Friday, August 23, 2002

Things that you think will be fun, but aren't: I don't know what brought this to mind, but several years ago our house was broken into (while we were asleep and, therefore, we now have an alarm system) and some 225 music CDs were stolen. Fortunately our insurance was for replacement value. This meant that the insurance company allowed me to replace all my CDs -- as long as I did it within, as I recall, three weeks. The idea is you go to the local CD megastore -- with which the insurance company has a deal -- and get your collection replaced. Well, not so fast, buster. The store gives you no help at all, just a shopping basket and a chance to walk up and down its aisles re-acquiring what you already had. Except that, it doesn't stock a lot of what you owned and isn't about to go out and re-order them either. So, basically, what you get is 225 CDs, not necessarily the ones you had before, but worth the same amount as you paid for them in the first place, on average. Okay, I thought, I'll do my best to find replacements and, after that, I'll just buy ones I didn't own before. I asked the insurance folk if this was all right and they said, as long as I picked out my 225 CDs within the specified time period, that would be just dandy with them. I replaced about 70 or so. Then it was on to the new ones. The first 60 were fun. After that, it was drudgery. So many bad CDs, so little time. Finally, I got a friend of mine, who was then a classical music critic, to help me with building the beginnings of a collection in that genre. Enthusiastic at first, even he grew weary. On the last day, when I needed to get at least 30 more CDs to get my money's worth, I was cursing the thieft not for stealing them in the first place, but for making me work so hard. A while ago I looked and there were still about 10 that have never been removed from their shrinkwrap. I wonder what insurance companies do now that so many people just download from the Net and burn on to CD blanks? 9:44:04 AM    comment []

To heck in a golf cart: All in all, I like to walk a golf course, pulling my little cart behind me. It's not that I want to feel one with nature on the links, I can do that in my house -- surrounded as it is by water and forests (and tourists) -- but because, otherwise, I get out of touch with the game itself. Friends, might (no, would) say that I have never been in touch with golf, but that's another story. Yesterday, however, I ventured on to a stretched out, mountainous course that takes four and a half hours to play in an electric cart and would likely run to six (plus varous bodily injuries) on foot. The experience became something like a game of polo, if you had to get off the horse to hit every shot. On board the vehicle there was a GPS thingy that told us how far we were from the hole every time we alighted to blast the ball remotely in the direction of the flag. This we turned off after the first three holes (for a $5 refund, each), but it continued to tell us how we were doing as regards time -- two minutes ahead of where we should be in the course, two minutes behind. All in all, an odd out-of-body experience. I don't know who was playing yesterday, but it didn't feel like me. That probably explains why most of the drives landed in the fairway. On the other hand, the people I was playing with were fun to be with and were kind about my remarkable lack of golfing talent. So it evened out. 8:00:25 AM    comment []

Fearful in the face of commitment: Every review I've read of the new version of OS X. aka Jaguar, has been favorable. It will do practically everything except put peanut butter on my toast in the morning, or so I'm told. Two things come to mind: One: I will put this on a test machine and not on the computer I use for my everyday life or work, because I've never met a new -- or even a revision of -- operating system that worked without flaws the first time out. There's always something that didn't come up in testing. Two: I always believe that a new piece of software is going to solve my life. It never does. What I get, instead, is a new piece of software, period. It may make things a tad easier, but it's no miracle cure for anything. Unless, of course they invent a program that will get me out of sand traps. 7:43:12 AM    comment []

Fearless in the face of commitment: I have taken the plunge and plunked down my money so that I can continue GfC. Was this wise? Was this a good investment? Probably not. 7:34:57 AM    comment []