John Cole
Tim F.
Tom in Texas
Michael D
DougJ
Anne laurie
Dennis G
Randinho
Mistermix
Kay
E.D. Kain
Angry Black Lady
Tom Levenson
Freddie deBoer
Sarah Proud and Tall
SteveM
Libby Spencer
Zandar
Soonergrunt

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

I think he understood more than anybody around him.  He knew, back in the early days with Woz, that the real power of a PC was the “personal,” not the “computer.”  He saw that a computer could be more than a hobby for electronics enthusiasts, and he saw that the devices we want to live with should be more than simply computers.

Everything the man touched was amazing, and I think it’s because he always kept his sights on the user, not only on the user of today but on the user of the future.  I’m sure he was hell to work for, but that was undoubtedly inseparable from his dedication to his vision.

It’s painfully obvious that Apple will not be the same without him. To the extent that Apple has driven innovation in our electronic lifestyle — computers, music devices, smart phones — the rest of the world won’t be the same either.

Goodbye, Steve Jobs. Thank you.

This is what I love in a vacation. Sightseeing is fine, but I’ll happily take ten days like this one.

As I spoke, he greeted me with, and I’m pretty sure I heard this correctly:

“Hello, Great One.”

And we both continued along our opposite directions.  I caught his greeting too late to do anything but grin.

I don’t really know what it means; a brief stroll around Google doesn’t indicate that it’s a stock catchphrase of any group in particular (along the lines of “peace be with you,” my favorite line from Catholic services).  But I liked it.  I love when people break the boundaries of conventional interactions, especially in a heartening way.

To me, that surprise phrase communicates the universal respect expressed by “Thou art God,” but without the theological baggage.  Thanks, stranger.

We appreciate that you have been with Yahoo! Mail for the past 13 years.

Wow, cool. 1998: before Google, for practical purposes. Before Firefox (though we had Netscape Navigator), before the iMac and the iPod. And perhaps most relevant, before email spam filters had reached maturity.
I was a regular usenet participant, but I unwisely posted under my home email address, resulting in a whole mess of junk mail. I signed up for a Yahoo! mail account explicitly to have a honeypot, an address I wouldn’t mind giving out to marketers (scrupulous and otherwise). And I still use it that way.

The bow-tied apple-bobbing boy at 0:24 is “stuck on Band-Aid.”

The super-cheery firefighter at the beginning is “stuck on Band-Aid brand.”

The former is how I remember the jingle (which, apparently, was written by Barry Manilow) from the commercials of my 1970′s youth.  “I am stuck on Band-Aid, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.”  But already by 1980, the Marketing folks at Johnson & Johnson realized their brand was so successful, it had become a generic, and they tried to push back by reminding you that it’s a “Band-Aid brand” adhesive bandage.

Of course, this screws with the meter of the jingle.  But they weren’t about to throw away a tune that had so thoroughly infiltrated the nation’s collective mental playlist, so they simply shoehorned the extra word in there.  As a result, it sounds rushed — it sounds like an afterthought, because that’s what it is.

But the brand identity people don’t care. They would rather break the jingle than erode their brand.

I don’t know why this bugs me, but it always has. It offends my sensibilities. It reinforces my prejudice that Marketing people have no souls. (Disclaimer: I have friends in Marketing. I’m quite sure they have souls. At least, when they’re at home they do.)

I just can’t stop noticing it.

• Jell-O’s jingle said “Make Jell-O gelatin and make some fun.” Just like J&J did, Kraft crammed the word “brand” in there (“Make Jell-O brand gelatin”) with no regard for the meter.
• I used to have a Lego idea book containing a note to parents, which politely requested that we refer to their product as “Lego bricks or toys” rather than simply “Legos.”  Cory Doctorow called attention to this just a few years ago,  though I disagree with his characterization of it as “vicious.”  Anyway, for my brother and I, the phrase “Lego bricks or toys” has served for 30 years as a shortcut phrase for this sort of uphill battle lawyers and marketers try to wage against common usage.
• An early ad for Vaseline Intensive Care said the product “lets the healing begin.” They later replaced it with “smooths the healing right in.” I suspect this call came from Legal (a department rivaling Marketing in soullessness): the first iteration was arguably making a testable claim, and they had to replace it with something more vague.

