7/21/2003 ·  8/ 6/2003
 5/29/2003 ·  7/18/2003
 4/25/2003 ·  5/28/2003
 3/24/2003 ·  4/24/2003
 3/ 1/2003 ·  3/21/2003
 1/28/2003 ·  2/28/2003
11/30/2002 ·  1/23/2003
11/ 1/2002 · 11/29/2002
 9/23/2002 · 10/30/2002
 9/ 5/2002 ·  9/20/2002
 8/10/2002 ·  9/ 4/2002
 7/24/2002 ·  8/ 9/2002
 6/27/2002 ·  7/23/2002
 6/ 3/2002 ·  6/25/2002
 4/24/2002 ·  5/31/2002
 4/ 1/2002 ·  4/23/2002
 3/ 1/2002 ·  3/31/2002
 2/10/2002 ·  2/28/2002
 1/22/2002 ·  2/ 9/2002
 1/ 3/2002 ·  1/16/2002
12/16/2001 ·  1/ 2/2002
12/ 2/2001 · 12/15/2001
11/ 1/2001 · 11/29/2001
10/16/2001 · 10/31/2001
 9/23/2001 · 10/13/2001
 9/11/2001 ·  9/22/2001
 7/29/2001 ·  9/10/2001
 7/ 2/2001 ·  7/28/2001
 5/29/2001 ·  6/30/2001
 5/ 1/2001 ·  5/21/2001
 4/ 8/2001 ·  4/29/2001
 3/25/2001 ·  4/ 7/2001
 3/11/2001 ·  3/24/2001
 3/ 4/2001 ·  3/10/2001
 2/18/2001 ·  3/ 3/2001
 2/ 4/2001 ·  2/17/2001
 1/23/2001 ·  2/ 2/2001
 1/ 1/2001 ·  1/22/2001
12/18/2000 · 12/31/2000
11/30/2000 · 12/ 7/2000
11/ 6/2000 · 11/28/2000
10/29/2000 · 11/ 5/2000
10/11/2000 · 10/19/2000
10/ 1/2000 · 10/ 9/2000
 9/24/2000 ·  9/30/2000
 9/15/2000 ·  9/22/2000
 9/ 7/2000 ·  9/13/2000

Search rbgilbert.com

This is my blogchalk:
United States, Massachusetts, Boston, Brighton, English, Ron, Male, Photography, Nudity.

Entertaining advertising promoting Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Go see!

From The Standard
www.thestandard.com

The Snacks Shall Inherit the Earth

Every major socioeconomic shift brings unexpected winners. In the Net economy, those who provide the snacks are smelling sweeter than a Snickers bar.

Corporate munchie vendors Aramark and Sodexho Marriott say orders are booming in high-tech meccas such as the San Francisco Bay Area and lower Manhattan. In such regions, sales in Aramark's refreshment services division are up 153 percent. Coffee represents 15 percent of all sales, up from 4 percent two years ago, while gourmet coffee sales have spiked 85 percent this year alone. And increasingly, says Aramark's refreshment president Richard Wyckoff, it's open season on coffee and other perks: "In today's world, it's not a question of what to charge, but how to keep the free coolers filled."

Sodexho VP Tom Smith theorizes that the rise is due to the long and unorthodox hours worked by a younger TV-generation workforce which "often prefers snacking to sit-down meals."

Both Sodexho and Aramark cite bottled water – sometimes private-labeled for larger clients – as another fast-growing beverage category. But low-cal isn't the highest priority. "We offer healthier selections, but demand isn't growing across the country," Wyckoff says. "People say what they think is politically correct, but they're eating what they want."

