Category: Home Base

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Home Base

Tagging along

C is for CookieYou guys know I like Tagalongs, right? As in the Girl Scout Cookies with the peanut butter in the center and the chocolate on the outside? I call chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream “sex on a spoon,” so this is basically sex in cookie form. If you think the notion of buying sex in cookie form from Girl Scouts is awkward if not outright disturbing, consider this even more alarming fact: they only sell Girl Scout Cookies once or so a year.

Which probably explains why I’m actually not fatter than I already am.

A while back, Wal-Mart tried to make their own versions of Tagalongs. They failed. The balance was off. The beauty of Tagalongs is that you’ve got just the right amount of PB inside, and just the right amount of fudge on the outside sealing it in – neither flavor really dominates. It’s nature’s most perfect food, aside from that whole pesky not-really-contributing-anything-nutritionally-meaningful thing. Wal-Mart also took a huge amount of criticism for trying to approximate the recipe and therefore, by extension, trying to steal sales from a wholesome organization like the Girl Scouts. Okay, I can kinda see that angle too, though I think that had everything to do with it being Wal-Mart that was doing it.

But now, completely under the radar, I’ve found that someone else has done a damn nifty job of approximating the recipe and getting the balance right. You can get these at Aldi stores, and they are delicious, and make no mistake… they are Tagalongs.

Not Tagalongs
Truth in advertising: whoever Benton is, these are indeed the best

They’re also only a couple of bucks a box. I know, I know… I’m evil and self-serving.

Aldi doesn’t have them in stock year-round (yet), but they do make them available a few times a year as advertised specials. And when they do, I will be there. Because even when I buy Tagalongs, real Tagalongs (and I still do, you know), I never have enough cash on me to do the whole freeze-a-year-round-supply thing that so many people talk about doing but never actually do.

Besides, it’s best if I buy only a few boxes, a few times a year. Do you know know long a single container of Tagalongs (or their generic twins) lasts around me? Not very long.… Read more

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Home Base Serious Stuff

Steve Jobs

It’s almost certainly not news to anyone here that Apple co-founder (and Pixar investment angel) Steve Jobs has died. I’m pretty confident that I don’t need to explain the guy’s background.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of his business practices, but it’d be nigh-on impossible for me to try to deny the huge influence Jobs (and Steve Wozniak) have had in my life.

AppleMy first computer was an Apple II clone. Okay, maybe that didn’t feed any money into Jobs’ bank account at the time – at least not until Apple sued Franklin and the other clonemakers – but the thing’s lifeblood was Apple II software. I learned to program BASIC and some machine code on an Apple II. I was convinced I was going to start cranking out games on that machine.

As it so happens, I also discovered bulletin board systems on an Apple II, and that’s why you’re reading this here, because that fascination – with reaching out and writing stuff that other folks could read – can be followed straight to the front door of this web site, whose oldest content started out as a series of files handed from BBS to BBS. All written, at least at first, on an Apple II (or a similar facsimile thereof).

During some of my most troubled teenage years, games like Ultima IV and Project Space Station occupied large swaths of my time and kept me out of trouble that I could’ve been getting into at that time (heaven knows I didn’t exactly have a strong parental influence guiding me at the time). Those were made for the Apple (and run by my trusty Franklin ACE) too. Then there was a very early desktop publishing program, The Newsroom, which helped me to further my interest in writing for print. Both my copy of The Newsroom at home and the one at school, ran on an Apple II.

Eventually time, and the diminishing availability of software, caught up with me and I reluctantly retired my Franklin ACEs from active duty and started writing my stuff on a PC instead. Only it was my stepmother’s PC and, as she commonly did, she let me use it and then yanked it out from under me just to cause me grief. All she really did was make me shrug and go back to writing the early LogBook files on a machine compatible with an Apple II.

Ten years ago this time, I was producing TV spots on a Mac-based Avid system, and was cursing its incessant ability to take forever to render, or just completely crash. Let’s skip the Mac. It wasn’t my friend.

The Android tablet that travels with me everywhere is not an Apple product. I’m consistent, if nothing else: it’s kind of like the modern day equivalent to the Franklin ACE. It’s also something that I’m sure nobody would’ve bothered to make if they weren’t trying to get the budget-minded portion of the market for Apple’s iPad. I use it… a lot. I’ve passed on the iPhone revolution, and I sat out several rounds of iPod in favor of a cranky old minidisc player and, more recently, the aforementioned tablet, but one would have to be perilously close to the crazy end of the scale to deny the huge cultural impact of those products. As Variety.com noted, the iTunes Store virtually single-handedly created the paid digital content market at a time when internet piracy was running rampant and outstripping the studios’ and labels’ ability to keep up (let alone comprehend) the changes taking place around them on the media landscape.

Oh, and my kid loves the Toy Story movies. Jobs brokered the deals that made those happen, too, having bought Pixar from George Lucas when Lucas needed a cash infusion in order to – and let’s be honest here – avoid feeling any impact whatsoever from a massive divorce settlement.

