jazz funeral procession along Harvard Ave., and that his family will be in attendance. It's clear that he was loved by many, which is really all any of us can hope for in our time here.

A while back the BU alumni magazine Bostonia did a back-page piece on the changes in Kenmore Square, the most dramatic of which was the demolition of almost an entire block and its replacement with the Hotel Commonwealth. I don't get over to Kenmore much these days, but I was there the other night to go to a baseball game, and looking across the square at that hotel, it just doesn't look right.

Sure, Eastern Standard is a nice restaurant, but I look at it and think, that's where the Rat should be. It was never my favorite club, but who I was seeing was more important than where I was seeing them, and I have so many great memories from seeing bands there over the years; its significance in the local music scene cannot be denied, and young kids just starting bands will never experience the rite of passage of playing there.

Instead of Kenmore Army-Navy, there's now Jean Therapy, selling high-end designer denim. Instead of the IHOP that replaced Charile's, there's a boutique chocolate shop. There was an old-school Dunkin' Donuts with sit-down counter service (anybody remember that?), and Deli Haus, and Planet Records, and the India Quality restaurant--now all gone. The hotel has tried to reference the Square's past by designing its street-level retail space with some stores one flight above the street and some one flight below, but it seems like an empty gesture. Maybe the Square is nicer these days, but it feels a lot less vital, and somehow less real.

On the other hand, the Kenmore T station is finally getting a long-overdue fixing-up; it even has an elevator now, and they're building a snazzy new glass-canopy bus shelter that's going to look pretty cool when it's finished. So some progress is good, but some isn't; progress is inevitable, but we don't have to like it.

Would You Call It a "Spiser" or a "Mender"?

Overheard, out of context, in the bleachers at Wednesday night's Red Sox game:

"I'm such a miser."
"You're kind of a miser and a spender."
"Well, I'm bipolar, so that's why."

Supercrap

I'm deeply disturbed by something, and I need to gripe about it: it seems that one of the worst music groups of the entire half-century of the pop/rock era is popular again. I'm talking about Supertramp. I keep hearing them on that damn TD Banknorth commercial that runs nearly every morning on New England Cable News. Blessedly, the name of the specific song in question escapes me, and I'm not about to make any effort to find it out, so you'll have to take my word for it. And if you know, don't tell me--I really don't want to know.

Typically I mute the TV when commercials come on, but I watch a little NECN in the mornings while having breakfast, then I leave the room to get dressed, and the commercial always seems to come on when I'm out of the room. By the time I can make it back to the TV, the song has already triggered that alcove of my brain that stores memories of songs, and it's too late: even though it's been three decades since its inexplicable popularity, it's lodged in there until I can get out the door, get my headphones on, and force it out with something else.

Then the other day I was in a store, minding my business doing an errand, when another song of theirs came on. I felt trapped. I felt queasy. I wanted to run away without buying my shampoo. I know that retailers pay a lot of money to companies to select the music that gets played in their stores, and that makes me think: really? This is the best you could come up with? The soulless, musically bankrupt, late 70's analogue of the Dave Matthews Band? I was only in junior high back then, and I didn't like it the first time.

I know whose fault it is, too. I can pretty much guarantee that some baby boomer working at an ad agency or "branding consortium," someone probably a couple of years older than me, who lost his or her virginity in the back seat of a Duster (look it up, kids) a couple of hours after seeing a Supertramp concert, is responsible for this travesty being forced upon us. I don't care about your blissful memories of sexual awakening. Just stop it. Stop torturing us. I think I actually liked it better when everyone's songs weren't for sale, and we were forced to endure cheesy jingles.

(Beer) Blast from the Past

When summer rolls around, I like to change up my beer choices a little. In winter I like to drink moderately heavy stuff--the various Sam Adams and Harpoon offerings, Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn Brewery, and of course Guinness--but in warmer weather I prefer lighter beers.

The Mexicans have the combination of decent flavor and light body down pretty well, and each year I enjoy reacquainting myself with the pleasures of ice-cold Dos Equis, Tecate, Carta Blanca, etc. (Corona is okay in a pinch, but it's kind of like drinking colored water.) I used to like Rolling Rock as my summer beer, but since it was bought by Anheuser-Busch last year and is no longer brewed in Latrobe, PA, I can't bring myself to buy it anymore.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a guy who bought back the rights to the Narragansett brand and has reintroduced the beer to the marketplace, at least in New England. This was news to me, but being a born-and-raised Rhode Islander, where the beer originated back in 1890, I was curious, so on the way home from work I stopped at the liquor store. They did indeed have it, though only in 16-ounce tall-boy cans. I never buy beer in cans because drinking it tastes like drinking the can, but in the interest of, um, "research" I went ahead and got a six-pack.

I thought it might be amusing to sit on the front steps drinking it out of the can to see what sort of reaction I might get from the neighbors, but I decided that might be a little too Larry the Cable Guy. So I sat on the back porch instead, and used a glass. The results of my unscientific testing? It's not bad. It isn't going to win any awards, but it certainly tastes better than Miller or Budweiser (I've long held that I would rather drink tap water than either of those) and kind of reminds me of Coors, which is probably just a coincidence.

I'm not saying Narragansett is a great beer, but the company's new leadership understands the beer's heritage here in New England. For a couple of decades it was the official beer of the Red Sox, and for many people it was their one and only beer. Both my grandfathers and my great uncle on my mom's side were loyal Narragansett drinkers. Its recipe had been altered several times under its various owners, so the new president went to the trouble to find the company's old brewmaster to return Narragansett to its original flavor.

It was decades of ownership by companies like Pabst and brewing in places like Wisconsin that caused the world to forget about Narragansett. Currently it's being brewed in Rochester, NY, which is a lot closer than Wisconsin and close enough to be almost New England. The company president says he hopes to start brewing it in Rhode Island again next year. I think that would be great. It would be like the Rolling Rock situation in reverse: in an era when it seems like everything is the same no matter where you go, it would be nice to have something with a distinct local flavor again.

Cock Blocks?

Some people in Oregon think the traffic-blocking posts the town had installed are too suggestive-looking. See for yourself.

(From KOMO-TV Seattle, via Jalopnik.)

Hacked-Up Hairball

Friday night we did a couple of errands, then went home to relax (yes, we are boring, thank you). In our cable TV lineup we have this group of movie channels that are not considered "premium" (like HBO or Showtime) but show movies unedited and with no commercials. Frequently there's nothing interesting on any of them, but sometimes we find movies worth watching. In this case, we stumbled on a movie so lame, so cheesy, so stunningly awful, we had no choice but to watch: Hackers.

This 1995 debacle might just be the most awesomely bad movie I have ever seen. It's nominally about a group of high-school kids in New York City (who all happen to be whiz-kid hackers) who must fight an evil computer genius bent on unleashing some sort of virus. At least I think that's what it's about. The main character is supposed to be some sort of super-hacker who caused the catastrophic crash of thousands of computers worldwide, and he's supposed to have done this when he was like ten or eleven years old. Wow. As a result, he is banned from using a computer until his eighteenth birthday--such a cruel punishment!

