Is this why people buy Macs?

The Stallion is in quarantine.

My main home computer is unusable right now, pending help from Microsoft.

I canned Norton Internet Security after almost two years of saying 'no' to paying for virus updates. I installed Avast! anti-virus software instead.

I don't know why, but Windows woke up and said hey! You've changed so much since first validating Windows that we need you to validate Windows again within three days. I figured that would be no big deal -- it's a legit copy of Windows XP Professional. I got it the day they launched it at the freakin' launch party hosted by Microsoft. It's real, so I expected no problem.

But problem is what I got. The Activate Windows program window opened up a window frame ... and did nothing. The hard drive chugged and chugged, but nothing happened. The program showed as "Not Responding" in Task Manager.

Okay, no big deal, right? Reboot. Same problem.

Check the web for help. Find some Microsoft knowledge base stuff about tweaking the registry and deleting some files and copying new copies of possibly corrupted files. Reboot. Same problem.

'K, this is getting lame. I call Microsoft. They listen to my problem and put me over to the Activation Centre. The Activation Centre is an automated system that tells me to run the Activate Windows program. Oh, bloody hell.

I figure, maybe if I just hang back and let this program chug away, it'll get somewhere. After about half an hour, it tells me that a script is running slowly and may make the computer unstable if I let it keep going. If I say yes, the program stops. If I say no, the chugging keeps going and nothing happens.

Crap.

So I posted a detailed request on the MS support page. Meantime, time is ticking down for my three days. Within 24 hours, Johnny Microsoft (not his real name) gets back to me and says:

From your description, I understand that The Activate Windows program always 'Not Responding.' No matter what method used. When checking relevant KB articles and other posts, you got some messages and the error code 0x80070002 was received. If I have misunderstood your concern, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Johnny said I should run the Activation program and follow the onscreen instructions. I told Johnny Microsoft that yes, he had misunderstood my concern. I made no mention of such an error code. And the whole point is that running the Activation program does nothing but chug at the hard drive and there *are* no on-screen instructions.

Well, that's the last I heard from Microsoft.

On day three of three, I noticed that my HD was pretty much full. I found a 9.12 GB (!!!) file in C:\WINDOWS called seuptlog.txt. Oh, that's not good. I erased it and tried some more.

I was able to conclude that:
- msoobe.exe seems to be the problem program
- the program is writing an endless series of repeating lines in the setuplog.txt file. The repeating sequence is:

08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,1023,,
SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSetupOOBECKPT TOS08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,999,,
DISPID_API_GET_REGVALUE 08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,1023,,
SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSetupOOBECKPT 008062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,963,,
DISPID_API_SET_REGVALUE 08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,987,,
SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSetupOOBECKPT, TOS
08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,1035,,
DISPID_API_DELETEREGVALUE
08062008 084856.921,dxpspbasentsetupoobemsobmainapi.cpp,999,,
DISPID_API_GET_REGVALUE

- it appears that msoobe.exe is trying to delete a registry value but is unable to
- I, also, through regedit, am unable to edit this registry value. It won't let me
- also, Microsoft is pissing me off.

Well, the three days have expired. The Stallion is locked up. Windows won't let me do anything other than start in Safe Mode. Well, I *can* start normally -- if I choose to Activate Windows, which, as we've learned, starts the window to nowhere and fills up C: with a crap log file. Now I can't print -- I think Stallion is my print spooler on the network. I can't finish the song I'm working on. I can't edit video. I can't do anything!

Where's Johnny Microsoft? Sure, they promise a response within 24 hours. I got that response -- the wrong response -- and that's all.

If he writes back and says -- oh, just try reinstalling Windows -- I don't know what shade of purple I'll turn.

Subscribing to Big Ass Superstar

Hey! Loyal visitor!

Did you know that you don't have to remember to come here all the time to read my junk?

The technically gifted among you may have been able to figure this out before, but I've set it up to become a lot easier to subscribe.

A service called Feedburner has made it simple for me to offer a subscription feed of BigAssSuperstar articles and my Flickr photos.

I'm no expert, but once you're hooked up, you read this web site's content in a news reader, or through your My Yahoo, or any number of other software thingamajiggies.

So, get hooked up by clicking on the XML link in the sidebar, or just click these words here and follow along.

Getting more, paying less

As much as I simply adore the idea of having an HDTV, I'm perpetually putting off the purchase.

As mentioned several times here, I want the fun but I don't wanna pay the price. I could justify buying a new screen, but I couldn't justify paying a lot more for digital cable, HD cable, an HD cable box and perhaps the full overhaul and upgrade of Little Eddie Dingle, the Home Theatre PC which serves us plenty well on old-school low-def teevee.

But the esteemed author at I've Paid Twice For This Already writes about an experience this week that made it a lot more palatable:

Well, right now at least, switching to digital and HD service from our extended basic service, and keeping our other services, we are eligible for another 12 months of an introductory special, which is about $20 less than we currently pay right now. And it includes the HD box. After the twelve months is up, the price goes up to $7 more a month than we currently pay for extended basic. So upgrading now saves us $20 a month off our cable bill for the next 12 months.

Now, that would be cool. I dunno if the local cable provider here would do something like that, but it goes to show that making a phone call here and there can get you a bargain.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Speaking of old things on the Internet...

I was "updating" a few files at http://www.cygnals.com/ last night, and noticed a directory in the FTP client that I hadn't seen in years.

• http://www.cygnals.com/adventures/

Remember the early days of the web, when pretty much any remotely interactive content was radically cool? Well, I went to the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores and bought as many Choose Your Own Adventure books as I could find, with the goal of writing them up for the web.