Now, to be sure, the hardware that made the Apple II happen was Steve Wozniak’s invention, and the design of the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iEtc. was driven by guidelines laid out and fiercely championed by Jobs, but he didn’t create the machines in either case. Jobs’ genius was that he could stride out into the middle of the American consumer landscape and convince us that, yes, we need personal computers in our homes, and they might as well be Apple IIs. Yes, you need a personal digital music device to replace your CD Walkman, and here’s the iPod. Yes, you need a phone that will grow tendrils that intersect every possible part of your life. Yes, those little flatscreen touchscreen computers they had on Star Trek: The Next Generation? Let’s move the timetable on those up from the 24th century to rightaboutnow. And, oh, by the way, you need one.”

He may well be the most successful carnival barker in history, because everything that Jobs’ company has cranked out since the introduction of the iPod, we’ve needed. Considering how ubiquitous everything since the ‘Pod has become, the man either had a deal with the devil, or he was a stark raving mad genius.

My money’s on the latter. Thanks for being a stark raving mad genius, Steve Jobs. Look at you. You went and changed the world. You made geeks out of everyone, even the folks who swore up and down that they’d never become geeks. And speaking as a fellow nerd… that is the sweetest revenge.

(Tapped out on the onscreen keyboard of my decidedly non-iPad tablet.)… Read more

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Home Base Should We Talk About The Weather?

Dashboard Dinner

For the past couple of summers, it’s gotten to be ridiculously hot at this point in the year; the heat index yesterday around here was 120 degrees. Last summer, I decided to stop wasting all of this solar energy that was pouring down on us from above and start putting it to good use. Mission: cooking without adding one iota (either metric or imperial) of heat to the house.

Dashboard dinner … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Home Base

E and Z, or how to unclog your dog

We had to spend an unnervingly large amount of my wife’s paycheck on a vet visit for Xena the other day. She hasn’t been the same since the weather got nice again and we let her go back outside – well, it’s more like we had to push her outside.

E & Z

And therein lies the problem. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Gaming Home Base

Four rather colorful horsemen of the apocalypse

Halloween was a bust this year – little E was plagued by a stomach virus just when he needed it the least (like there’s a good time for that sort of thing); I spent most of Saturday trying to keep up with the upchuck. Needless to say, no trick-or-treating took place this year… and no one came to the house this year, since Xena’s doghouse has been relocated to the front of the house. (Xena goes as Cujo every Halloween.)

In the meantime, me and my three-year-old boy spent all weekend exploring one of the most enduring and conceptually disturbing survival-horror video game franchises of all time. Strong stuff for a pre-schooler, you say? Sure it is, but it’s all so innocent. … Read more

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Funny Stuff Home Base

Brain scan

A couple of my Facebook friends recently posted some personality and intelligence test results courtesy of an app there. I’ve taken those same tests before, but it’s been a while; I went directly to the site for the tests rather than do the Facebook app (even before the recent revelations, I just don’t do Facebook apps) under a silly pseudonym. But what the heck, I’ll post the results here, even if I don’t want them to have my info. … Read more

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Cooking With Code Home Base

Thank you for not blogging

This blog has become a bit of a no-blogging zone here lately. The whole site has. I’m working on that a bit, but it’s been slow going. My hours aren’t conducive to me getting… well… much of anything done. (I just mowed my yard this week after getting a long-distance call from the guys aboard the International Space Station, asking me to do something about the fact that my grass was tall enough to brush up against their windows when their orbit carried them over Arkansas.) Daddy duty is taking more of my time as little E reaches the age where he wants to explore things, learn more stuff, and have conversations. I love the little conversations we have. It’s the whole reason one’s in the dad business. He cracks me up sometimes, especially when he comes up with some humorous response that’s like something I would say in the same situation. He really is turning into a little me. (I want him to turn out better than that!)

I’m trying to figure out what to do with theLogBook.com. Daily updates, frankly, ain’t gonna happen anymore. It was a valiant try, but at this point I think it’s all about finding clever ways to leverage what’s already on the site. You’ll be seeing quite a few instances of “It aired today X years ago!” stuff soon, as we’re going into the time of year that American TV shows generally premiere – it’s kind of a no-brainer. I wish the forums were generating more activity that I could point to without having to go in and constantly goose it, but I guess this is to be expected when I pretty much fell off the grid for about a week or so (without really planning or preparing to do so, it has to be said). Responsibility for the site going comatose lies solely at my feet.

At the core of the issue is: I have less time to do all the watching / listening / reading that I used to do, to say nothing ofr writing about all the watching / listening / reading that makes up the site. My schedule has really become more about drive-by forum postings (and an awful lot of them are links to other places) when I have the time – perhaps a little too much influence from Facebook, but really much more of a function of my schedule.

I’m open to ideas on how to make it work. I’m not ready to give up yet, even though by any measure that includes common sense, I probably should be.… Read more