Whoever wrote it had clearly read a bunch of William Gibson novels and was trying to emulate some of the cyberpunk aspects of his writing, but in a contemporary, non-scifi setting. I like Gibson's books, but you can't copy him; it just doesn't work. Whatever Hackers is, it's a mess. Much of it makes no sense, and as with most movie and TV portrayals, the "hacking" is completely unrealistic. Decent soundtrack though: Underworld, Stereo MC's, Massive Attack, to name a few. (According to IMDB, there were actually three soundtrack albums released for this movie.)

One of the great pleasures of watching cinematic fertilizer like this is spotting the otherwise-respectable actors who stopped by to pick up a quick paycheck and maybe, if we're lucky, chew some scenery. The girl-hacker crush object is played by none other than Angelina Jolie, in one of her earliest film roles, sporting a Peter Pan pixie haircut to make her look tough but still sexy and vulnerable. I give her a pass because she was young and probably didn't know any better.

Hey, there's Lorraine Bracco, in an obvious midcareer slump between Goodfellas and The Sopranos, and blonde no less (dye job or wig?), playing some sort of vixenish criminal mastermind. Huh? Wait, here comes Mr. Lopez himself, Marc Anthony, playing... a Secret Service agent? Yeah, credible. Other folks making brief (luckily for them) appearances include Penn Jillette as a bad-guy hacker minion, Dave Stewart of Eurythmics as a white-hat hacker helping the kids, and Felicity Huffman as a prosecutor.

Now, I have to be honest: we missed the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie, so there were a couple of things we didn't get that may have been explained in that early portion. But really, it just made us want to see it again, and it looks like we'll get the chance: as the credits were rolling, a message at the bottom of the screen told us what movie was coming on next, then said, "You've been watching Hackers. See it again on July 21st at 9 PM." Hmm, bad movie-watching party at our house?

Markdowns

The Mrs. and I celebrated our nation's independence in a most patriotic and quintessentially American way: we went shopping. But we didn't go to just any old stale suburban mall; no, we went outlet shopping.

Outlet shopping is one of the few things I can't do on my own, because of the locations. The outlet center we visited on Wednesday is located about 35 miles southeast of Boston. It is not close enough to any public transit, so you have to go by car. There is a company that runs bus charters, but it costs around $35 round trip, which is just outright robbery. The other relatively nearby outlet option is Kittery, Maine, just over the border from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This too is beyond the reach of public transit. As such we go maybe three times a year, which realistically is often enough, considering the time and travel involved.

I first discovered the joys (and disappointments) of outlet shopping in the early 80's on a visit to L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine. The surrounding storefronts on Main Street had been filled by retailers looking to take advantage of the Bean faithful flocking to Freeport by unloading some of their past-season merchandise on them. Outlet retail has grown into its own entity; companies like Gap and J. Crew now produce separate product lines specifically for sale at their outlet stores.

This can sometimes lead to confusion among less-savvy shoppers. The thing about shopping at outlets is, the "bargains" are often dubious. There's a lot of merchandise that just isn't very good, and some things that I would be interested in but that aren't discounted enough for my liking. Then there are the near-misses: not the right color, not the right size. My friend David says, "You have to know what things cost," meaning that having some idea of what the item sells for in the non-outlet world gives you a sense of whether or not you are in fact getting a good deal at an outlet store.

I tend to have the best luck when I'm not looking for anything in particular. I have in the past gone looking for a specific item and found it, but that doesn't happen often. This time around I was hoping to find several things, so naturally I didn't find any of them. I didn't come away empty-handed, but it wasn't as successful a trip as some others have been. The Mrs. has a bit of a bag fetish, so I was not surprised that she bought a new bag, but I was surprised that it was for her sister and not herself. But she got a new bag when we went to New York a couple of weeks ago, so maybe next time.

Office Space

My office at work moved to new office space yesterday. Fortunately it was within the same building, so it wasn't as traumatic as it might have been. The move was handled by professionals, so all we had to do was pack our belongings into plastic crates and label everything with numbers corresponding to our locations in the new office.

Yesterday was designated a work-at-home day, because we would have just been in the way. I'd never worked at home before, but it meant I had to bring my work laptop home to use, because it has all the software I use daily as well as the needed setup to access the work network remotely. But being at home was distracting, and when I went to make something for lunch, there wasn't anything to eat (because we're bad about shopping regularly). So today I'm back in the office, in my new workspace.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm in a cubicle, like I was before; that doesn't bother me. But my cubicle is at the far opposite end of the office from my boss and the other people in my department; any further away and I'd be out in the courtyard. I'm stuck outside the big bosses' offices, across from their administrative assistant. I'm not sure how or why this happened, and my boss didn't seem too sure either, because originally he'd told me I would be at the other end, in the same general area with everyone else. The overhead lighting is too bright, and it's several degrees warmer than the other part of the office.

On the other hand, this space is newly built, so we have much better kitchen facilities including a new coffee-making device, a nice new conference room (the old "room" was a table in the middle of the office, right next to my cube), and some incidental stuff like new phones and desk chairs. And there's a secondary exit next to my cube for when stealth getaways are needed. On balance I guess it's all right. It is nice to be in a space that on one else has used, and that was configured specifically for the department's needs. If I can get them to turn off or undo a couple of the fluorescent lights, I'll be fine.

Weekend Bits

—On Saturday night the Mrs. and I went to see Richard Thompson at the Berklee Performance Center. I've seen him at least half a dozen times, but this was the first time I had seen him perform with a full electric band since about 1998, and it was a killer show. He never fails to entertain, but this time the combination of material from his new album and a choice selection of older songs made it the second-best show I've seen him do, after his awesome "1000 Years of Popular Music" in the fall of 2004.

The Berklee has great sound, but the seats are just awful. They're old, lumpy, and uncomfortable. Over the course of a two-hour show, they really take a toll on your back. There must be a famous music-star graduate out there who would be willing to cover the cost of new seats.

—A while back I said I would do a post about the newly expanded SoundBites restaurant when I had a chance to visit the new space. We finally made it there yesterday (I think they moved next door about a month ago), but they aren't entirely up to full speed yet. We waited in line much longer than usual; according to the owner, the new kitchen has some limitations that are affecting preparation and/or cooking. We definitely waited a long time for our food; typically the plates are on the table within five minutes of ordering. He's planning to add a second kitchen to handle the weekend crowds, and when that happens things should even out somewhat.

The new room is very attractive, with a couple of distinct sections, a roomier self-serve coffee area, and a full bar, a holdover from the location's previous incarnations as a Mexican cantina and, before that, a barroom of varying levels of seediness depending on the crowd it was trying to attract. So we'll have to check back in to see how things are progressing.

Luxury Condos

Riding on the T this morning, I noticed another passenger reading the Metro. For those of you who might be reading from somewhere other than the Boston area, the Metro is a free weekday paper handed out at subway stations and street corners that is read looked at by people who don't want to spend their commute just staring into space, but also don't want to think too hard in the morning. The only reason I noticed was because it appeared this person was reading it upside down. I suppose this isn't a radically unusual thing to observe in the spectrum of T rider behavior, but still.

Later I saw another copy of the paper on an adjacent seat and picked it up. It turns out that on Thursdays the Metro runs a home section (as do many other papers), and for reasons likely known only to them, they print this section upside-down from the rest of the paper. A four-page insert in the center of the paper would seem to be a much more logical and professional choice, but I'm not part of the Metro brain trust, so what do I know?