I got through one of them. I sat there and typed out the whole book into HTML files and linked 'em up. Yeah, I had that much time on my hands back in 1996 or whenever that was.

Give it a spin if you like!

And if you really dig the Choose Your Own Adventure books, check out Demian's Gamebook Web Page for a database of these and others.

Oh, the interwebs -- ten years and still kludging

A belated happy 10th birthday to my other domain, cygnals.com.

When I graduated university in 1995, Internet access was from only one room in the school, and I did everything through a shell (text-based) interface. I knew how to check my email (with Pine), and I could use IRC.

Some of the other students were checking out something new called Mosaic, which was a graphical interface to something new called the World Wide Web. I wasn't that interested. Hell, we had gopher, newsgroups, muds, all that cool stuff. Graphics? Pfft!

A while later, my friend Cindy, who'd been schooled in journalism and didn't have much interest in computers beyond the page-layout programs of the day, started to learn about HTML. She told me a few basics -- that it was a matter of putting tags around text to make them bold or italic or whatever, and adding links and images.

So, I picked up a book called HTML For Dummies and set about learning. This was back in the era where the BLINK tag was brand new. In hindsight, the HTML of the day was basic basic basic. Tables were new and controversial and probably not quite standard. Internet Explorer hadn't been invented, if I recall correctly.

I set up a little web site at Toronto's first real ISP, but I was still viewing everything in black and white text through a little program called Lynx. That forced me to design all my web stuff to look decent both in plain text and on the Netscape of the day. It built some habits that stood well for the time -- keep images as compressed as possible (GIF only, natch) and always use the ALT tags so people could get around. It was a rare treat to go to a machine hooked up to "real" internet with a "real" browser and see if the graphics looked like they were "supposed to".

When that ISP shut down, I moved to Interlog. Interlog was bought by someone, which was bought by someone else, etc. You remember the tech bubble. Rogers@Home came along and I got into the high-speed era.

1998 rolled around, and with all that HTML-ing experience under my belt -- all by hand, kids --that's when I registered cygnals.com. And old friend from the BBS days, Vic Metcalfe at Zymurgy Systems, had his own hosting company, and graciously hosted the web site.

As best as I can tell, that was back in 1998. I noticed the date a month or two ago when the domain came up for renewal again. I finally moved away from Network Solutions, which was one of the only places you could register a name back in those days.

Ten years.

Ten years is a long long long time on the internets. Much of the stuff over at http://www.cygnals.com/ is still about that old. My 1998-era web design skills just don't hold up. I moved away from being a geek at just the time being a geek was starting to pay off and be cool. The internet passed me by in a lot of ways. I'd love to tidy up the old site and make it pretty again, but it seems like it'd be so much work. Meh. This blog works fine.

And now it's almost time to renew the bigasssuperstar.com domain for another few years (and get away from register.com).

I saw a news story this week about how the internet's naming authority is about to open up the net to a free-for-all of domain names. The old-timey geek in me thinks that's just wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The whole idea of a hierarchical domain name system seemed so bloody efficient. Top-level domains, and you work your way down. If it can be anything-dot-anything, that just feels like chaos.

Then again, the net is a lot more chaotic now than it used to be. Back in the "early days", there was so little content to go around, being a little fish in a little pond was enough. Now you really have to be somebody to be somebody. I don't even think I'm the #1 Scott Simpson on the net any more!

And in the eyes of Google, I'm not somebody any more. I've got bad PR, so to speak.

I was wondering this week why my PayPerPost opportunities had dried up to dessicated remnants of the drizzling shits. It turns out my Google PageRank has fallen.

My PageRank is zero. Zero! Yeah, I guess it's probably because I do the PPP thing in the first place. (Tangent: anyone remember when you had to set up all your internet settings manually through a Winsock program, and PPP was one of the protocol options you could choose when buying your ISP subscription? No? Just me? Yeah, I'm old.)

One thing that could, as I understand it, get my PageRank back up is to have inbound links from relevant, well-ranked web sites. Many thanks to Cindy, Rasheed and the couple of others who've linked here from their blogs. I totally dig your spirit. But if any other readers come here for something more than "big ass pics" and other Google-stumbling, hey, hook a fella up. Blogroll me or somethin', would ya? Maybe?

So, as I approach my 35th birthday this summer, I say happy birthday to a part of me I've spent some years distancing myself from -- the relics of my old, excessive, immature, embarrassing life on the net at cygnals.com.

Props from the peeps

News95.7 got a ton of fan mail over the weekend praising our thorough coverage of the forest fires around Halifax. We taped the emails to the newsroom whiteboard as they arrived in the assorted inboxes. Today Jason White snapped this photo of the sprawling wall of tributes.

Good news, bad news on the consumer front

BAD NEWS! Scooter, the Roomba Scheduler with intelli-bin that mom and dad got me for Christmas, is sick and/or dead. It started making a loud grinding noise and the main roller brush stopped working consistently.

GOOD NEWS! I got in touch with iRobot (the robot company, not the Will Smith movie) and they diagnosed the problem as a problem. They say they'll be sending a new robot and that I should just throw the old one in the garbage after stripping it for parts. Wow! That's customer service! And the Hammacher-Schlemmer warranty may even extend past the iRobot warranty.

---

GOOD NEWS! Steak-umms are back! Thinly sliced sandwich steaks that go from frozen to in-your-belly in minutes! TV ads even promote Steak-umm burgers!

BAD NEWS! The ads are American.