And when they want, especially at Web companies where well-stocked kitchens are the norm. Excite@Home spokeswoman Stephanie Rudnick says workers suck down approximately 55,000 cans of soda, 5,500 bottles of water and 3,000 bottles of juice each month. "I could weigh 800 pounds if I wasn't careful," sighs Rudnick, who tries to stick to diet Mug root beer and avoids subsidized treats like the free ice cream from a rolling vendor every Friday afternoon. - Joyce Slaton

Dinner tonight with friend Sam at Vox Populi which I had forgotten is no longer a brew pub. But still, they are kind enough to at least carry a Commonwealth brewery seasonal beer (pumpkin ale). Upstairs all is serene. Downstairs is packed with shrill youngsters all in black! I recommend the upstairs, except the bleached blonde bimbette who pretended to tend bar there. She couldn't be bothered.

Are you as tired as I am of paying full price for your x-ray film and surgical equipment?

Lex Luthor for President! 

I'm a bit behind in reading my Science News, but that doesn't excuse the rest of you who failed to mention to me that some months ago those physicists confirmed the existence of the tau neutrino, thereby filling out the twelve sub-atomic particles. Whew! I'm relieved. Imagine having to go along in a universe with eleven sub-atomic particles. It's bad enough that pi is an irrational number.

The hot water is finally back on tonight, but still there doesn't seem to be any heat. It's the hot water that counts, though.

Damn, if the State Fair of Texas don't start tomorrow! When I was last in Texas I heard a lot about this, but had no idea where it took place. Now I know it's right near Dallas. You might be astounded at all the things they've got going on. Here are just some of things on Saturday:

• Team Monte Carlo Thunder Tour
• Roaming Robot
• Nabisco's Backyard Circus
• Chevrolet Magician
• Club Cheer
• Top Flight K-9's
• Silent Drill Platoon
• Buford Buzzard Show
• World on a String
• Myna Bird Show
• AquaBlast
• Living Statue
• Kroger's Birds of the World
• Strolling Animals
• Clydesdale Hitching
• Skidboot the Cow Dog
• TXU Energy Extravaganza

Do Some Time!
You've got to see the Maricopa County Live Jail Cam! Maricopa County is Phoenix, Arizona. There are actually 4 cameras. Two in the pre-intake area, one in the search cell and one outside the holding cells. You know you want to see the one in the search cell. The Sheriff says he has nothing to hide. This is your chance to help the citizens of Phoenix defend their 4th and 5th amendment rights while simultaneously getting off on the cops and indulging your voyeuristic desires. Win win win!

NAMBLA and the glory of offensive speech
by Mubarak S. Dahir
I am no fan of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, NAMBLA, the infamously controversial group that advocates sex between young boys and men. More...
If the Bay Windows article is missing you can read it here.

Two homelife things today:

1. My condo association covers four abutting buildings. The main boiler for heat and hot water is two buildings away from mine. Yesterday morning there was a fire in that building so bad that the building is currently unoccupied. The wiring going to the boiler was damaged, so we won't have heat or hot water for as long as three days! The heat we can do without, but the hot water is a bit of a stretch - even for me.

2. My building is directly across the street from a small, old hospital that is now not much more than a nursing home and an AIDS hospice. The Archdiocese of Boston (the hospital's owner) has proposed some large changes to the place that would include a 6-story mixed-income condo building. Tonight there was a meeting over there for people from the neighborhood to meet the developers and talk about the plans. I went. I never go to political meetings or activist meetings or neighborhood meetings or even condo meetings. And now I remember why. This was far worse than any government meeting I've been.

First we had all the old activists speaking and assuming we all know exactly who they are. We can tell there are ancient grudges and frictions at work. Then someone finally suggests we all go around and introduce ourselves. A fine idea, I thought! What a mistake. Most people saw it as a chance to grandstand for 10 minutes as they tried to impress us with how very long they'd lived in the neighborhood and how very, very evil they think all those student renters are. This neighborhood has a pretty impressive ethnic diversity, so that meant it was difficult to understand about half the speakers. We also have lots of elderly people living here, and of course the ones at the meeting all had some hearing loss too, so...