Anyway, that's not really the point of this story. There was an ad on the back of the upside-down section for a new condo development in Everett, which is adjacent to our end of Medford. I hadn't heard of it, so when I got to work I typed in the web address; turns out it's not too far from our house (there was no map link on the site; I had to map the address myself to find its exact location, which is definitely an infraction of Web Site Usability 101). They're pitching it as essentially (I'm paraphrasing) "city-style luxury living at lower prices and without city hassles."

[CORRECTION: I was wrong. There is a link that says "click here to preview directions from your location," and if you click it (which I admit I didn't do this morning), it gives you the Google Maps page I linked to above. But it's not obvious that's what's going to happen, because when you see something about directions, you think that it's going to ask for your starting location first, because that's what the web has conditioned us to expect. So I'm still calling them out for a lack of clarity, but I didn't want to get a truckload of email from people about it. When I'm wrong, I believe in admitting it.]

Oh, and did I mention it's called "Britney Place"? Is this an intended association with you-know-who? Are the people who would want to live there the sort of people who would also want to name their daughters after the recently-unhinged celeb? Or is it just poor spelling? Neither is advantageous, in my humble (and admittedly biased) opinion.

The site was fairly generic and a little short on things like pictures, but there were a couple of things I found interesting. On the right side of the "Community" page, there are three photos. One is of a guy walking a couple of dogs, one is of the Boston skyline (presumably a view from somewhere in the complex), and the third is of... a row of brick town houses on what looks a lot like Beacon Hill. I'm not sure how those things go together, but I'm thinking the developers want to plant the idea that living at Britney Place will make you feel as much a part of a community as if you lived on Beacon Hill. Okayyyy, sure, if it makes you happy.

On that same page, if you happened to follow that link, there is some general info about the area and its convenience to Boston locations. If you didn't feel like following the link, I copied this part for your benefit: "4 minutes by car to Boston’s North End neighborhood of restaurants, cafes, shops." Read that again. Four minutes. Four minutes. If you live around here, you have a pretty good idea of how realistic that claim is (or isn't). And it's not even a sort-of-round number like five minutes.

Now remember, I said it was close to my house. I can absolutely guarantee you that it is completely impossible to drive from Britney Place to the North End in four minutes, even under totally ideal road conditions--no other traffic on the roads, all green lights--and I don't even drive. I know people who LIVE in the North End who can't get to the North End in four minutes. What flavor crack are these marketing copywriters smoking? I'm fairly confident that you could drive from Britney Place to the Gateway Plaza (Target, Costco, Home Depot, lots of other fun stuff) on Route 16 in four minutes, but I guess that wouldn't have seemed as comparably glamorous a selling point as the North End.

So, where does that leave us? Looking for some sort of a way to wrap this up, I guess. Britney Place's marketing people have, um, taken a few liberties with the materials promoting their development. Not exactly news, I guess, but it makes me wonder what other things they may have fudged or glossed over. Like, walls cost extra?

Heat Treatment

Summer has arrived here in the Northeast, no question. It's been in the mid-90's and quite humid the past few days, but we'll be having much more pleasant, comfortable weather by the weekend (so they say). When I was growing up in Rhode Island, summer highs above the mid-80's were rare, and while it was frequently humid, we pretty much never got this relentless, spongy, soppy, Gulf Coast-caliber humidity, so as far as I'm concerned, global warming is real.

Even so, we are somewhat selfish consumers of natural resources, which is to say we really like our air conditioning. Really, really like it. Sure, I got by with only a fan for years, but you couldn't buy an air conditioner for $99 back in 1986, or I probably would have. I enjoy summer when I can walk around outside without melting into a messy puddle, but when the humidity cranks up, I'm heading indoors and turning on my AC.

After the first few summers at our old place, we got a small unit for the bedroom so we could get some sleep. The rest of the house sweltered around the clock, because there was nothing around it but concrete and asphalt (no trees), and the sun just beat down on the place all day. The thing about summer in the city is that it's not just the heat that interferes with your sleep, but also the noise, and in our case the streetlight directly outside the bedroom window; the AC helped with all of these.

After several years we decided to add a second unit in the living room, but we had a technical issue: there was a wide opening into the dining room, and another wide opening from the dining room into the kitchen. We didn't care to spend a ton of money on a big honking unit that might or might not cool the entire first floor of the house effectively, so we opted to close off the living room opening with thick curtains, which looked really classy, and weren't even very good at constraining the cool air.

When we moved to our new apartment last year, the layout was much more sensible, and I figured out that with a third unit we could have a reasonable approximation of central air, with all the rooms at the same temperature. The only catch was that two of the spaces were a good bit larger than the units we had were intended to cool, so I ended up buying two new units last summer (and giving one of the older ones to a friend).

The new ACs are very efficient and have an energy-saver setting that is kind of like extra-low. I confess that we leave one unit on that setting during the day for the dog's benefit, but we close off the other rooms and leave those units off until we get home.

When we are home, we don't set the ACs any lower than 70 degrees, and we also don't turn the things on as soon as it gets warm and leave them running continuously until the end of September, like some of our neighbors seem to do. (I noticed that the people next door left theirs in their windows all winter, which is just lazy, and it also ends up wasting a lot of heat.) As soon as it cools down we'll open the windows and enjoy the seasonable air, but with one eye on the weather report to see when it's going to get sticky again.

Shopping Satisfaction

Even though we were only in New York for a couple of days, we did manage to get in some shopping, which to me is always one of the key reasons for going to New York. There's always a store or two that doesn't exist anywhere else, or has just come to the US from Europe or Asia and, naturally, chosen New York for its first US location.

This time around, the store I really wanted to check out was Uniqlo. They are a Japanese-based clothing company, and their flagship store on Broadway in SoHo opened in November. It's a multilevel place that is the largest in the entire chain at over 35,000 square feet (according to their web site). The store's design is somewhat reminiscent of an Apple store, with white walls, light wood flooring, and wide, open staircases, and is entirely in keeping with a Japanese aesthetic. The shelves climb to the ceiling and are stacked with column after column of neatly folded clothing arranged by color (quite beautiful to behold for someone like me).

The merchandising reminds me a little of H&M, but Uniqlo's styles are far less trendy and much more classic casual (perfect for me), and the clothing is certainly of better quality than anything H&M could hope to produce. Also, the few times I've stepped inside an H&M, the men's clothing felt like an afterthought, whereas men and women are given equal treatment at Uniqlo, which made it a worthwhile trip for both me and the Mrs, who picked up half a dozen assorted tops.

Unlike much of retailing these days, the store's prices are reasonable across the board; $39.50 seemed to be the magic price point for jeans and dress shirts, but this isn't the time of year when I'm likely to shop for those items. Well, that's not entirely true; I've been looking for a pair of off-white jeans since last summer, but no one seems to have them this year either. I did indeed find them at Uniqlo, and on sale for only $19.50, but they only came in one cut, and it was way too low-waisted and snug for my middle-aged midsection (and dignity).

