Ramblin' with Roger

Then my friend Tom Hoffman, husband of the Hoffinator, mentioned on these pages recently, had some sort of digestive tract problem which sent him to the hospital on Halloween, which was on a Sunday. Tom’s problem required some surgery, which meant that he would not be able to go to the polls. For someone as politically conscious as Tom, this was a real crisis. Fortunately, the Board of Elections webpage had a form online that allowed us to print it out. Then his wife still had to take it to the hospital and get him to sign it before 5 p.m. Monday, the day before Election Day. Fortunately, she was able to do so, and she got an absentee ballot, which she delivered to the polls on Election Day when she voted, thus assuring victory for President John Kerry.

Just as Tom was getting out of one hospital, my big boss, Jim, landed in another hospital with a heart attack while playing in a basketball game, saved by the janitor using the defibulator required at all of the schools. Jim was making a slow recovery, but appeared out of danger.

When Tom got out, I e-mailed him pretty much every day, mostly about politics. He was a political junkie who chastized me for voting for Nader in 2000 (in New York, where Gore won by a wide margin anyway.)

Then the next Friday, I came to work, and the secretaries called to me in a conspiratorial manner which meant that they were going to give me bad news. I figured that Jim had died. One of them whispered, “Tom died.”

Tom died? I was happy for Jim and his family. But Tom DIED? He had had a massive heart attack the night before, a year ago today. We all were in shock; he was doing so well. And he wasn’t even 50.

Over the next few days, folks from the office were over at the house, helping in whatever way possible. The funeral was the next week, and it was Jim’s first time out of the hospital.

There’s not a political story that goes by when I don’t think, “I wonder what Tom’s take on this will be, er, would have been?” I’m sure he would be relishing the Republican infighting over the Miers nomination, outraged by the Bush administration’s defense of torture, and thrilled that Scooter Libby was indicted.

More than that, he was a weather junkie, who could predict with some accuracy the path of a hurricane. He was the commissioner of the March Madness basketball pool, and he was often a winner of said pool. (No, it wasn’t a fix, and no money was involved, only bragging rights.) He was a librarian, so he was naturally very bright.

I know the Hoffinator misses him.

With the old VCR, I’d get really behind watching J because I’d have to find the correct show on the tape. My wife will tell you that I was pretty much of a moaner when it came to watching shows on a six-hour tape. She’d say, “Let’s watch Gilmore Girls!” But I’d groan, “Do we HAVE to NOW? It’s the fourth item on the tape, and I’ll have to go back to find it, then skip over it later!” Now, we have a menu, and we can watch whatever we want whenever we have the opportunity.
The other thing I can do is to tape two things at once, which I gather from Mark Evanier TiVo cannot do. Boy, I wish I had this feature some years ago when The Equalizer was on CBS and St. Elsewhere was on NBC, both on Wednesday at 10 p.m.

The downside to the DVR is that it has finite capacity, some 30 hours; it seems to be some combination of number of shows and the hours taped. On Tuesday, I was up to 33 shows unwatched, 98% capacity – we were busy with other things, and I had taped a Macca special here, a Johnny Cash special there- which required dumping a couple shows quickly.

So what AM I recording to watch?
Weekdays:
6:30 pm ABC World News Tonight. We usually watch it after Lydia’s in bed.
7:30 pm JEOPARDY!, which, unfortunately, really starts at 7:29:50, so I miss one or two introductions.
Sunday:
9 am: CBS Sunday Morning
9 am: This Week – I couldn’t decide so I’m taping both.
7 pm: 60 Minutes- But why does the machine suggest that it will actually start at 7 pm when there’s a 4:15 NFL game? I end up recording Cold Case just to see the last 60 Minutes segment.
8 pm: The Simpsons, if I can find when it’s actually on after football.
Monday:
12:35 am: Ebert & Roeper
8 pm: Arrested Development – so I finally decide to watch the show, and what do I get? Two weeks of “encore performances” of Prison Break, then a pair of AD episodes, back-to-back, then more Prison Break.
Tuesday: This has been “Must See TV” night for me for a while
8 pm: Gilmore Girls
9 pm: Commander-in-Chief
9 pm: My Name Is Earl – I know about counter-programming, but why are the only new shows I’m watching on at the same time?
9:30 pm: The Office
10 pm: Boston Legal
10 pm: Queer Eye- which must be on hiatus
And we eagerly await the return of Scrubs
Wednesday: Nothing
Thursday: Nothing. A night of shows we have watched in the past but have given up on: Survivor, The Apprentice, E.R., even Joey. Actually, we have, at my wife’s suggestion, recorded a couple episodes of Everybody Hates Chris, one of which we have seen and enjoyed.
Friday: Nothing
Saturday: The evening news, if it isn’t pre-empted by college football. Otherwise nothing. (With the networks often showing reruns of shows that were on during the week, why don’t they just give the time back to the affiliates? I suspect it’s because it IS a time they can occasionally run specials and they don’t want to surrender the time permanently, but that’s a guess.)

So that’s 15 hours a week, more or less. Probably a few minutes of news in the morning for the weather.
Here’s where you say, “You oughta be watching X.” Well, it won’t be CSI or NCIS or any show that portrays how crummy people are to other people. I’ve given up on 24. I don’t plan on getting HBO.

