First of all, look at these likely lookin' fellas...

Max has formally decided to grow his hair out. Miyu gave it a trim (first big-boy haircut at Mudhoney, with no lesser personality than Sebastian Bach at the next chair) but he's getting good and shaggy. Charlie has yet to go under the scissors, because Procrastiwife can't part with his little curls yet, no matter how much they start to look like peyis.

Charlie's two month affair with Elmo is over and he's back to Yo Gabba Gabba - so much so that we bought exorbitantly priced tickets to the YGG live show at the Beacon in November. All for an event that he won't remember. They'd better let us take good pictures...

Charlie's vocabulary is growing but he still uses the word "Ba-ba" for about a dozen different meanings, differentiating between them all with subtle changes of inflection. It's like Mandarin. For instance:

Ba-bah - "Bo Bo", binkie, pacifier

Ba-buwh - bubbles, specifically the hippo bubble dispenser

BAH-ba - his brother, Max; also shortened to "Ba"

Bahbah - Yo Gabba Gabba; see above

Max is into marine biology, specifically sharks and whales. He has recently become enthralled with YouTube videos of prehistoric sea animals, taken from the "Walking with Dinosaurs" series. Here's one we watch a lot, which I have come to find strangely compelling:

It's kind of amazing to watch him watch this - not only does he rock out to the Drowning Pool song that underscores it, but he shouts the names of all the creatures like they're sports heros. "Dunkleosteus!" he'll shout. "Daddy! Stethocanthus!!! MEGALODON!!!"

It also amazes me that people out there collect these random things into video compilations and post them on YouTube - and they find an audience, to the tune of tens of thousands of views! Here's another of his favorites (although he strenuously contests the order of the listings):

And, finally, an obsession both boys share - subway cars. Specifically, the Red Bird subway cars. Specifically, the Red Bird subway cars being decommissioned and thrown into the ocean to make an artificial reef (at which Charlie gets very excited and shouts "WA-WA! WA-WA!"):

That's because I discovered that, rather than spend $1500+ on a new MacBook Pro, I could upgrade the overstuffed hard drive on my PowerBook myself. I jotted down a smug, self-congratulatory blog post, rushed out to buy the necessary parts, rolled up my sleeves and cracked open my computer.

And promptly f*cked it right up.

All was going well - I took off the plate over the RAM:

I got the keyboard unit lifted up:

And then got the keyboard unit detached:

And then unscrewed the first of the three screws that hold the bracket that holds the hard drive:

And then STRIPPED THE OTHER TWO SCREWS.

Oh yeah. What was once a #0 sized Phillips screwdriver slot (tiny) is now an almost smooth cone. Helpful.

It happened so gradually - I thought I was being careful. I'd try to turn it, it would lose grip, I'd look at the slot to make sure I wasn't stripping it, I'd try again... and then suddenly I had tried it like four dozen times and the screws were totally stripped.

So I did what any sensible person would do at this point - I set it aside and sulked about it for almost two months.

Then, two months later, I needed to build a sound cue for a show - and I needed Garage Band, on my computer, to do it. So, refreshed from my extended pout, I set back to work.

This time I brought a sharp utility knife, and scratched and scratched at the stripped remnants of the grooves until I had dug out a decent flat-head-friendly channel. Then I tried to turn it with a tiny flathead. It didn't work.

I scraped it some more and tried again. It didn't work. And again, and it didn't work.

At this point I may have started to lose my temper. I sort of yanked on the top of the bracket, where I had managed to get the first screw out, and twisted it and bent it and tried in general to either sort of break it off or at least bend it out of the way so I could jimmy the hard drive out.

NONE OF THIS IS A GOOD IDEA.

I got control of myself before I did any lasting harm, and took some deep calming breaths. Walked around the room a few times. Went and got a drink of water.

Then I sat back down, tried the flathead screwdriver again, and with a mild crack the top screw came right out.

And then the second did the same.

Apparently my snit fit, and specifically yanking on the recalcitrant bracket, actually got the screws free from the Apple-applied adhesive on their threads (don't tell me it's not there, it totally is because Apple HATES when you work on your own computer rather than paying them to do it), and all was well.

I swapped in the cloned hard drive, screwed it back in (using my well-grooved, newly flatheaded screws), put the rest back together, and turned it on. And sure enough, it was my computer again, just with 320GB of storage now. The thing works like a dream.

So kids, the moral of the story is: go ahead and lose your sh*t in the face of stubborn technology, but only enough to be useful.

Last night, Lisa and I had a brief spat in front of Max. We had gotten maybe two snippy exchanges into it when Max bursts out:

What are you doing? DON'T GET A DIVORCE!!!!!