I did come away with a pair of Bermuda-length madras shorts, a pair of bright blue boxers with pink flamingos on them, and three polo shirts. The polos were offered in about 30 colors and two fits, far more than a typical store would carry. I couldn't find one color I wanted in my size; a clerk noticed me rooting through a stack and offered to get one for me. He zipped up the stairs and returned with it a couple of minutes later. Every employee I came in contact with was extremely friendly and polite, not something you always expect to encounter in New York, or for that matter, anywhere in retail these days (as a matter of fact, our dinner waiters both Friday and Saturday nights were extremely indifferent and indolent).

I imagine that Uniqlo will get around to opening a store in Boston eventually (it seems like an obvious market for them), but I don't want to speculate as to how long that will take. I heard recently that Zara, which is sort of Spain's equivalent of Banana Republic, will have a store in the old Filene's building (it seems funny to write that) when its redevelopment into a multi-use complex is finished two years from now. Maybe the developers should use that approach and go after other retailers who do not currently have a presence in the Northeast, and try to make Boston more of a shopping destination for people who don't get to New York with any frequency.

In the meantime, I will have to be content with shopping at Uniqlo when we visit New York, which means I'll have to try to visit New York more often, until they open a store here.

City Scenes

Our weekend trip to New York was fun, but much too brief. A couple of days isn't nearly enough time to do more than a few things, and the Mrs. is one of those people who always wants to get an early start back, so things have to get wrapped up even earlier than I'd like.

One thing about this trip: the traffic was miserable. We left Boston at noon on Friday and hit a couple of minor slowdowns along the Pike, and some moderately thick stuff where 91 runs into 95 in New Haven. Things slowed down considerably when we got into southern Connecticut, then opened up again, then after we crossed the state line, traffic got slower and slower until we were crawling, and at 6 PM we hadn't even made it past Co-Op City yet. We decided to get off the highway, and using our one map of the area (which only showed selected streets) and some luck, we made our way through the Bronx to Third Avenue, which we were able to take across the Hudson and all the way downtown.

We didn't make it to our hotel, a block above Wall Street, until 8 PM. The trip usually takes us about four and a half hours. That's insane. But I don't think we've ever tried to drive into Manhattan on a Friday evening in the summer; we tend to go at odd times, like leaving Boston at the end of evening rush hour, or on Saturday morning, so I think we now know when not to go in the future. But we did have a very pleasant late dinner at the downtown location of Les Halles, Anthony Bourdain's bistro, which we found totally by accident while heading toward another theoretical food destination.

But the main reason we went was because very good, very old friends who live a thousand or so miles away were in the city on vacation. We've done several of these meetups over the years when they're visiting New York, and it's really good to have that time together, however brief. They've visited us here as well, and we've been to visit them, but the New York visits feel a little more special, regardless of what we do during that time.

On this particular Saturday afternoon we visited the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The weather was perfect, the park was stretched out all around us, and the buildings embraced the park in the distance. We took pictures, but as our friend said, a picture doesn't quite do it justice. You just have to experience it for yourself.

P.S. For those who might be wondering (and since I mentioned it before we left), the dog did very well in our absence, which was a relief.

Hitting the Road

The Mrs. and I are off to New York for the weekend. This is the first time both of us have gone away since we got the dog last summer, so it's kind of a big deal, for her and for us. One of our friends is dog-sitting, and hopefully London will behave for her.

Office Goodies

Every Wednesday morning we have "bagel day" in my office. It's a chance for the staff to have a little break from work, to get together in an informal setting just to say hello and catch up with each other a little. The only real rule is that we have to talk about something other than work.

The responsibility for bringing the bagels and other treats rotates among the staff according to a list that's kept on the refrigerator. Someone is in charge of maintaining the list so that the bagel duties are distributed fairly and regularly among the roughly 25 people who work here.

Today's bagel day turned out to be "mountains of pastry and baked goods day": cinnamon rolls, rugelach, muffins, pound cake, even brownies. There were no bagels in sight, not that this was a problem for anyone, except that I've eaten enough sweet stuff for at least the next 36 hours. Lunch? Couldn't even think about it.

Road Work Ahead

On Sunday we visited my dad for Father's Day. It got me thinking about some of our family history, vacations and such.

In August of 1972, when I was about to turn nine, we took a two-week road trip from Rhode Island to Florida and back. The centerpiece of this trip was a visit to Walt Disney World, which had just opened the previous fall. Our vacations were always car trips, because air travel was still prohibitively expensive for a working-class, single-income family of five, but also because my father enjoyed driving. Typically we went to Cape Cod or Lake Winnipesaukee, but this was the biggest trip we ever took, and as family vacations go, it was a really good one.

I don't mean to skip over the trip itself, but one of the reasons it stays with me is because of something that happened on the way home. We were approaching Washington, DC, and there was some major road construction going on. I'm pretty sure my dad was trying to find the Beltway in order to go around the city, but we ended up in the wrong lane and soon found ourselves on an off-ramp, heading for an unplanned detour into downtown DC. My parents weren't big on museums and cultural attractions, so the sights and sites of our national heritage weren't intended to be part of the trip.

We passed a few landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial. I remember that one in particular because that's when my mom pointed out the window and said, "Oh Johnny, look, can't we just stop for a little while, since we're already here?" My dad's knuckles were white as he gripped the wheel, and he yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! I can find my way back to the highway if you'll all just shut up!" I would have been happy to stop, but I also knew better than to try to win that argument.

Yeah, good times. I didn't actually make it back to our nation's capital until almost 20 years later.

Tree Service

I was just out running an errand at lunch, and I noticed that along Huntington Avenue in the vicinity of Mass. Art and the Harvard School of Public Health, work crews are planting trees. But that's not entirely accurate; they are in fact replacing the trees that are already there. I'm no arborist, but the trees that are being replaced look pretty healthy to me. Anyone know why this is being done?

A Reunion, of Sorts

A few years back I worked for an e-commerce company. Like many others, its story didn't have a happy ending, but not in the usual way. It was a small company, with a staff of about fifteen. It had been acquired by a large tech company that made products that ran our products, so we had the resources of a large company with the atmosphere of a small company, a nearly ideal situation. We had loyal customers and we were making a profit.

About a year after I started there, the company was sold. The new owners were a humorless bunch of folks from a different part of the country, and I got the impression they didn't quite get us. The CEO struck me as a singularly greedy individual. He was quite obsessed with making his company as big as possible as quickly as possible, and a few months after we were acquired, the new owners made a deal to merge with another company. At that point I think we all knew it wasn't going to be good for us.

The company we merged with had a lot of funding (one of the reasons they were attractive to the greedy CEO to merge with), but having the money meant they got to call the shots, and a couple of months later, we got word that the operations of all three companies were being consolidated at company X's offices in North Carolina. Oh, and they didn't need any of us down there, because they could hire people to do our jobs for roughly 75% of our salaries, due to the lower cost of living there. Not that I would have wanted to go anyway; I'm too entrenched here, and if I was going to choose to move away from Boston, it would be to Seattle, or Chicago, or San Francisco.

