I am not a manufacturer of coffee vending machines

Let's be clear about that. If that's what you're looking for, try here or here.

Now that I've said that in a searchable post, I'll probably get even more Google traffic from Italy and Finland. Oh well.

Red Sox should let Wakefield start

Tim Wakefield has earned a spot in the rotation, don't you think? Wake makes a good point in today's Boston Globe that maybe, at age 38, his body might be better suited to going every fifth day.

It's either me or Bronson...At his age [28], he might be a little more resilient than I am right now. I could probably pitch every day, too, but he's shown in the past that he can pitch back-to-back days -- two innings, two innings, then get the day off.

You also gotta love his 5 month old baby going to the World Series to see him pitch.

Oscar who?

Have I even been in a movie theater in the past year to see something that wasn't rated G? I don't think so. I'm sure whatever movie wins will make it onto my rental radar screen within the next 18 months. Until then I can't be bothered thinking about it.

I'm still liking the Walker deal

He rebounded and the Celtics won. The man learned some humility in his journey through Dallas and Atlanta. He's joining a team where he's a star, not the star. His presence puts Mark Blount in the second unit where he belongs. He's going to draw attention from the defense and open things up for Pierce and Davis.

There's a lot of talk about GP coming back but I don't see it happening. But wouldn't the return of Kenny Anderson be a hoot? Assuming the guy can still play; I haven't seen him lately.

Perhaps the biggest impact of this trade is that the fans are talking about the Celtics again--even as the Sox are starting spring training. They're going to go play with more confidence--and let's face it, fun--which will get them past the first round of the playoffs.

I like this team again.

Screwing around at the bonfire

My friend Mike just called looking for a ride to the hospital next week. It all started Saturday night at his mid-February bonfire (related post: Rules for Daddy's Hangover).

Normally you wouldn't think an outdoor party would be the place to be on a cold February night in New England, but if you have enough wood and other flammable materials it can be quite cozy. The keg of Farmer Brown didn't hurt either.

Things started ominously with the arrival of a fire truck shortly after the fire got going strong. They pulled slowly up the drive, lights flashing, and Mike went over to talk to them. He came back with a piece of paper in his hand and we all thought it was over. "Citation?" someone asked. "Nope," replied Mike. "Cooking permit." Cool! The fire department can count on my support at town meeting for their budget request.

My wife and I missed the late fun, though--babysitter, clock ticking, money slipping away, you know how it goes. Then on Monday morning on my way to work I happened to drive past Mike walking out of Cafe Koko on crutches.

I rolled down my window. "What happened to you?"

"Broke my ankle stomping on the fire at 3 AM."

And I missed it! It's a pretty nasty break, too. His appointment is to have screws put in. Maybe a little glue too and a c-clamp to hold it all together, who knows.

Welcome back, Antoine

I never saw this coming. I can't say I love him, but I like this move. We get to see more of Marcus Banks, and we get one of the better forwards in the league.

Report: Walker traded to Celtics

RSS from AP: You have to work for it

The Associated Press now has RSS feeds, which is a good thing. They tell you that you can use Firefox, Bloglines, and other tools to access them, which is also a good thing.

But somehow they coded the page in a way that disables the auto-discovery features of these tools, so you have to manually copy and paste the feed URL into your reader. Neither Firefox or the Bloglines "Subscribe" button see the feeds when I am at AP's RSS page. Oh well. I have enough energy to blog about it but not enough to configure a feed.

Romney and the national spotlight

I finally finished the sports section and came across this meaty story:
Boston Globe / Romney's road show

Romney is a guy who seems to be permanently running for office, rather than actually running his office. He's perfect for national office: he's squeaky clean and has no skeletons in his closet, and has no actual record that could be attacked because he doesn't really do anything except pose for photo ops and complain about the Turnpike Authority and occasionally fire somebody. I wrote about him in a column a few years back; I'll see if I can dig it up.

No time

No time for blogging this morning. Spring training has started and I need to read about Manny's dreadlocks, Mueller's knee, and the lady who answers the phone at Fenway.

Rules for Daddy's Hangover

Yesterday was not a good day. Daddy had a hangover. Mommy had to go out for a while leaving Daddy with the kids. The kids do not understand about hangovers.

I'd like to propose a few simple rules for kids when Daddy declares a Hangover Emergency.

1. No pooping or peeing in your pants, on the floor, or in any other manner requiring cleanup.

2. Before waking up Dad you must submit the request to a certified independent arbitrator. If approved, you must provide 3 days written notice, by certified mail, of your intent.

3. After Daddy wakes up there will be complete silence until he consumes three (3) cups of sufficiently strong coffee. If necessary, communication may be submitted in writing during this period.

4. No further explanation of Daddy's condition beyond "I went to bed too late--see what happens when you don't get enough sleep?" will be provided, so do not ask.