Poor kitten.

On a hunch, I checked their Refurb page, and discovered that last week's 15", with specs superior to the current $1700 model (since it still has both video cards and a bigger hard drive), was available refurb for $1450. 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive. It doesn't have the hotsie totsie new battery, but I don't really care. I sure as hell don't care $250 worth.

The new solid-block MBPs are gorgeous, and lustworthy. And did I mention that my wonderful loyal Powerbook, which I got most of four years ago, has been running slowly and was currently refusing to charge because Charlie dipped the end of the power cable into Max's cereal?

In a burst of impetuous capitalism, I was ready to upgrade. All I needed was the ProcrastiWife's final go-ahead, which she had sounded ready to give.

I did not get it. She didn't say no, but she didn't say yes. She pointed out, rightly, that $1500 is still a buttfull of money to spend out of the blue, and that we should think about it.

So what, I thought to myself, is the real problem with my current computer. It turned out the only insoluble issue was that the hard drive was almost full. So I started doing research in the vain hope that I could upgrade the hard drive.

I went to TekServe but balked at their online quote-request tool. So I went to Google.

"Google," I said, "can I replace the hard drive on my Powerbook G4 myself?"

Turns out, I sure can.

It'll look a little like this, except my arm hair isn't as dark:

All I would need was one of each of these:

Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320 GB 5400RPM ATA100 8 MB 2.5-Inch Notebook Hard Drive
Macally PHR-250CC FireWire 400/USB 2.0 2.5-Inch IDE Hard Drive Enclosure
23-in-1 Mini-Uni-Drive Kit

Here's what you do (in a nutshell): buy a new internal hard drive (important: Powerbooks take IDE (also referred to as PATA) hard drives, NOT the SATA drives which are more common nowadays); buy an enclosure to temporarily turn it into an *external* drive; hook it up to your computer; clone your hard drive onto it; pop the hood and swap hard drives (see above instructions); mount your old smaller hard drive in the enclosure for use as a spare external drive; enjoy your newfound storage space.

I had a false start, as I went to J&R in my impatience to get the project going, and Igor the Surly And Idiotic J&R Associate (the bane of my existence in the Hard Drive department, who screwed me over vis a vis my DVR expander which is a WHOLE OTHER STORY) took great Slavik pride in telling me that the only enclosure they had was the Apricorn Universal (it was an Apricorn DVR expander that went bad on me, so I distrust them).

At home, this USB 2.0 drive refused to be recognized by my computer. Lisa's saw it just fine. Mine? No go. So today I searched all over creation (otherwise known as TekServe, BestBuy, PC Richards and finally success at B&H Photo - reminding me of the essential NYC lesson "YOU GO TO B&H") and got an enclosure with a FireWire interface.

My hard drive (which turned out to be a measly 80GB) has been cloned onto my spanking new 320GB monster, and tonight I will attempt the swap. By the way, anyone looking for an excellent sci-fi read that involves this exact procedure, but with humans, should read John Scalzi's brilliant Old Man's War.

I'll let you know how it goes. Once this is over, I'm going to upgrade to OS X 10.5 Leopard and iLife '06, and hopefully with the new 4x storage headroom my old girl will keep humming along for another good little while - all for a total investment of around $350.

Now I just have to figure out how to spend the $1100 I just saved!

Obviously, this could not go unanswered. So here's my response.

We are such grownups.

If you want to make a movie, check out Xtranormal.

Max: [to his mother] Shut up.

Mom/Dad: EXCUSE ME?!!!

Max: [with a winning grin] I'm just playing a game! A game called "shut up the door!" I'm talking about shutting up the door!

Mom/Dad: [grudgingly amused] All right.

Max: And the door is your MOUTH.

UPDATE: Fixed the upload of "Witch's Vampire" so it should play now.

A couple more tracks from Max's improvised pop album I AM THE KING OF STRONG. The out-of-time tambourine is courtesy of baby brother Charlie, who wasn't really paying attention.

Witch's Vampire:

Bucket and the Cannon (Star Wars Version)/But That's All:

And, in the big two song finale -

The Sunniest Day in the Universe/It's Over and Far Away:

The whole "album" is here.

I have a long history of attempting to prevent disaster by pre-emptively panicking about it. Click the heading "Stuff to worry about" above for many examples (no bird flu pandemic yet, right? You're welcome).

So here goes again: as the Dow and the S&P 500 set new record lows every day (we're back to 1997! To 1993! To 1932!) I read at Minyanville that the extremely bright Kevin Depew thinks that we've got a long way down before we can expect a bottom, because the entire psychology of the market (and by extension the country) has to shift before we can start to put things back together.