We had about two months between the time we got the news and when our office was shutting down. As the end grew closer, one of the programmers decided to have a "memorial barbecue" to mark the end. (Many of the employees had worked together at this company for several years before I got there.) He offered to host the event, everyone brought food, and it turned out to be a fun time in spite of the occasion. What's interesting is that we've kept up the tradition; on Sunday I went to the fourth annual memorial barbecue. Almost everyone was able to make it this year, which is pretty impressive.

Even though I only see these people once a year, it's nice to catch up and see what the others are doing now. Four of the programmers have managed to be working together again, one person is retired and spends winters cruising the country in an RV, one got his pilot's license, one is a consultant, one had a baby and is working part-time. I'm not going to say that working there was like being part of a family, but as workplaces go, it's in my personal top three, and it's nice to be able to maintain that connection.

Smoked Out

I was waiting for the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing this afternoon. I walked to the northernmost end of the northbound platform, because when I get off the train at Wellington, the escalators are at that end of the platform, and it's just easier to already be at that end of the train. Yes, I know this is a compulsive personality thing, but when you have to run for a bus that comes only every 20 minutes, the 60 seconds you save walking from the back end of the train can make a difference between getting the bus and getting stuck waiting for the next one.

Anyway, I got to the far end of the platform, and there were a few other people waiting at that end. A minute later a youngish guy came along, went all the way to the wall, and lit a cigarette. This is something I cannot tolerate, not only for the health implications of secondhand smoke, but also because it's just such an incredibly rude and selfish thing to do when you're stuck in a confined space underground. I really don't care how bad your pathetic nicotine addiction is, don't put it in my face when I can't escape it. So while everyone stands around looking annoyed or pretending they don't notice, I'm the person who goes up to the smoker and asks them to put it out. I always do it politely, and the person almost always complies.

This guy looked at me, looked at his cigarette, and looked back at me and said, in utter seriousness, "What, there's not enough wind down here for you?" It's like he was thinking yeah, I know I'm doing something disgusting and obnoxious, but instead of admitting that you called me on it, I'm going to be as much of an asshole about it as possible. In addition to people who have the nerve to smoke in T stations, I don't deal too well with defiance either, especially when it's coming from someone who is in the wrong and obviously knows it.

I probably should have taken a moment to compose my thoughts, to come up with some really good comeback, but I managed only, "The air down here is bad enough without your carcinogens adding to it." I know, what an idiot, right? I actually used the word "carcinogens." I'd blown it. He looked at me like I was from space, then I just gave up and moved away. It took another two or three minutes for the train to come, and somewhere during that time he either finished the cigarette or got rid of it, because when we got on the train he didn't have it. It's a good thing; I probably would have leaped on him and yanked it out of his hand at that point.

When I got off the train, I was sort of looking over my shoulder, because the smoking guy got off at the same stop. I worried that he would end up on my bus and would know which stop I got off at, but that's just a little paranoia resulting from having a minor confrontation with someone over their behavior. I thought to myself, I shouldn't even be in this kind of situation, but when someone behaves this way, I just can't help myself. Because if no one says anything, then the offender believes that it's somehow okay. And it's not. When I witness someone crossing the line of socially acceptable behavior, I can't ignore it. It's probably going to get me in trouble some day.

Money Trail Follow-Up

It's been a few days, I know. I was... (brace yourselves) reading a book. Not even an ebook, but a real, tangible, dead-tree book. I recommend it. Not just the specific book, which was Field of Blood by Denise Mina, but also the act of reading. Very relaxing. I hadn't been reading much other than the newspaper, and I realized that needed to change.

A few weeks ago I talked about awareness of where your money goes. Soon after I learned about a book called The Blue Pages that compiles information about companies' politics and practices. In addition to political contributions, the book lists what types of nondiscrimination policies a company has, whether or not they offer insurance to employees' domestic partners, and any legal actions they may be involved in (labor disputes, discrimination suits).

It's pretty interesting stuff, but at the same time it makes my head hurt a little. To give an example, in my previous post I made a reference to Home Depot executives' contributions to Republican organizations, and said that Lowe's looked like a better choice. I wanted to follow up on that, which is one of the reasons I got this book. Turns out that Lowe's is even worse than Home Depot: their executives contributed only to Republican organizations, compared to Home Depot's 17% Democrat/3% Republican split. Beyond that, Lowe's denies insurance coverage to its employees' domestic partners, whereas Home Depot offers it. So Home Depot in fact comes off as slightly less evil than Lowe's, and I stand corrected.

(Depending on what you need to buy, you may be better off going to your local Ace Hardware or True Value store. These are independently owned stores that are part of a larger network, so by shopping there, you're supporting a business in your community.)

There's a lot more of this sort of info in the book. Some of it is surprising, some of it isn't. One interesting bit: at the beginning of each section (clothing, food, home products, etc.) there is a list of the top ten donors to Republicans and Democrats. In many cases, the same companies are in the top ten on both lists, meaning they are splitting their contributions more or less equally. Infer from that what you will; the best option may be to spend your money with the companies that make no political contributions.

By the way, The Blue Pages costs only $9.95, so it's a worthy and painless investment. But don't buy it from Amazon: their execs lean Republican, and you should be supporting your local independent bookstore anyway.

A Year in Medford

Friday marked a year since the Mrs. and I moved. After almost eleven years in the same apartment, we crossed the Mystic River from Somerville to Medford. We liked Somerville and still do, but we couldn't find what we needed and wanted there, and then its neighbor just to the north beckoned. This has turned out to be a very good decision in terms of our overall quality of life.

First, the residence itself is nicer. Not that the old place was shabby, but the new one has many more updated elements and features, mainly because the owners lived in this apartment for five years before deciding to rent it out because they needed more room. The slight reduction in living space is not a problem for us; it's actually easier to clean and take care of this place. The setting is more pleasant: we have a small back yard here, and there are trees all around. Before there were hardly any trees, and the house was surrounded by concrete and asphalt.

The new neighborhood is quieter and friendlier; we have met a number of people we see around semi-regularly. At the old place, I had a nodding acquaintance with only one person who was not a fellow tenant of our landlord, and there was a twelve-unit apartment building adjacent to us that regularly gave us noise problems.

But the biggest difference is that the landlord isn't looking out the window at us all the time. It was definitely like living in a fishbowl, along with the owner's passive-aggressive behavior and intrusive, privacy-ignorant attitude toward repairs and maintenance. Our current landlord now lives in New Hampshire, and I communicate with him mostly by email, a much more agreeable situation.

We also got our greyhound London last summer after moving, because the old place did not allow pets. While she is the most sensitive, neurotic, and high-maintenance dog I've ever met, we still love her dearly and regularly find ourselves laughing at her behavior.

Getting to and from work does take slightly longer, and there aren't as many amenities as close by as there were before, but these are minor tradeoffs that I have no problem accepting in exchange for the advantages we have gained. I could see us eventually buying a place in this neighborhood (something I couldn't say about our old one). Who knows if that will happen, but it's nice to imagine the possibility. It sure feels like home.

Plasmatastic

A few weeks ago I made that most bourgeois of purchases, a high-definition plasma TV. Those of you who are around me with any frequency know that I've been working up to this for about a year, and you're probably sick of hearing me go on about it. But rather than just say "this is what you should buy," I'm hoping that what I learned during the process may help some of you make the right decisions, or at least avoid making the wrong ones. I apologize for the length of this post, but this is a substantial purchase, one you don't want to make impulsively.