GOOD NEWS! I contacted the Steak-umm company (at www.steakumm.com) with an urgent request for information on Canadian availability of Steak-umms. Company e-mail responder Jena Evans responds enthusiastically:

We are pleased to inform you that Sobey's stores, as well as their affiliates IGA, Foodland and Price Chopper stores, are now carrying the Steak-Umm Sliced Steaks in Ontario Canada.

BAD NEWS! I don't live in Ontario. Crap. I miss Steak-umms. I mean, I love it here, but we don't have Steak-umms.

GOOD NEWS! We have donairs. Screw you, the rest of Canada.

---

BAD NEWS! My Western Digital My Book 500 GB external USB hard drive failed. I was using it for backups, file transfers and extra storage for the PVR. The WD drive diagnostics thingy craps out at various points, suggesting to me that either the cable is faulty (lies!) or some read element is broken (possibly true!). And from the comments at amazon.com, it looks like I'm not the only one with problems.

GOOD NEWS! I bought it a little more than a year ago from Future Shop. I contacted Western Digital to see if my warranty is still good and they can send me a new drive. That was weeks ago and they haven't replied. Wait, that's not good at all. That's BAD NEWS!

Considering privacy when there's nothing to hide

I'm looking for your opinions on this ... I think I know how I feel about it, but I'm aware that other people feel differently ... so help me understand here.

I've posted here before about people marking some of my Flickr photos as favorites in a post entitled "Gay guys totally dig me on Flickr." There's a contingent of gentlemen who think my chubby, hairy belly is dead sexy.

When I check recent activity on my Flickr gallery, I regularly find that people have marked some of the photos as favorites. When I click on the person's name to see their favorites, there's usually a theme. When it comes to the context in which I find my pictures, it's usually a collection of overfed and underdressed hirsute dudes.

Me -- I'm not that spooked by it. I find it flattering that people would find me so attractive they want to see my picture more than once. I don't feel threatened by it. My pictures don't portray me in a degrading fashion in any way that would impugn my character or smear my reputation. They're just photos of me that happen to appeal to a certain narrow demographic. I even stuck out my belly in one of the photos on our Cuba trip as a nod to my "fans".

Lately I've spotted a few people favouriting my girlfriend's pictures. And, likewise, there's usually a theme. Usually it's breasts, specifically cleavage, although one guy clearly had a thing for cute girls' armpits.

Now, this is where I acknowledge my opinion may diverge from others.

I'm not threatened by men on the internets looking at our innocent snapshots and finding my girlfriend to be hot. I'm kind of flattered that they think she's as sexy as I do.

Some people find it really really creepy that people would be looking at them like that. I don't think Amanda's comfortable with strangers finding her pictures sexy. I don't think she finds it threatening but she's clearly not into having her armpits fetishized for people who troll the web for shots that accidentally show the body parts they love most.

Now, I'm not taking pictures of my partner in sexy underthings and in suggestive poses to post on the internet to vampiristically solicit the drooling glances of other strangers. Not that that would be entirely unlike me, or some version of me from the past, but that's not appropriate, welcome or ... y'know, it's not a good idea. I get that.

Aren't I scared that these people are stalking me or her? No, I'm not. I don't believe these people are infatuated with anything more than the particular image they're looking at. I'm not afraid that someone out there has spotted my lady's 'pits or decolletage and is crawling the web looking for a way to get to her. I don't feel that kind of fear.

What's going on here is that we're posting perfectly reasonable snapshots that the average person would find innocent and plain. But people are devouring other peoples' photographed life and cherry picking the parts that turn them on, then saving them out to a collection that focuses on their particular predilections.

So what's a person to do? Cave into the peepers and go private with our otherwise unproblematic photos? Consider this: every parent who's posting adorable photos of their kids playing in the backyard pool are also sharing those family memories with oddballs who scour the web for pictures of children playing in backyard pools! Your little boy or girl could end up bookmarked for future insalubrious viewing by a guy whose viewing habits would make you throw up.

Where's it stop? If someone has a thing for women in red shirts, you may find your photos ending up in a collection along with other women in red shirts. Blue-eyed redheads? You're bookmarked! Flat-chested? Ample-bosomed? Somewhere in between or maybe a little heavier on one side than the other? Someone's going to fancy you! Someone's going to fancy you for a part of you you may not be proud of. And even if you're proud of it, are you comfortable with someone other than your honey bunny ogling you at the keyboard?

So, that's what I want you to meditate on and comment about.

How do you handle the knowledge that the material you post innocently to the web is likely being consumed by people who are using it for pervy purposes you hadn't intended?

A picture can say a thousand words ... or just a few

Before we went on our trip to Cuba, mom and dad sent a really cool card.

It was a picture of a cat exploring some luggage ... and the caption was something along the lines of "Going somewhere?"

I thought it was very unusual -- and cool. I think she explained that a local photographer made and sold them using his or her own photos. What a neat idea! It was just a regular photo print, like you'd get at the store, on a simple card ... but it had a real sense of personality and creativity that you don't quite get with even the most appropriately-chosen Hallmark or Carlton cards.

I even thought to myself ... now that's a smart way for a photographer to monetize a hobby. I think I even said it out loud. Not in a crass, commercial way. Just a little "well, isn't that one smart cookie?!"

Well, there are ways to do it yourself. Of course, you could print up your own photos and find the right card stock. I suppose you could even learn calligraphy and get stickers and decals and transfers and stamps. Scrapbooking hobbyists would have a blast!

Me, I'm not so fancy.

I know that my flickr photo account is linked to various services that let me print photo cards, photo calendars, photo beach balls perhaps, and photo albums that I ordered the first Christmas we were here to show the folks back home some of the pictures I took during Year One on the Right Coast.