So we tape early in the week, and watch later in the week.
My wife watches the evening news, 60 Minutes, and the Tuesday shows except Boston Legal. Actually, we haven’t seen Commander-in-Chief in three weeks, but we will, we will. It’s recorded and it’s retrievable, unike some VCR tapes I have. For example, there was a Temptations movie (2-part, 4-hour) taped, never watched; must be 5 years ago now.
The other thing my wife views is figure skating. I say I don’t watch it, but I could, if asked, provide an analysis of the pros and cons of the old scoring system (based on 6.0) and the new one. So I don’t sit down to watch it as much as it’s on while I’m reading the paper and I get to absorb it by osmosis: Grand Prix. Triple salchow. “Fell out of doing a triple lutz and only landed a double; that will cost him plenty.” And why do the sponsors (this year, Ore-Ida and Marshall’s) run the same commercial, 3 5, even 9 times in two hours? Fortunately, she usually watches this in the recorded mode, so she can zap past them.
Yes, I watch some sporting events, but I tend to be a playoff fan: from September on in baseball, from Thanksgiving on in the NFL, March Madness in men’s college basketball. But if a baseball game happens to be on during the season while I’m flicking through the channels, I will check it out, especially in the summer when many shows are repeats.

And maybe I’ll find that Temptations tape.

My mother used to “work outside the home”, as it’s now referred to, when we were kids. So we spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s, her mother’s, house. Grandma Williams used to tell us stories about bogeymen and whatnot, and Leslie and I were gullible enough to believe her tales; baby sister Marcia was too savvy to buy into it.

My mother was pretty much unaware of this until we told her when we were adults. This gave her a huge case of the guilts. Was she a good mother? My sisters and I perfected our response, we heard the question so often.

“We’re FINE, Mom! None of us are mass murderers or destitute. We’re happy, reasonably healthy. You were a fine mom, and we love you.” Which worked until she thought of it again.

Recently, Sony has been caught using some pretty underhanded, quite invasive methods to keep people from copying CDs released from certain artists. I’ve not discussed this with everyone until now, because Sony would not release the list of those titles that are affected by this “XCP” copy protection.

There are already at least four ways of using this “XCP” software for nefarious purposes.

Please note, this is about removing some nasty software that makes your PC vulnerable to many different attacks, not about bypassing legitimate software protection (which this is NOT).

Here is the list of CURRENTLY KNOWN artists/titles (more may come out of the woodwork):

Trey Anastasio – Shine
Celine Dion – On ne Change Pas
Neil Diamond – 12 Songs
Our Lady Peace – Healthy in Paranoid Times
Chris Botti – To Love Again
Van Zant – Get Right with the Man
Switchfoot – Nothing is Sound
The Coral – The Invisible Invasion
Acceptance – Phantoms
Susie Suh – Susie Suh
Amerie – Touch
Life of Agony – Broken Valley
Horace Silver Quintet – Silver’s Blue
Gerry Mulligan – Jeru
Dexter Gordon – Manhattan Symphonie
The Bad Plus – Suspicious Activity
The Dead 60s – The Dead 60s
Dion – The Essential Dion
Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten
Ricky Martin – Life

I would suspect ANY SONY or BMG disc released during 2005. Some of you may note that I’m not calling these Audio CD’s or CD’s – they are in fact NOT true Audio CD’s. Many of these non-audio CD titles will cause damage to stereos (car and home) that do not know how to deal with the non-audio portion of the disc.

Anyone out there heard any more on this?

I don’t care. I feel no pity.

When I was a kid, I used to go to O’Leary’s market at the corner and buy cigarettes for my father. (You used to be able to do such things, back in the bad old days.) Winstons, they were.
Some point after the Surgeon General’s warning about the risks of lung disease from cigarettes, my father developed emphysema. He quit, but when the symptoms went away, he went back to smoking. I thought this was the dumbest thing he had ever done, and I (gingerly) made that known to him. Eventually, I started stealing his cigarettes, first a few at a time, and then whole packs. (He bought them by the carton.) I figured if they became expensive enough, he’d have to quit. Packs were already up to 35 or 40 cents. Soon, my father tired of my behavior and said, “Roger, give me back my cigarettes,” and I did.
Eventually, my father quit smoking. He’d argue otherwise, though. He’d say that he never quit, he just stopped for a day, then another day, until it became over 25 years of another day without tobacco.

Back in 1972, I was in an elevator at college when a guy was coming onto the elevator and about to light up. I pleaded with him not to. He said, “Why? Do you have asthma?” I lied, “Yes!” and he didn’t light up. I have a very good nose, and I’ve sussed out a smoker at 30 feet. I don’t know if I’m peculiarly sensitive to smoke, but I do know that physically it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to be around smoking, or heavy smokers, or even where smoking has taken place recently and/or heavily.

I’m not as nice about this issue as I used to be, especially since I’ve had a child. I suppose I can live with people offing themselves, but I draw the line when they’re slowly killing me and those I love. I really suffer when smokers smoke in open air stadia. It may be pouring rain, but I’ll leave a bus kiosk before standing next to smoking.

Tomorrow is the Great American Smoke-Out where people are supposed to try to quit tobacco. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths both among men and among women. One cannot nag someone to quit: see Steve Gerber on August 10. (Mark Evanier had some interesting observations about this back on August 9.) Good luck to those who desire to quit.