I didn't buy a big TV to show off. My 12-year-old 32" TV was acting cranky for the first few minutes every time it was turned on, and I figured it was the beginning of the end. (In 1995 it was the cheapest set available in that size, and I've definitely gotten my money's worth from it.) Also, because of my poor eyesight, I've always had to sit closer to the TV than I would like, so I wanted a bigger set to give me a little viewing flexibility. At first I considered just getting another tube TV. The largest cathode-ray tube TVs still available are 36", but let's face it, the CRT is old technology that's on its way out; manufacturers have sharply cut their production of tube TVs and are offering few choices these days. So there wasn't any advantage there, even before I'd factored the advent of high-definition broadcasting into the consideration.

For sheer size, nothing beats a projection set (now generally referred to as DLP). They are the least expensive of the large (42" and up) HD sets on the market, and considerably slimmer than the hulking styles of a few years ago, but after viewing several models in stores, I decided against them. Except for the most expensive ones, DLP sets don't offer as sharp a picture as other formats; they have a lamp or bulb that needs to be replaced after a few years; and there are still issues with viewing angle--in one store, I had to crouch down to avoid the darkening of the picture that occurs when you look at it off-angle, and that was the deal-breaker.

So it came down to plasma vs. LCD. Both have some pluses and minuses, but the bottom line is the bottom line: LCD sets cost more than plasma sets in comparable sizes. This is supposedly going to change in a few years, but for now it is still more expensive to manufacture the larger LCD panels. I was comparing a 50" plasma to a 46" LCD, and even at the end of the model year, the LCD cost 20% more. LCD sets do weigh less than comparably-sized plasma sets, but how often do you need to pick up your TV anyway?

Plasma sets are susceptible to burn-in if you leave the set on the same channel for too long (from news crawls or "bugs," those network logos that are always in the same spot on the screen), or watch lots of standard-definition broadcasts with the black bars on the sides, but the risk declines after the first 100 hours or so of use, and if you've bought one of these things, you should be making the most of HD anyway (and thus filling the entire screen area).

I knew exactly which model I wanted four months ago, but I decided to play the waiting game because I knew the price would be dropping when the newer models appeared in the spring. I read up on the models that were being introduced this spring, but the consumer electronics industry has a tendency to remove features in order to achieve specific price points. I wanted a certain feature that had largely been eliminated on the 2007 crop of TVs in my price range, and since there weren't any significant changes to the technology, I wasn't losing anything by choosing an outgoing model, and I saved several hundred dollars by waiting and buying strategically--after prices had been reduced, but before the remaining stock sold out. The drop in price between January and April amounted to 25% of the price I ultimately paid.

Then there was the matter of where to make the purchase. I imagine there are plenty of people who would just wander on over to the nearest shiny-gadget emporium and get whatever model is on sale that week, but that's not me. The big stores' selection tends to be broad, but not deep. I found only two local stores that purported to carry the model I wanted, and both were charging full retail (which you saw if you followed that link up above), which was hundreds (eventually thousands) more than what some online stores were charging. I checked at Costco; they have a fairly liberal return policy, and I figured a good price would be worth the trouble of asking my one SUV-owning friend to help me get the thing home, but they typically carry just a few models, whichever ones they've been able to negotiate the best deals on that quarter, and the one I wanted wasn't one of them.

Beyond these factors, I've mentioned that I like to be mindful of where my money goes, and I prefer to support independent businesses when possible. There are plenty of those online, but most savvy shoppers these days know that not all online stores are created equal. This is particularly true with items like heavy, bulky TVs. Shipping them is expensive; some sites just pass that cost along to you, while others offer free (but painfully slow) delivery; the best sites offer a variety of delivery options, depending on how much you're willing to pay and how fast you want your TV to arrive. You can pay upwards of $200 and get only "curbside delivery," which means just what you think it means: the box comes off the back of the truck and gets put on the ground, and from there you're on your own. Hopefully you've called a friend or two to help you up those two flights of narrow steps.

The other crucial piece of information is that many online electronics retailers will not accept returns of big TVs for any reason, even if it doesn't work right out of the box, and even if they are an authorized dealer for the brand. This is basically because they don't want the trouble and expense of coming back to pick up that lemon set you just bought. In cases like this, you have to deal with the manufacturer directly. This can be a wildly variable experience, and there are horror stories all over the web that may put you off buying the thing completely, or may just drive you back to your local shiny-gadget emporium.

You really have to read all a site's policies carefully in order to make an informed decision. I was determined to get the "white-glove" treatment: full, indoor delivery service and setup, and I was willing to pay extra for it if necessary, but what I really wanted was to get it for free. Ultimately I found the model I'd chosen, at a substantially reduced end-of-model-year price, at Crutchfield, an independent catalog and online retailer with a superb reputation, excellent customer service, a 30-day return policy, and free delivery and setup. It took a bit of effort on my part, keeping tabs on price drops every week or so over the course of several months, but it was worth it. Deciding on a specific model first, and being familiar with the company, kind of knowing that's where I wanted to buy from, made the process a lot easier.

We've been enjoying the TV for a month now, and it's as great as I expected it to be. The cable company just added three more high-definition channels last week, and hopefully more will be added soon. And in case anyone's wondering, I didn't throw away the old TV. It still had some life in it, so I passed it along to a friend.

Call Waiting

On Thursday evening I kicked off my extra-long holiday weekend (that's right, I didn't have to work Friday either) by attending a play at the BU Theatre, courtesy of my friend Anne, who got the tickets for free through her employer. Before the show began, there was a reminder to turn off cell phones.

The performance was the Huntington Theatre Company's production of Present Laughter by Noel Coward. I confess to knowing very little about him, but the show was quite entertaining, funny and drily witty. Near the end of the first act, during a brief lull onstage, I caught the muffled but noticeable sound of a vibrating cell phone coming from a couple of rows behind me. I suppose there are people, doctors and such, who are required to be on call for emergencies and who cannot turn off their phones completely, so I decided to give whoever it was the benefit of the doubt.

During the second act, from somewhere further back came the even more distinct sound of the Nokia ringtone. (I'm sure you all know the one I mean, even if you don't realize you know it.) It wasn't at full volume, but it was loud enough to be a distraction. The phone's owner succeeded in silencing it after a few rings. To their credit, the actors either didn't hear it, or they chose to ignore it. Trying to maintain the spirit of generosity, I thought maybe someone used their phone at intermission to check in with the babysitter, and forgot to turn it off again. Fortunately there were no interruptions during the third act, but during the intermissions (there were two), I noticed several men tucked into the various corners of the theater, hunched over their BlackBerries.

I don't have access to email or the web on my cell phone. Actually, I do have access, but I've chosen not to enable it. I've been tempted by the Treo, having worked for a while for a company owned by Palm; there are times when I'd love to be able to look up directions or restaurant info on the go, but I don't think it would happen often enough to justify the additional cost each month. I have the feeling I'll give in at some point, but for now I'd like to think I can live without being connected during those times when I'm neither at home nor at work.