Key graf:

...going back to the early 1980s, as social mood began to shift from negative to positive, it became necessary to view long periods of benign economic conditions as the norm, and short periods of negative economic conditions as cyclical interruptions in the primary positive trend. That must be reversed now.

We are going to be experiencing long periods of harsh economic conditions interrupted by far more brief periods of improving conditions. Adjusting to this will be difficult. Many false starts in the form of brief economic bright spots will appear, but the inevitable return to the primary negative trend will crush any brief bursts of optimism until all reasonable people conclude there is no point in embracing optimism because things are only going to get worse. And at that point, we will have reached the bottom.

Read the whole thing here, though it turns into "technical analysis" which I think is the modern day equivalent of reading auguries in entrails.

So here they are, the advance cuts from I Am The King of Strong (note: a couple of them are "covers" of songs by "The Great Sounds"). Don't let the confidence fool you - he's totally making all of this up as he goes along.

"Carbalone" (no I don't know what it means either)

"Break Up With Me"

"Great White Wind" (this is his power ballad)

My dayjob firm calls a staff meeting to explain the steps being taken to deal with the troubled economy. "Don't worry," they say, "we have been planning for this and have taken steps that have insulated us from the worst measures that other firms are finding necessary. Primarily, there are to be NO LAYOFFS."

Today:

Staff meeting to explain that all floater secretaries have been let go. Employees of retirement age being offered voluntary buyouts. All employees being offered voluntary schedule/pay reductions. Once these measures are in place, "we'll see where we are" and consider "involuntary measures."

That took less than three months.

I think a lot of businesses knew things were rough and took the first steps to gird against it last year, but are only now facing up to just how bad it is and just how drastic those measures are going to have to be. Expect to hear more stories like this in the next couple months, as more people are given sudden and unexpected opportunities to re-evaluate their life priorities.

"Hey, why is our canoe moving so fast? And what's that roaring sound?"

Happy First Birthday, Charlie!

Coconut Run - from Johnson Controls (Ingenuity Welcome!).

Once you get the hang of it, it's simple - you build a cart to catch a load of 15 coconuts, then you run the cart over rough terrain to deliver them for processing as quickly as possible. Your efficiency is rated by a formula of speed by the number of coconuts delivered.

(Tip: once you've seen what each tool does, uncheck "show tips" so that it stops popping up at you).

I have worked my way up to 96% efficiency which - trust me - required real concentration. My best design yet is here (try it yourself for a while before you peek, so that your design ideas are fresh).

Ad-dic-tive.

Thanks to an offhand rant at a Youngblood meeting, wherein Josh and Nikole were decrying the rise of leggings-being-worn-as-if-they-were-pants, a new blog is born. Josh, in an apotheosis of rage, cried "Look! I know what's pants, and I know what's NOT pants."

So I created I Know What's Pants as a blog, and Josh has started blogging on it, and lo, it is hilarious.

I mention this because there's a hopeful and redemptive message in her passing. Grandmother had an extremely difficult childhood - her family was very poor, so she was "farmed out" to relatives at a very young age (6 or so, if I recall correctly) and was treated not as a child but as, essentially, indentured household help from that point on.

She was left with a conflicted outlook on life. On the one hand, she was determinedly negative: she expected that, whatever the future held, it would be the worst possible outcome for her personally, and she prepared for that with a kind of grim satisfaction.

On the other hand, for her entire 95 years she retained a girlish hopefulness that would appear in flashes: her whole face would light up with an astonishingly youthful delight when it seemed that, despite her worst expectations, something might actually break her way.

She took care of her mother and her mother-in-law through painful, protracted declines. Both experienced long and torturous convalescences. My only memory of my Great Grandmother Booth is of an incomprehensible skeletal figure in a stale-smelling nursing home.

In her own old age, she was terrified of a similar fate, of machines, of strangers, of needles, of useless senescence. She dearly wished to be spared those tortures and indignities, but her fear was amplified by her underlying conviction that - since she always expected the short end of any given stick - it was certain to be her fate.

It was not.

She lived with my parents for the last year and half, and a month ago was still able to get herself up in the morning and come out with her walker for breakfast. Halfway through her 95th year, the woman who became a realtor in her 60s and worked as a food demonstrator at the grocery store well into her 80s could still get up out of her chair by herself to go to the restroom.

And when it was time to go, her decline was mercifully swift and her passing as peaceful as she could have wished. Sometimes, even when we most expect a curse, we are given a blessing. Somewhere her face is lit with joy.