But if you're not all flickrized and just want to do up some fancy Photo Cards, there are other options. CardsDirect has a whole mess of options available in color, B&W, sepia, borders, finishes, and whatnot.

I can imagine a lot of people would order them for family photo Christmas cards. Nice, but a little predictable.

How about:

• Look at our new baby!
• Look at our new pet!
• Look at our new baby and our new pet!
• We got new carpet -- see our first stain?
• The best shot from our vacation
• Hubby finally cooked -- can't you just smell it?
• Our province is flooded, and this is the last thing we saw before the house floated away ... wish you were here!
• Does this look infected to you?
• This is infected. Get yourself tested
• This is the last you'll ever see of me
• It's yours. Pay up
• Here's a photo of my new photo card
• Happy Festivus
• We got married and you missed it! Kisses!

Just a few ideas. I hope you find inspiration.

Worst case scenario, you can order a blank one with a non-sequitur shot of anything, and use it as a thoroughly amusing substitute for stationery. Now that seems right up my alley.

Selling out to the man

Hey, gang.

Life's ticking along in a loverly fashion. The weather here has been alternating between gorgeous and blech, but that's what spring's about, I guess.

I figured I'd give everyone a heads-up that you may start seeing some Big Ass sponsored posts.

As you might've gathered from recent posts, I'm taking an even greater interest in my finances lately. Part of that has been spurred by my voracious consumption of personal finance (PF) blogs. Some of these bloggers augment their income to pay down their bills by blogging for dough. The most common one I've seen among bloggers whose blogs I like is called PayPerPost.

PayPerPost offers bloggers various opportunities to write a little blurb that has something to do with a product, service, web site, widget, gadget, person, concept, whatever ... and get money for it. It can be a few bucks or it can be many bucks. Because I'm not one of the most popular blogs in the world (yet), I qualify for the few-bucks ones. And because I'm not an amoral shill who's willing to whore my writing out for just anyone (yet), most of the PPP opportunities are of absolutely no interest to me. And I'm told they have blog reviews.

So, it's not like I'm about to get rich doing this.

I'll try to keep the sponsored stuff to a minimum, and where I'm able, disclose that it's a for-money thing. But I hope you'll believe me when I say I won't tell you I love something if I think it's a scam. I'll try to pick opportunities that serve your interests. And since the only ones out there who give any regular feedback are people who know me personally, I'll assume that your interests are reading about what my interests are.

In other words, the blog will stay mostly the same.

Anyhow, if you write a blog ... if you have some decent traffic ... and you're interested in making a few bucks here and there ... check out PayPerPost.

And if you're dropping by and think -- hey, this BigAssSuperstar could really give a rub to my excellent product, service, widget etc. -- well, just click the picture in the sidebar and make me an offer. I may tell you to take a hike, or I may dig your scene and be happy to take your money.
What'm I going to do with the money I earn? Gosh, I dunno. Pay for my next belt test at tae kwon do? (I got my green stripe just before the Cuba vacation, if you hadn't heard.) Save to buy a house? Buy some of that kitten-soft toilet paper? Renew cygnals.com for another few years? (The ten-year anniversary is coming up, gang.)

Another PPP note ... You have to read and write pretty well. Reading poorly doesn't pay off, because the rules are strict. For example, this post didn't measure up to standards, so I didn't get paid. Them's the breaks, people! I'm actually grateful that a company like PPP is rewarding people who can read and write!

Kudos to Philips on the Bodygroom

My much-blogged-about Philips Bodygroom broke.

The on/off button became permanently indented and wouldn't turn on/off. Bah!

A quick internet search told me that I wasn't the only one with this problem. I called Philips and found that my unit (the Bodygroom) was still under the two-year warranty. They emailed me a UPS shipping slip and I had it out in the courier within a day or so.

I don't know how long it took, 'cuz UPS dropped it off at the rental office downstairs and nobody ever called, but they sent me back a brand new one. Yup, a brand new retail boxed Bodygroom. And it could be my imagination, but this one seems even sharper than the last one.

I have not noticed any change to the button mechanism, so there's a chance this one could fail like the last one ... and I don't know if this machine earns me a fresh two-year warranty ... but I think it's great that they'd take care of me like this.

This is probably the best warranty-related customer service I can ever remember receiving from any company having to do with anything. Ever.

Thanks, Philips!

One more Chris Andrews video, before he was Punch

The funeral for Chris "Punch" Andrews is today in Newmarket. I'm sorry I can't be there.

Thanks to those who replied to my previous post about Chris. I've heard from some people I haven't seen in more than 15 years.

Here's one more video from the BigAss archives. Judging by a shot from the end that shows an old Standard Broadcast News terminal, I think this was shot on September 30, 1991.

It shows Chris op'ing a Blue Jays game (on the Telemedia sports network!) at Energy 1480 (CKAN-AM) in Newmarket. It's also a short tour of the radio station. If you knew Chris, you'll appreciate the short bits of him in the tape. If you're just curious about what radio stations were like before computers, then you'll see that, too.

Keep an eye out for cart machines (YouTube video quality is too poor to read the labels), reel-to-reel machines, record players, old clocks, clunky headphones, ashtrays, the wooden weather station, giant PCs, and a small collection of compact discs.

All the best ... be good to each other.

What's under the hood

This is mostly for my own benefit, so I can refer to what gear I've got if I'm in the mood to upgrade .... or if there's some kind of catatstrophic crash.