On Saturday afternoon, the Mrs. and I went to a movie. About half an hour in I hit the trifecta: the phone of one of the people sitting behind us rang. The woman answered it, but she immediately whispered, "I'm at the movies, I'll call you back" and hung up. A noble effort, but again I have to wonder: was this necessary? Are people really so careless, or are they just selfish? When I go into a movie, a play, or even a restaurant, I immediately silence my phone. It's become a reflex action.

I think our electronic tethers are inflating our sense of self-importance. It's one thing to call home to check on the kids, but is it possible that everyone at the theater last Thursday was such an important person that they couldn't (or wouldn't) turn off their cell phones even after being asked to, and had to check their email during the breaks in a play that had a total running time of about two hours and forty minutes? It seems excessive. Entertainment is supposed to be a respite from our everyday lives, not an interruption of them.

Shack Attack

The other day I was upgrading some of the cables and connections of my A/V setup (more on that soon) and determined that I needed to split the signal that comes in through the coaxial cable so it could go to two separate devices. This is easily done with a little doohickey called, accurately enough, a splitter. But getting one meant I had to go to an electronics store, which is one of my least favorite shopping destinations.

This might be surprising to some, considering my love for technology, but I generally find these places highly annoying and depressing, and tend to buy my gear online from privately held, customer-focused companies like J&R or Crutchfield. (I considered buying the splitter online, but it seemed silly for something so small, plus I needed/wanted it quicker.)

The sole purpose of a store like Best Buy or Circuit City is to get you to part with as much of your money as possible. I'm sure you're thinking, isn't that the purpose of all retail stores? Sure, but consumer electronics chains are more blatant and sleazy about it than, say, Nordstrom. They want your money too, but they aren't going to try to push you into an extended warranty for that pair of pants.

I decided I could either stop at a store on my way home from work, or make a special trip on a day I wasn't working. I opted to do it on the way home, making the errand slightly less painful and not wasting my free time. Then I started wondering if there might be another place I could get the part, and into my brain drifted the words "Radio Shack."

Remember them? They're still around. How that's possible is anyone's guess, since they ceased being relevant to the marketplace nearly three decades ago, around the time the CB radio craze had run its course (I'm speaking from personal experience here, but don't judge me; I was still pretty young, and pretty bored). And just last year there was the CEO who resigned after lying about his academic credentials, and a few months later the company's decision to inform several hundred employees that they had been laid off via email. A real shining star in the retail firmament there.

But they are still in business, somehow. In the scheme of things my few dollars wouldn't make much difference either way, and I wasn't planning on buying anything else there for, oh, ever. And when I considered it, stopping at a Shack was actually on my way home, not even half a block from a T station, which made it less trouble than going somewhat out of my way to Best Buy. (Maybe that's how they've managed to keep going--by being more convenient?) I was also sort of curious to see what the place was like, since I hadn't been in one for at least ten years. What were they selling? Who shopped there?

The answer to the first question was mostly cell phones and the mountains of crap that go along with them, and other miscellaneous stuff of about the same quality (poor) as the electronics you'd find at Target. The answer to the second question, at least at 5:30 on a Thursday afternoon, was nobody, or rather nobody else besides me. Three clerks were standing around, talking and looking excruciatingly bored. I found the splitter in less than a minute, paid for it, and got on my way.

Back in the day, if you bought something at Radio Shack, you could be assured of being put on their mailing list for what seemed like the rest of your life. Instead of putting their flyers in the Sunday newspapers like everyone else, they chose to mail them to millions of customers, roughly every couple of weeks. If you asked not to give your name to cut down on the junk mail, the clerk would tell you it was store policy and that you had to do it. It got to the point that, when I did have to buy something there, I always paid in cash and gave a fake name at an old address, simply out of spite. I guess they finally figured out that wasn't the most customer-friendly way of doing things.

Before I went to the store, I had checked the web site to make sure they did in fact carry what I needed, and to confirm that the store I wanted to stop at was indeed still open. The site was actually pretty okay, with decent navigation and lots of subcategories to narrow my search. As with some other clicks-and-bricks retailers, I could place an order and have it shipped to a store to pick up, and not have to pay a shipping charge.

It made me think that, while they might have missed the bus with regard to their store operations, they seemed to have grasped the basics of online retailing. Maybe that's the future of the company, after the stores wither and die. And we can all look forward to spam from them for the rest of our lives.

Monday Morning MBTA Blues

It was bad enough that I started the morning commute by missing my usual bus (which I think is coming earlier, because I'm leaving the house at the same time) and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. When I made it to the Orange Line, the train went one stop, then the doors started closing and reopening repeatedly. Eventually we started moving again, but I could tell it wasn't going to end well.

Sure enough, when we got to State, two of the three sets of doors on the station side of the car didn't open at all, and the third opened and closed again immediately. It wasn't even open long enough for anyone to start moving, so luckily no one got caught in it. But the people who were trying to get off the train started banging on the windows and yelling, as though some sort of poison gas had just been released into the car. I mean, sure, I'd be upset too; we've all had trains and buses miss our desired stop for some reason. But it just seemed like a slight overreaction.

The train went one more stop to Downtown Crossing, and naturally the doors on the other side of the car didn't open either. The train sat there for a couple of minutes, as passengers started muttering to themselves or each other about the havoc wreaked on their commutes by the T on a regular basis. Then the door at the back of the car opened and a conductor came through. She did something to override the system and the rearmost door opened. The people who wanted that stop, and those who had been unable to get out at the previous one, exited the train. We sat for another minute or two, and then came the inevitable announcement: "All passengers please exit this train. This train is coming out of service." Somehow they managed to get all the doors to open, but only to let everyone out more easily.

As we all stood on the platform, we were assured that the next train was just back at State and would be arriving momentarily. This of course was a lie (as it is every time T personnel claim that there is another train "directly behind"), but it was only a small lie, as the train did arrive about five minutes later. But it was still rush hour, so as you'd expect, that train was already pretty full, and there was no way it was going to be able to absorb the contents of another train. I opted not to try to squish in with everyone else, and stayed on the platform.

Once again we were told there was a train at State that would be arriving right away. Once again it was a lie. This time the wait was closer to ten minutes. I thought to myself, could they be having problems with another train? Then I saw the lights in the tunnel. The train approached, and as it came into the station, I saw that the first car was dark, which meant no passengers were in that car. Yes, there had indeed been trouble with another train, and they were only two trains apart. What fun.

But there was enough room on that train for everyone, and I did eventually make it to work. It took about 30 minutes longer than usual, not counting the extra time due to the missed bus. If I do include that, then it took me two hours to get to work today. Let's see how the ride home goes...

UPDATE Tuesday 5/22: This turned out to be a slightly bigger deal than I thought. It actually made the Globe today. And I guess those doors were open a little longer than I'd realized (admittedly, I was reading the paper at the time), because a guy got his arm stuck between the doors. He was able to pull it back in, but lost his briefcase in the process. Nice. I wonder if he can file any sort of claim with the T?

UPDATE Wednesday 5/23: For those of you who may be arriving at this story from the link on Universal Hub, I want to be clear that I was in no way making fun of the man whose arm was caught in the train doors. I admittedly was not paying full attention to what was going on, since this sort of thing is unfortunately a not-that-infrequent occurrence on the T, so I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening. I'm very relieved to hear that he is okay, and that he was reunited with his briefcase due to the unselfish action of a fellow passenger. But the T still screwed up big time.