There, that won't be so hard, will it?

Broke blood vessel in head???

According to Boston.com, the Patriots say that Tedy Bruschi suffered a "broken blood vessel in his head." Hello???

Here are some excerpts from the first page I found on Brain Hemorrhage.

What is a brain hemorrhage?
A brain hemorrhage occurs when a blood vessel, aneurysm...or a vascular malformation...in the brain ruptures. Blood may leak into or around the brain tissue. This leaking produces one of the most severe forms of stroke. Many patients become catastrophically ill and require urgent treatment.

What are the common symptoms of brain hemorrhage?
Abrupt onset of a severe headache is the most common symptom.

I think this is more serious than they are letting on!

UPDATE: Now they're calling it a "leaking" blood vessel. Still sounds like a ruptured aneurysm to me.

UPDATE 2 2/18/05: Now the team has confirmed it was a mild stroke. I don't know why yesterday I thought they were trying to hide something; I'm sure they were just running around trying to figure out what was going on, and trying not to say too much until they knew. Anyway. Must have been a hell of a scare for him and his family.

Drawing the line at AC/DC

My 7-year old son loves hard rock. Nirvana, Jet, basically anything they play on "Lazer 99". Mostly we encourage it, but tonight when I was cleaning out my office he found the AC/DC album "Back in Black" that his uncle had given him for his birthday. After listening to the lyrics with a paternal perspective, I had put it right on the top shelf behind a dusty economics textbook. I mean, "What Do You Do For Money, Honey" and "Give the Dog a Bone" are not songs I care to explain to him at this age.

I told him he can have it back when he's 15.

I love Flashblock!

With apologies to my friend Lucian at Macromedia, I just installed the Flashblock extension for Firefox and I am loving it! When a page has Flash content you see a button, which you can click to activate Flash. And a lot of times I do want to see Flash content. I just want to see it when I want it. I've always been annoyed that the Flash viewer doesn't have any user-modifiable settings (or that IE didn't let you control it) but I didn't want to uninstall Flash, because I really do want to see Flash content a lot of the time. Now I'm a happy camper.

Lost a battle

Just got back from the school committee meeting where I spoke in favor of keeping teachers. Got shot down. Two teachers are getting cut, which will lead to larger classes in K and 1. I'm glad I got to say my piece, but sad it didn't make a difference. I think their minds were already made up.

"Missile Defense" continues to flounder

The Missile Defense Agency reported a failed test. This is the brilliant system that's supposed to save Alaska and Hawaii should North Korea ever develop nuclear capability. (What? They already did? Oh my.)

The Missile Defense Agency announced today it was unable to complete a planned flight test after the interceptor missile did not launch from the Ronald Reagan Test Site, Republic of the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific Ocean. The reason for not launching is under investigation, and program officials are reviewing data to determine the cause.

They're pretty brief in these press releases when the news isn't good. At least this program only costs $9 billion a year, a drop in the bucket compared to Iraq.

Gillette postmortem

Today's Boston Globe has a fascinating and sometimes brutal assessment of Gillette by a former executive.

Gillette: the rest of the story:
"As soon as the real estate department in Cincinnati gets a look at the inner-city Gillette World Shaving Headquarters, it will calculate the value of its waterfront land and recommend the collection of inefficient, multistoried, 75-year-old buildings be sold."

It seems bad for Boston, but who really knows how it will all play out.

Smells like...

Twice in 24 hours I was struck by the smell of two different kids' foods. One was canned spaghetti, the other microwave mac and cheese. Both had the distinctive smell of fresh puke.

How could I feed this to my kids? Well, it doesn't smell pukey to them. Besides, I'm sure the food companies had the kids' best interest at heart by providing partially predigested meals to ease the burden on their little developing tummies. Besides, I ate stuff like this growing up and I turned out...well, let's not go there.

If only they didn't like this bad stuff, I could feed them soy cakes and wheat germ and lentil loaf and feel like a good parent. But I can't starve them, can I?

Now I'm feeling guilty. Pass the Oreos.

Great morning!

How 'bout this? The kids are playing, mostly nicely, together. THey're practicing "Amazing Grace" on the piano. The Mrs. is happily reading a book in bed. And I'm reading the news and posting to my blog!

Democracy's maxim

From The New York Times:

"There is no single factor that explains why the Sunni Arabs, about 20 percent of Iraq's 28 million people, failed to show up for the election. Some were scared, either of general violence or retaliation. Some had little information. Others simply long for the old days of Mr. Hussein, and others like Mr. Ajili disliked their former leader but hate the Americans much more intensely. Still others believed that they were following the vague directives of their political and religious leaders."

This lesson is played out in every U.S. election, from the presidency down to the school committee: get out the vote. The other groups in Iraq understood this message clearly and seized the opportunity to gain influence. The Sunnis, for a variety of reasons described in the Times article, did not. And they lost out.