It’s probably nothing special to cable subscribers who have had TV Land and Nick at Night for years, but for those of us using only an antenna, this provides an opportunity to catch shows I haven’t seen since UHF: Dobie Gillis, The Twilight Zone, Dick Van Dyke, Bonanza, and on and on.

Only one real complaint so far: the video and the audio aren’t quite in sync.  Its sound is behind by just a fraction of a second — enough to be annoying.  Hopefully they’ll get this straightened out soon.

On a tangential note, Amanda made an offhand comment about how as a pet owner, she requires a lot of her boyfriend’s support, so how much more difficult must it be for mothers of humans to go it alone:

I mean, a pet is like 5% hassle, 95% fun, and with kids, the ratio is more like 75-25, especially when they’re little.

Naturally, several commenters seized on this “75-25 ratio” and ran with it, debating whether the “hassle” number is higher, lower, depends on the kid, depends on their age, etc.  A lot of good points were made, but I have to disagree with the fundamental assumption.

Raising children is 100% hassle. Even when it’s fun.

Parenting eats your life.  At least, it’s eaten mine.  Once that little person enters your household, your time isn’t yours.  Even when they’re sleeping or away at day care, you’re still on call 24/7. That doesn’t mean you don’t ever get to relax or have fun, it just means that your needs and interests no longer come first.  You want to do your own thing, that’s fine, but you have to plan it around the children.

For many of us, the time that most resembles life before children is time at work. When I’m at the office, I’m tending to responsibilities that have nothing to do with my family obligations.  In our patriarchal society, that means fathers (who work outside the home) get to spend more time in a non-parenting role.  We might have a demanding job with lots of responsibility and little self-direction, but it’s still ultimately our own time.

Conversely, you might have a great time playing in the sandbox or building with Legos or reading a story with your child, but that time is still not yours.  It may be a joy, it may be frustrating, but either way, it’s not about you.

Maybe I’m interpreting the word “hassle” too broadly; I think most people read it to imply an irritation. But in context, Amanda used the word to contrast with “ease,” and I think she’s right: when you’re in a parenting role — a role that the traditional patriarchal marriage allows the father to spend very little time in — it’s sometimes fun, often rewarding, but never really what I’d call “easy.”

As my wife began planning for his birthday party, several of our friends told her, “Five is a big birthday!” or words to that effect. This came as a surprise to both of us. Not that five isn’t a big deal, but that’s because every birthday is kind of a big deal when you’re a kid.

I’m not really sure why people were singling out the fifth year as some kind of milestone. I understand the attraction to multiples of ten and five, but that makes more sense when you’re older; 25, 30, 40, 50. It seems like the first couple decades of life have enough concrete milestones, having to do either with physical development or societal rules, that there’s no need to rely on properties of numbers.

• One: hooray, the parents survived the first year! (This birthday is for anybody’s sake but the one-year-old. Every day is “happy birthday” when you’re that age.)
• Two: old enough to blow out the candles.
• Three: you may now play with toys that present a choking hazard.
• Five: you qualify for kindergarten.
• Seven: it is now okay to play with the Nintendo 3DS.
• Thirteen: This is a really big one. PG-13. Facebook. Myspace.
• Fifteen: learner’s permit.
• Sixteen: driver’s license.
• Eighteen: you can vote, be drafted, and buy cigarettes (but not beer). Age of consent, in most states.
• Twenty-one: finally, you can buy your friends beer.

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch.

The station’s website was unsurprisingly uninformative about this new development (television stations tend to treat their websites as an extension of their local news broadcast, rather than as a place for information about the station itself), so I stopped by the station’s office to ask in person.

The front desk clerk didn’t tell me much — she said she didn’t know most of the details, and I see no reason not to believe her — but she confirmed that the station plans to begin broadcasting additional programming, and they’re hoping to start by the end of May. What will the programming consist of? The receptionist said the station managers are still deciding, possibly still in negotiations, so your guess is as good as mine.

I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing one of NBC’s sister channels (CNBC or MSNBC) coming in over the air. But considering that our local ABC station’s second digital channel is a FOX/My Network TV feed, and the CBS affiliate multicasts with the CW, the possibilities are pretty wide open. We’ll know soon enough.

Whatever the final selection, I’m happy to see this. Broadcast television remains pretty limited in the Flathead Valley, so this latest development will add welcome diversity to what’s available.

Update 5/28: 9-2 is up, showing MeTV.

Update 6/1: According to RabbitEars, 9-3 will be This TV, another channel specializing in retro programming.