Paper or Plastic?

On Wednesday I received a letter from my bank telling me that VISA had informed them that my debit card had been "compromised," and that I should call to have it canceled and replaced. Since the card was still in my wallet, I wondered how that might have occurred.

Then I remembered the TJX data breach that was reported in January. While I'm not a particularly frequent shopper at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, or any of the company's other chains, I have bought things from them here and there, and odds are I've used my debit card in one of their stores at least once in the past several years. Since the data thefts supposedly went back as far as 2003, that would increase the likelihood that my card data was among the millions that were stolen.

This is actually the third time my personal information has been stolen or otherwise compromised, and considering that, I'm very fortunate that the outcome has not been worse. A bit over a year ago, the Boston Globe's delivery company wrapped some bundles of newspapers in printouts with customer information on them, mine included. Two years ago, I got a phone call from my credit card company because someone was attempting to make a purchase using my credit card in Japan.

Neither the card company nor I ever figured out how the crook had gotten hold of the card number, but it hardly seems to matter. It's probably going to become more prevalent, as thieves continue to try new techniques that are easier and less risky than armed robbery.

My mother refuses to shop online because she's afraid of data theft, but I bet she's used a credit or debit card at Marshalls at least once, so her personal info is therefore just as vulnerable as if she did use her card online, and in the wake of the TJX and Stop & Shop incidents, it's beginning to seem like online stores' data security may be better than that of brick-and-mortar stores.

So what's the answer? Do we return to a cash-only economy? Is that even possible? These days it's kind of difficult to live without a some sort of credit or debit card, but these episodes showed that the infrastructure--banks, credit card companies, and especially retailers--are not doing their part to make our transactions as secure as they can possibly be. To me, this is basic customer service, and should be spelled out right along with a store's return policies. The Web has entities such as VeriSign that assess and certify the security of online stores; perhaps we need something similar for their counterparts in the physical world.

Extra-Happy Meal

Oh yeah, the week needed a story like this: a kid working at a McDonald's in Illinois hid his pot stash in a Happy Meal box, then gave it to a customer at the drive-up window, along with the food. Story courtesy of Consumerist, one of my favorite sites.

Junk Drawer

I'd like to say that I haven't posted anything lately because I've been out enjoying springtime. I could say it, but it would be a lie. It's just laziness, and a general lack of ideas. Thus, a few scraps:

—I managed to drink my usual three cups of coffee between 7 and 10 AM (two at home and the third after getting to work), but when I was starting on that third cup I realized that I'd forgotten to eat breakfast. As a result I was buzzy and hungry all morning, and couldn't concentrate for more than two or three minutes at a stretch. Getting lunch early seemed like the solution, but I guess I was still out of it, because I got mustard all over the cuff of my shirt.

—May is an expensive month: sister's birthday, wife's birthday, Mother's Day gift, Mother's Day dinner, all within the space of two weeks. Consequently I should try to curb some of my usual spending urges for a while. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

—Yesterday was the Mrs.' birthday; though we had celebrated with some friends on Saturday night, I wanted to mark the actual day by taking her to dinner or something else she would enjoy. But she wasn't feeling well, and has been so stressed out from work that she said even if she was feeling all right, she wouldn't have wanted to go out. So we'll have to hold onto that thought for a bit.

Personality Plus

I don't write about work, because there isn't really anything to say. I go to work, I do my work, I go home, I come back the next day and resume where I left off. I am left alone to do what I'm supposed to be doing. Work is, thankfully, not a source of stress in my life. Getting to and from work via public transit tends to be more stressful. When I get home, the Mrs. always asks "How was your day?" and I always say "Fine." (And yes, I do ask her about her day, which typically includes large amounts of stress.)

But there is something about work that bothers me. I've been here fifteen months, and everyone has been very welcoming and friendly from day one, except for one person. She happens to be the person who trained me when I started the job, because she did it before me. During that first week she struck me as shy and introverted, and though it was pretty obvious she wanted to get back to her own work as soon as possible, she did a good job of getting me oriented and up to speed.

But as soon as my training was finished and she went back to her other work, she stopped talking to me. Not even a "hello" if I passed her in the hall. Occasionally I would see her outside the building or on the subway, and she would avoid eye contact and ignore me. She might as well have had a guide dog. And she's completely normal in her interactions with everyone else in the office, so it's not some generalized personality disorder.

This is how it's been the whole time I've been here, with very rare exceptions. From time to time I have had to email her about something, and her responses are always prompt and polite, as though we had a normal coworker relationship. And a couple of times she has appeared at my cubicle to ask me a question, and again the exchanges were perfectly normal. But we've never had any other sort of conversation, and she still avoids eye contact. We've had roughly eight or ten elevator rides of awkward silence, the kind you have when the other occupant is a total stranger.

Naturally, this bothers me. I've been working for almost thirty years, and I have never experienced anything like this. I have worked with people that I thoroughly disliked, and who disliked me just as much, but we still said hello to each other out of simple civility. Not that I think this coworker is uncivil; I just don't get her. She's breaking the social contract of the workplace, and I don't know why. I have an overwhelming urge to break through her wall of slience and just blurt out "Hi, how's it going?" in the most obnoxiously friendly voice I can muster, just to see what sort of reaction I'd get. But I haven't done it, and I probably won't.

I can handle not being liked, but being ignored? No one likes to be ignored, whatever the reason.

Following the Money Trail

When I started this blog, I did it as a place to share my opinions, but I also had a slightly higher goal: I wanted to help people become smarter about spending their money. That means not just which brand of widget is best, and which retailer you should buy it from and why, but also about that retailer's values, including where your money goes after you spend it.

With this in mind, please take a minute to read this article on Consumerist about donations made by corporations and their executives to various political organizations and groups. While I do not consider myself an activist and I have no intention of making this into a political blog, the intersection of politics and commerce is inevitable in our society, and knowledge and awareness are powerful tools. If you believe in buying things like fair trade coffee or eggs from cage-free chickens because of the policies those items represent and uphold, then you should consider what's at work behind some of your other purchases.

It comes as no surprise to me that Steve Jobs gave money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, but I was surprised to learn that Home Depot and its CEO gave so much money to Republican causes and political action committees. It reminds me of years ago, when the word was you shouldn't go to Domino's Pizza because the company's founder was a staunch pro-life advocate. He sold his interest in the company quite a while ago, and I don't eat at Domino's anyway because there are plenty of other pizza places around and I would prefer to support local businesses, but the point is, it's important to know where your money is going, and you can use it like a vote, by supporting companies whose values align with your own or by choosing not to support companies whose values do not.

I'll bet there are plenty of registered Democrats, and independent voters as well, who have spent big chunks of money on home improvement project materials at Home Depot who might not have done so had they known about the company's donations. Not being a homeowner, I don't spend a lot of money there, but I did buy two air conditioners there last summer, and if I had known this information at the time, I would have chosen to buy them elsewhere. For now Lowe's is looking like the better bet in the home improvement category, but I'd to want to know what causes and organizations they support as well, before spending money there.