Red state/blue state again

I speculated about this with school funding. Here we go again!
Bush cuts hit Democratic states, analysis finds (Boston Globe)

Hi tech, low tech, it's all procrastination

I enjoyed this piece in The Boston Globe:

Confessions of an instant messenger:
"Enter: The facebook. If AIM is a gateway drug, The facebook is Internet crack. If you're in college, you know the deal: upload your picture, add in some interests, list every single band you've ever listened to, girls write down your favorite ''I love shopping and my best friends' quote from ''Sex and the City,' and guys write down that you like ''Scarface' and ''The DaVinci Code.' Then you browse through different profiles and compile a list of friends, some of which you know and some of which you've (maybe) met once but never talked to after that."

Back in my day (said the old man) we had a little printed facebook with black & white mugshots of those who bothered to send in a picture. The rest of us got a picture of a bear, which was actually better looking than any photo I would have submitted anyway. For wasting time, the facebook didn't last long. I had to move on to more time-consuming things like teaching myself to throw darts lefthanded.

Class size in early grades

Normally I post some thought I've had after reading something or experiencing something in the day, but lately I haven't had time to read and have had even less time to reflect on anything long enough to consider it an experience rather than just sensory input.

One of the things that's been keeping me busy--to the point where it's moved into the "experience" realm--is our kids' school. It's budget time, and there's talk of letting go 2 teachers and increasing the size of the K and grade 1 classes. Our first grade will end up with about 22 kids, which is pretty good compared to a lot of school systems, but when you look at the research, it's actually not a good thing.

There is a ton of evidence supporting smaller classes in the early grades. The most compelling is the Tennessee STAR program, which found that, in a large, scientifically controlled study, classes of 13 to 17 students in grades K-3 significantly outperformed their peers in classes of 22-25 students. It also tracked these kids over time and found that the benefits persisted in later years even after the children returned to larger classes. And minority students benefitted the most.

The SAGE program in Wisconsin had similar results, confirming other research done in the 70's and 80's. As a result the US Department of Education states that class sizes should not exceed 18 in early grades; schools can even use Title II funding for the purpose of reduing class size. DOE no longer pushes this as a priority, following the realignment of priorities brought on in the No Child Left Behind Act, but it still acknowledges in a 2004 report that class sizes of 18 and under should be the goal.

So, where does this leave us? It doesn't add any money to our budget (no Title II money here that I know of) but it does confirm that increasing classes to 22 kids is a conscious choice to reduce the quality of education in our school. We're not just talking about losing the luxury of small classes; we're talking about lowering our kids' potential for future success in school. That may be OK with some, but it's not OK with me.

Traffic woes

I use Sitemeter to keep track of how many people are visiting Omni-matic and where they clicked from. I tend to get Blogspot surfers right after I publish something, and I get some visits after I post something to a blog or message board, and I get people when I surf BlogExplosion. I also get stragglers from a reciprocal link at Pops' Bucket (who probably then hit the back button faster than you can put Pops' apostrophe in the right place). I even occasionally get hits from a search engine. But then they go away, and as far as I can tell they don't come back.

Has Omni-matic become irrelevant to the masses? (As if it were at one time.) Is my writing too middle of the road? Do I cover too much crap that people read about everywhere else?

Until now Omni-matic has lacked the dark emotional turmoil that makes some blogs engaging. I also never, ever post erotic pictures or verses from the Bible, either of which would lift my numbers.

Let's see if I can loosen up a little and give my readers more turmoil at the very least, since I don't think the erotica/Bible options are going to work for me. I'm feeling down about my blog! Aaaargh! @#^@#%!!! How's that?

I'm also going to look at a redesign of the template. The Blogger presets are OK, but I need to do better than OK.

Technical note: blogroll

I took out the automatic blogroll using my Bloglines subscriptions. It was just too long and too slow to load. I've gone back to a shorter, manual list, which I'll change from time to time.

The art of the cover tune

I've been noticing a lot of cover tunes on the radio in recent months: some great, some bland, some daring, and some just plain nostalgic. This morning I heard a new(?) version of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground", which got me thinking about how this same song propelled Red Hot Chili Peppers into the mainstream a few years back (years, decades, whatever).

I think recording a cover can be a great way for a band to show who they are. When you put your mark on something familiar, the distinctiveness of your sound stands out. By the same token, if your sound lacks any disctinction, your cover recording will make it all the more apparent.

I love Perfect Circle's version of "Imagine", painted in darker shades than the original. Whoever did that Crowded House song last year somehow managed to make it even duller than the original. Someone's got a remake of an old Supertramp hit which is pretty well done but lacks any differentiating qualities.

Remember Devo doing "Satisfaction"? Great stuff!