During their grandstanding most of the people ranted about how the students are ruining the area, driving the prices up and parking their cars on our streets and playing loud music. We're situated just midway between BU and BC, which is sort of like being between twin tornado funnels. You just hold on tight while everything swirls around you. One of the guys there had taken some volunteers out and canvased a lot of the student residents. He found an astonishing number were not from BU or BC, or even Harvard (which is not far away) but from dozens of the other schools that are farther away. They say they move here because Brighton has gotten the reputation as the party town. We've probably got more bars per capita than any neighborhood outside of the traditionally Irish neighborhoods like South Boston.

Most of the neighborhood people (who were all owners, with one exception) sounded like fuzzy thinking collectivists who somehow wanted to live in a fantasy neighborhood that was simultaneously desirable, moderately priced and convenient to the city, while not attracting students or people with cars. This disgusted me. But they all somehow seemed to instinctively understand that to keep these proposed new condos from becoming just more student housing they would have to very nice and very expensive! It's great how capitalism cuts through those layers of fuzzy thinking without any effort!

Certainly the most interesting person at the meeting was a young, very obviously gay man who had just bought a 3-family to live in with his fiancé! I couldn't quite fathom this, since "fiancé" still has a purely heterosexual meaning.

I was pretty impressed that EVERYone wanted to save these two huge beautiful beech trees that grow on the grounds of the hospital. I thought I might be the only person who admired them, but it was the very first thing brought up when the meeting started.

Horrors!
Are you concerned that learning takes last place in our public schools behind drugs, violence, expensive clothes, homophobia, racism, sexism, public prayer at sporting events, and gangs? Well, it's worse than that!

Read about it here in the Denver Post or, if that's no longer available go here to read my copy.

I've added my 1996 Boston-New York AIDS Ride thank you letter to this site.

September 24, 1957 was the date of the last Dodgers game in Ebbets Field.

• The Provincetown Wharf Cam. Live view of the Pilgrim Monument. Check it out.
  
• The Sagamore Bridge Cam. Be glad you're not there!
  
• The Bourne Bridge Cam.
  
• Hyannis Harbor Cam. Drop me a note if you spot a Kennedy.
• Mashpee Common Cam.
• Craigville Beach Cam. This one may be asleep for the season.

Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, was born on this day in 1936.

Also on this day, in 1789, Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, creating the Supreme Court. On the same day George Washington nominated six men to the court. Two days later the Senate approved them! A record that still stands.

Strangely enough, this is the birthday of John Marshall (1755) who became the court's 4th Chief Justice. Call Ripley!

What I want for Christmas!

Almost Perfect...
is an interesting book about the creation and growth of WordPerfect corporation until W. E. Peterson, the author, left the company shortly after the release of their first verion of WordPerfect for Windows. This book is free and formatted for reading on the web. It's a study in how to turn out a great product, but fail in the Total World Domination game. Includes some Microsoft bashing, which is always fun to read.

You may be interested in a very easy to use word processor created by some former WordPerfect people. It's called Yeah Write and is available for download from www.yeahwrite.com. It's not WordPerfect.

WordPerfect is still available and is still better than MS Word. A Linux version is available. Check it all out here.

I ran across a list of 5 things you should do with your computer every week to keep it running well at Tourbus. You can go there to read the full text and justification, but here are the 5 points. I agree with all of them. (This is PC-centric - if you don't run a WinTel machine, then you are so brilliant you already know what to do - have pity on the rest of us):

1. Update your Virus Definitions (this assumes you are running anti-virus software, which I guess is hint number 0.9)
2. Run Windows Update
3. Run ScanDisk
4. Run Defrag
5. Back up your Data

If you don't know what any of these terms mean, then go to Tourbus or read your Windows help files or use Google to search the web for explanations.

Peeve
Spelling "Oktoberfest" with a "C" rather than "K." If you are really afraid that people will label you a neo-Nazi sympathizer (by the way, there is nothing "neo" about them) if you spell it correctly, you can Anglicize it by making it two words: "October Fest" or "October Festival" or "Harvest Festival". You get the idea.