Little Eddie, the Home Theatre PC is:

• AMD Athlon XP 1500+ at 1.3 GHz
• 512 MB RAM (256 MB x2)
• MSI MS-6712 board (aka MSI KT4V)
• BIOS is American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01
• 704.03 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity (Maxtor 6B200P0)
• SONY DVD-ROM DDU1621
• Sapphire/ATI RADEON 9000 video
• Hauppauge WinTV 250 and 150MCE tuner/capture cards
• Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
• SnapStream FireFly
• Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard
• Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter
• Inside an Antec Overture II case
• Hooked up to living room television and home theatre sound

The Stallion (studio/gaming/general purpose PC) is:

• AMD Sempron 3000+ at 2 GHz
• 2 GB RAM (1 GB new Kingston Value, 2 x 512 MB Kingston)
• ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe board (v2.xx), BIOS Rev 1013
• 407.87 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
• SiI RAID 0 Set + WDC WD800JB-00CRA1 (80.02 GB)
• NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG
• CD-RW LG GCE-8481B
• ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 9800 Pro video
• SB Audigy Platinum sound card (removed for now)
• M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 sound card
• LG L204WT 20" widescreen monitor

Both running Windows XP.

Well, that ought to do it. Enough geekery for tonight. Dinner's almost ready.

Sorry, bud, wrong Scott Simpson -- the sequel!

Last June, I wrote here about an email I received from a US car dealership about my new Lexus:

Ray Catena Lexus in Larchmont, New York wrote to welcome me to the eVIP program for service on my Lexus Rx350. They even had the VIN# for my Lexus.
Problem is ... I don't have a Lexus.

Today, another email from another dealership addressed to me ... well, to Scott "B" Simpson:

Welcome to the New Country Audi OnStation Program! We are pleased to offer you complimentary membership to our online email program designed to help you maintain and extend the life of your vehicle.

I've sent a reply to New Country Audi, 181 West Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT, asking how this could happen. Haven't heard back yet.

Name my robot

Still no flying cars, but the Jetsons world is starting to come through at BigAss HQ with the arrival of the Roomba robotic vaccum cleaner.

I got a Roomba Scheduler for Christmas from mom and dad and have had a few opportunities to put it through its paces.

It's cleaned the living room and dining room a few times, and does a decent job. It chokes on cords if they're in the way, and wedges itself helplessly under the coffee table from time to time, but that's half the fun.

It's not a hands-off toy. It demands cleaning after use. Emptying the dustbin is just part of the maintenance. It takes a bit more work to take the roller and brush out and give them a thorough cleaning. But that's, again, part of the fun. It's satisfying dirty work, like popping a boil, or cleaning the wax out of your ears, or a good puke after drinking too much.

Yesterday I cleared the clutter from the master bedroom and sent it on a mission to clean where the regular vacuum won't go -- under the bed, under the dressers and so on.

The Roomba spent an hour or so bouncing around the bedroom while I cleaned the litterbox. I cleaned the machine's guts afterward and ended up with a huge pile of cat hair, lint and detritus. After recharging, I sent 'im back for another mission. Another pile of stuff. This beast really cleans up.

The problem is ... he (she?) doesn't have a name.

Given that our household has two kitties named "Kitty", and Amanda's DS Nintendog puppy is named "puppy", there's a solid chance the new robot could end up named "Robot," "Roomba," or "Vacuum."

Suggestions?

In the days before DVD

Not so many years ago, people didn't have DVDs. We had videocassettes. We had the Betamax vs. VHS wars, which are chronicled so thoroughly on the interweb. And people who wanted something better than videotape had Laserdiscs. They were big -- like the size of records -- but they had great picture quality, fantastic sound quality, and often had extra stuff... the kind of extra stuff we take for granted now on DVD.

This is a clip I found on an old VHS tape when I was doing some transfers at home. It's a clip from Buffalo's NBC affiliate, WGRZ-TV, Channel 2, on their evening newscast. It's a consumer segment asking whether it's a good idea to invest in a laserdisc player. I figure this clip is from early 1992, several years before DVD was introduced.

I get a kick out of past predictions of the future, and old-time fascination with technology that we now view as archaic. And I'm looking forward to the days when the stuff we consider high-tech is considered embarrassingly out of date. Hell, look at how far cell phone technology has come in just the past ten years.

Buying a bunch of stuff -- are Dean Ween's pickups next?

Seriously, I'm not manic right now. I'm just feeling creative as heck and spending money and having trouble falling asleep.

I just bought a bunch of new gear for the Big Ass Recording Studio: an audiophile sound card, a set of awesome studio monitor speakers, and a new mixing console. It ought to be great, once it all arrives and gets hooked up.

And I was sitting here tonight thinking ... man, I should go get the guitar restrung and tuned up if I'm going to be doing a bunch of recording and mixing soon ... after all, Amanda got me a gift cert for the Halifax Folklore Centre so I can have that done ... but wouldn't it be awesome to upgrade the stock pickups in my Fender Fat Strat? Probably. I love the guitar, but I bet it could sound even more awesome if I had improved pickups. Y'know, I think it was partly inspired by overhearing some college kids talking about guitars on the ferry this morning. Anyway....

Problem is, I don't know a damned thing about guitar pickups. I know a humbucker from a single-coil -- and I know I rarely play the single-coils on my Strat 'cuz they feel like they don't cut through like the neck-position humbucker.

So, I go a-cruising on Google to find out what kind of pickups guitar hero Dean Ween uses. And I find a brand-new article on Fender's web site about it:

You know, I have other guitars -- I have a lot of guitars -- but I use my one Strat for everything; for all of our touring and all of our recording. I have one Strat that just sounds and plays better than any other one; a '61 slab-board neck bolted onto, like, an early '80s '62 reissue. And then I put the same pickups in all my guitars -- it's got a Hot Rails in the lead position and then two Fender-Lace Sensors in the middle and the neck. That's my go-to guitar for every track and every gig. It's been re-fretted, like, five or six times since I've had it. And, apparently, it was used on Private Dancer. That was the story I got.

So, there you go. No idea what those pickups are about, how much they cost, or anything else about 'em. But now it ought to be easier for anyone else to find out about Dean Ween's Strat pickups. Rock on.

More insight from Google Analytics

Some Google searches that have brought people to the Big Ass web presence:

• all varieties of "big ass": hairy big ass, big ass small waist, big ass wife, urban big ass, all about big ass, big ass fans squishy ass, big ass kiwi's women, big ass small feet, big fat disgusting ass in thong, big!!! ass!!!"
• some "huh" searches: "dirt digger" scientist -rocketing -team fossil
• "sunrise senior living" sucks
• .50 cal dummy shots store
• looking for guys to "tap me" in the cambridge area
• some local stuff: bud the spud chip wagon, custom shoes for problem feet halifax, chemtrails halifax, doodads electronics dartmouth nova scotia, haircut bayers lake business park, graffiti halifax, scientology in halifax
• some questions: how to get small waist but keep ass, how to have a big ass, how many calories are in a pretzel roll?, how many calories are in a super donair, why do men like big ass woman
• nwemarket high school people use face book
• and lots of searches to do with X-weighted

Make of it what you will. As long as people are coming here, how they get here isn't so important.

Stuff I'm learning from Google Analytics

A few months ago, I signed to set up Google Analytics for bigasssuperstar.com. It uses a little embedded tag in the web pages to keep track of web traffic in more depth than my usual log analysis would show. It's free and pretty cool. But it's teaching me stuff I didn't know about my traffic.

In the past month, for example, Google Analytics tells me:

• I had two visits from Iceland
• 100 from Brazil
• One each from Zambia and Botswana
• 40 from Russia
• 66 from Saudia Arabia ... 40 from Iran ... only two from Syria
• Two from Khazakstan (wa wa wee wa!)
• 4,334 absolute unique visitors. Seriously?
• 18 viewed on their Playstation Portable, 4 on the PS3, 3 on the wii
• 79% of visitors use Internet Explorer, 16% use Firefox, with Safari, Opera and PSP following
• 86% arrive from search engines, mostly Google. 7.5% come directly. 6.77% show up through referring sites.
• Most popular search key words are "big ass" (67%), "bigass", "ass big" and "big ass adventures"
• Only 4% of visitors indicate they still use dial-up

Now ... more than four thousand visitors? Granted, most of you are looking for big ass. Big ass videos, big ass adventures, big ass small waist, whatever. I'm clearly getting most of my traffic from folks looking for large behinds. Sure, they find it, but unless they're looking for "hairy big ass" or "sweaty big ass" or "maritime big ass eating pizza and cheeseburgers and sometimes donairs", I'm probably not the big ass they're looking for.

Still -- you big ass hunters -- drop a note, huh? Fine, you speak Greek or Italian or French -- or Estonian, a lot of you. "Suur Eesel üli-täht!" Write some comments. Send an email. Show yourselves, dammit! I feel like people are calling me up night and day and not even saying "oops, wrong number!" before hanging up.

Mission Accomplished: Bodygroom arrives in Canada

After a year of campaigning on this blog and pleading on customer service phone lines, results are in. Philips has listened. One of their PR-folk has emailed me the following release:

LOOK BETTER NAKED
PHILIPS LAUNCHES BODYGROOM -- OFFERING CANADIAN MEN A MORE CONVENIENT WAY TO TRIM AND SHAVE BELOW THE NECK

TORONTO (Ontario) -- May 22, 2007 -- To help Canadian men maintain a cleaner look and feel, Philips introduces its latest innovation in male grooming complete with an online how-to guide at http://www.shaveeverywhere.ca/ to help men tend their woolly coats. Just in time for Spring, guys can trim their fur line with the Philips Bodygroom -- an all-in-one body hair groomer for hair removal everywhere below the chin...including those sensitive spots below the belt.

This ultimate manscaping tool offers a better solution than current methods -- Philips Bodygroom is less painful and less expensive over time than waxing; and more precise with fewer nicks and cuts than scissors or blades. With a product this easy and convenient to use, men no longer have an excuse not to look better naked and feel their absolute best.

"Men are becoming increasingly conscious of their body image and until now have resorted to painful or inconvenient hair removal methods to maintain their appearance," says John Nicholls, Marketing Manager of Domestic Appliances and Personal Care, Philips Canada. "With Philips Bodygroom, there is finally an affordable all-in-one solution for Canadian guys to trim and shave unwanted body hair in the comfort of their home."

With warmer months ahead, Philips Bodygroom is an ideal tool for shearing overgrown pelts to show off hard-earned pecs for a beach-ready body and an asset to men who play sports where body hair slows down their game. While keeping a well-groomed body is aesthetically pleasing, it is also essential for hygiene and comfort. Trimming or shaving body hair removes trapped bacteria causing body odour and allows deodorants and sprays to come into direct contact with the skin, leaving the body looking good and feeling fresh. Philips Bodygroom is safe for all body zones including the chest and stomach, back and shoulders, underarms and groin area.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Philips Bodygroom is an easy-to-use body hair groomer designed specifically for men,that effortlessly removes unwanted body hair with the following features:

• three interchangeable attachment combs allow easy trimming
  of various hair lengths
• hypoallergenic shaving foil prevents irritation on sensitive skin
  and delicate body parts
• ergonomic shape also allows easy access to hard-to-reach areas and
  can safely remove hair in all directions
• 100 per cent waterproof making it safe for use in the shower or even the bathtub

To help educate men on the benefits of a well-groomed body, Philips has launched http://www.shaveeverywhere.ca/. Log on for a virtual product demonstration and other useful male grooming tips. Beginning in May 2007, Philips Bodygroom is available nationwide at retailers in-store and online for a suggested retail price of $59.99. Please visit www.shaveeverywhere.ca for information on where to buy.

---

Thanks to everyone who called Philips at the numbers provided in earlier blog posts. And thanks to Shannon for getting me one of these dealies for Christmas. It works great.

The new screen

I finally got around to spending some Christmas/birthday money a few weeks ago. I went to Future Shop and picked up a monitor to replace my 2000-vintage Syncmaster 750S. The ol' Samsung was still working fine and looked good -- it was just feeling small compared to everything else out there. And, I so rarely treat myself to new toys, so, what the hell?

I got the LG L204WT Flatron Wide 20" widescreen LCD. It boasts a 5ms response time and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. Mostly, it's a true Big Ass Monitor, and it's bright.

It's served me well on my recent spree of multimedia production, editing video and touching up audio in a variety of programs. The web looks fantastic. Photos look gorgeous.

And, it's got me playing video games again. Not a lot of video games. But I had some games that I just hadn't played. I bought Call of Duty for a LAN party a long time ago and only ever played it once. Looks nice on the wide-screen. Someone bought me Half Life 2 as a gift ages ago, and I hadn't opened it yet. Looks f'ing incredible in native widescreen mode, though I can't wrap my head around the game yet. Looking forward to trying GTA:Vice City and Medal of Honor with a wider field of vision. Watching DVDs ought to look cool too, 'cuz this thing has higher resolution than an HDTV. (Yeah, I know, DVD isn't HD.)

Anyway, new toy. I like. Good purchase. No dead pixels, it works with my ATI AIW 9800 Pro, so I'm a happy camper.

I think I should get back to hanging out with Amanda now, as I've been playing on the computer all night and it's a quarter past ten.

Toys are fun, spam is not

I'm enjoying my new iPod. I ordered one of the new 2nd-generation iPod Nanos from Best Buy Canada. Green, 4GB. It arrived promptly in a little tiny box. I amalgamated my sprawling music library into something iTunes can manage by itself, sorted out most of the duplicates, and now I'm in the process of listening to it all and rating each song. I'm using a system I've seen outlined in various places -- one star for songs I don't really want to hear again, two stars for a song I can tolerate but would probably skip past, three stars for a song that's okay, four stars for a song I particularly like, and five stars for "this f'ing ROCKS".

I've thrown together a few "smart" playlists -- fifty Rush songs here, forty Ween songs there, a pile of short 90s tunes elsewhere, and so on. I tell the machine to serve me up a pile of songs that have no stars -- unrated. Then I rate 'em on the iPod, and when I plug the critter into Little Eddie Dingle, it syncs everything up with the master library, ratings and all.

A surprise for me has been how much I've enjoyed the Barenaked Ladies podcasts. They released a new album (or two) in September. While they were making it, they made podcasts. And they're fun. I've caught myself laughing out loud while listening. I'm gonna have to put the new BNL album(s) on the iPod for listening, since we have tickets for their Halifax show in January.

It's going to take a long, long, long time before everything's rated. It may never get completely finished, actually. But it's fun along the way.

Now, I'm a bit peeved at another of my toys: the Blackberry. I've gone for some years now with a Blackberry strapped to my hip, and not even a whisper of spam. But I got three or four spams on the weekend, and one at 4:43 this morning -- looks like some kind of pump 'n dump stock deal. I'm not even sure what I can do filter this crap out on my end.

Back to toys that work. I've been accomplishing a want-to-do that I've wanted to do for, like, five years or more. And that's transferring my old videotapes to digital. After failed experiments with USB digitizers and frustration with the ATI All-in-Wonder solution, I did some research and realized that the Hauppauge MPEG2 encoder cards in Little Eddie are the ideal solution for me. I run my old four-head Sharp VHS machine into a Datavideo TBC-1000 time base corrector to smooth out any timing errors and give fresh sync signals to the encoder card ... then run S-Video and stereo audio out, into the PVR-250. (The PVR-150, I've found, looks and sounds little crap in comparison.) The pack-in software, WinTV2000, is a little clunky but versatile, and lets me capture DVD-ready video to the hard drive. A quick trip across the BigAssSupernet to The Stallion (the more powerful PC in the house) makes it ready to edit, author and burn. So far, what I've been taping looks pretty good, and no dropped frames in any of the experimental burns I've seen. I'm learning a lot about digital video along the way. This weekend I began experimenting with an old video project from my university days, by splitting the audio from the video in an effort to remove some tape hiss and hum that's bothered me since the day the soundtrack was mixed in 1995.

The trick to getting all this done is finding the time to dump hours of VHS tape into the machine. Now that I'm going to the gym a lot, I can set the thing rolling, go get sweaty, and come back to find an hour or more of video encoded. Cool beans.

On a closing note ... best wishes to mom, who's going into hospital this week for an indefinite stay. The Bigass community (me, Amanda, and the few regular readers) are all thinking of you and wishing you comfort and good health. Love you! Love also to dad, who'll have his own challenges in an empty house! And continued good vibes go out to my sister, who's now about a month and a half away from birthing her first baby. Hell, good loving thoughts go out to everyone ... except those nasty spammers.

Follow-up (November 17): Looks like I'm not the only one to get a sudden burst of Blackberry spam. BBHub - The BlackBerry Weblog - wrote an article about the recent annoying emails, with several comments from users who've been getting them too.

More Schmaps for yous

The folks at the Schmap! travel guide site have done it again! They've used four of my Flickr photos in their latest product. It's a guide to Banff, where Amanda and I enjoyed a lovely visit in the spring. They've again offered me the opportunity to offer you the opportunity to take the opportunity to download one of these beasties for free. As with the Halifax guide, I have no idea how much they're supposed to cost, but free's free.

Free Schmaps for Big Ass readers

I was recently approached by a company that makes downloadable travel guides. They call themselves "Schmap" ... They wanted to use some of my Halifax photos for an upcoming interactive guide to this city.

Well, the thing is done. And, as a contributing photographer, they're letting me offer y'all a free download of the Schmap Halifax travel guide. Yeah, free! I don't know how much it's supposed to cost, but free's free. Watch for my shots in the section about Point Pleasant Park. The "picker" ought to appear below.

Coming soon: A Schmap guide to Banff, also including some Big Ass photography.

Rising Big Ass Traffic

It's now been a year since a friend graciously constructed the framework of BigAssSuperstar.com, just in time for my big move to the maritimes. One year ago today, I was on an airplane bound for Halifax and a whole new life.

It was also a new life for this stagnant domain name, which I'd bought some years ago and left sitting with nothing useful on it. Here's a snapshot of the traffic trends over the past year.

I don't know what happened in April that started bringing so many more people here, but they've been comin' ever since. The terms which bring the most surfers here, according to the fine log-analyzing tools at my host, www.zymsys.com (special thanks to years-ago BBS buddy Vic Metcalfe for still servin' it up), tend to be "bigass" and "big ass", followed by "kirk cameron" -- that's actually a messed-up image link to a Kirk Cameron vs. Scientology article I posted. I think it appears on a gay soccer fan messageboard. I'm guessing, 'cuz I don't speak Italian. Amazing what you can learn from reading server logs.

In short, if you're a regular reader, thanks for reading regularly. If you're a surf-in-by-accident reader (eg. those on the hunt for "big ass" or "ass parade"), I hope the detour served you well. If you hit here looking for li'l ol' me, thanks for remembering me. It's been my most productive year, online content and otherwise, and I'm delighted that people (and googlebots) are seeing it.

Now, if I could only find the time and talent to overhaul www.cygnals.com ...

Philips Bodygroom Canada update

Just off the phone with Amy at Philips looking for an updated release date for the Bodygroom shaver in Canada. As reported here in mid-June, their customer service folks told me that the Canadian version of the Philips/Norelco Bodygroom "shave everywhere" electric gadget could be available here as soon as August, pending CSA approval.

Today I've been told that there is no imminent release date. Amy says they aren't even sure it's going to be sold here. She says the product was "just released" in the States, and the company is still deciding whether to sell it north of the border. Perhaps next year, she says.

She did say that the marketing people get sent a note each time someone calls and asks, which may help push them toward a product launch. The Philips Canada web site doesn't have the right number to call, but here it is, for all you hirsute gents who want to put in your own inquiries: 1-800-243-7884.

Canadian kiwis to stay fuzzy for now

It's been blogged all over the place already, but the online advertising for the Philips/Norelco Bodygroom shaver has caused quite a buzz and some big laughs on the net. Visit www.shaveeverywhere.com to see for yourself. It's for sale at Amazon.com, but they don't ship this product outside the US. It's not listed on the Philips Canada web site.

So, I called the Philips customer service line to ask when the Bodygroom will be sold in Canada. The line is one of those frustrating voice-recognition dealies ... ("English ... no ... no ... no ... main menu ... no ... no ... operator ... operator! ... no ... other.") ... after getting lost on hold and otherwise yanked around, my third call got me a different 800 number.

The instantly helpful operator at the Canadian line said the company doesn't quite know when the gadget will be sold here. Apparently it's still pending CSA approval. Seems kinda strange, 'cuz it's been sold in the UK for a while now, and in the USA since at least this spring. I guess the CSA takes a while to vet electronics. "Maybe August" is the best I could get out of them.

Update: reader Laura points out a Halifax-based blog which tackles the subject, noting along the way that "wooly backs are nauseating" ... And re: the availability issue raised here, Byron points out in the comments that eBay sellers have Bodygroom available for import from the UK.

Coolest story I never heard

Saw a story on the ABC wire today about new "stealth" ringtones the kids are using to hear their phones ring, while preventing adults from doing so. (San Fran Chronicle article on same subject.) You probably know that high-frequency hearing is the first to go, and usually starts falling off around age 20. These ringtones are high-frequency tones that kids can hear, but adults can't.

ABC News filed a report by Jim Hickey which purported to tour the ringtone around their newsroom. The interns and desk assistants could hear the tone clearly, but the older reporters and editors could not. I thought the story was bullshit, because I inspected the waveform of the report, and there was nothing visible where the stealth tones were supposed to be -- just silence.

Rather than concluding that we'd all been had, I did some searching and found a web page with the stealth ringtone available for download. I played it, and the youngest person in the room immediately grabbed her ears and started complaining that someone was scratching a chalkboard or something. No one else, aside from our traffic reporter, can hear the damned thing. So, I guess it's true.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed. I thought my high-end hearing was still decent. I routinely hear (and see) things that other people don't. (Not in a hallucinatory/del