We saw it with the original iPod--I still remember reading the article on nerd bastion Slashdot.org that declared the concept completely DOA. It happened with Xbox ("Micro$oft making a racing game? When you crash the car, it crashes your console! Snort!"). It happened with the Nintendo DS ("Two screens? I guess we can have twice as much of the same Mario game they've been remaking for 20 years, amirite?"). One can only imagine the backlash around 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web ("What possible practical application could this have? Now the world can see pictures of my cat!").

That scorn takes on extra fury when the perception is that the company just isn't thinking. How could they be so foolish? Why, their whole company could have been saved from inevitable failure if they had just heeded the wisdom of Complaining Geek #256, Who Definitely Is Never Going to Buy This Broken Failure of a Product Now That They've Shown They Have No Clue.

Here's the psychology of it: you envision, in your head, a detailed concept for exactly what sort of product would precisely solve your particular set of problems. In the case of the iPad, it would have all the processing power of a MacBook Pro, would run OSX, would have a video camera, would have facial recognition, etc. etc. This probably solves the problem of the average Mac laptop user, who might want a smaller, lighter, fundamentally cooler version of the same thing.

But clearly, this is not the problem for which the iPad was designed. And so, because it doesn't solve my problem, it is broken, and Apple missed the boat, the fools.

Now, let's think this through from Apple's perspective. If you already have a Macbook, and are invested in the platform, and are likely to buy another one in three years' time when yours has become obsolete, what possible reason would Apple have to invent a device that replaces a Macbook--a laptop that makes a very nice profit for Apple, a thing which is certainly not broken, and has no need of being fixed? They already have your future dollar. The goal is to capture dollars which are not already spoken for.

Think of Nintendo with their Wii (another great example of nerd outcry). Some business-speak for you: if there is a defined market of people who will use a certain class of product, and you want a piece of that market, and you believe that most everybody who is going to be in that market is already in it, the only way to gain a share of that market is to compete with everybody else in the space. For Nintendo, they looked at a crowded 3-player market of core console video games and saw that the endgame was a bloody battle of attrition to grab players from Xbox and Playstation, or get people to purchase more than one platform.

But there is another way: create a new market.

As Jobs said in his keynote, the iPhone has an established niche. So does the Macbook. The idea is to determine whether or not there is room for something in-between. Like Nintendo, who gambled that there were lots and lots of people out there who might be interested in playing a different sort of video game, Apple is gambling that there are lots and lots of people out there who might be interested in a new "class" of device.

A very easy-to-use computer, more similar to a cell phone than a complex, scary laptop, with all its software to be installed and viruses and whatever an operating system is.

A computer with the ability to have wireless internet anywhere, not just within range of a wifi hotspot.

A computer which is built around the needs not of a computer programmer, who wants complete control over the machine, who uses it like a block of clay to sculpt more and more complex works of art. A computer that operates quite a bit like the old concept of the Internet Appliance: a device whose sole purpose is to surf the web.

3Com tried it with their Audrey. So did Compaq, with their iPAQ. Hey, there were plenty of other MP3 players before the iPod came on the market.

The iPad is the coming of age of the Internet Appliance. The ease-of-use of a microwave oven, applications that install as if from the dollar menu at McDonalds and just work, and the always-on network connectivity of a cell phone. It's not a computer. It's the embodiment of Web 3.0. It's the Internet, everywhere.

Let me repeat that: the whole sum of human knowledge, accessible anywhere, for about the same price as you pay to get web access on your tiny little phone. Cheap, ubiquitous wireless access just took on a more useful form factor. That's the revolution here, and it's going to change things, big-time.

The users are an untapped market. They are your grandmother who winters in Florida and doesn't want to pay for an internet connection that will go unused half of the year. They are the guy who cuts your hair and wants to keep in touch with his kids in California, but doesn't know the first thing about computers. They are your classmates who play games on consoles and just need a simple PC for taking notes, or reading textbooks which they bought online at a discount. They are road warrior consultants who need Word, Excel, Powerpoint, email and a web browser, in the most lightweight and portable package possible. They are all the people who use the basic functionality in every application, panic at fake virus popup windows, and wonder why on earth this Internet thing can't be less complicated.

They are not you.

Remember: you may think that it's ridiculous to own more than a half-dozen pairs of shoes. That hasn't stopped Zappos.com from making millions. In other words, it's not always about you.

So, you can buy a full-featured netbook for less than the price of an iPad, install Linux on it, author shareware or hack kernels or even install OSX on it and thumb your nose at Cupertino. Have fun. Apple will be perfectly happy to allow Asus and the rest to compete over a few dollars of margin in the cutthroat netbook market.

In the meantime, they'll be busy cornering a new market. And that's why they make the big bucks.

• The fall semester is over! It was among the most valuable and enlightening semesters of my MBA...I wrote a full-fledged business plan, learned how to identify and evaluate new business opportunities, gave numerous short pitches and long presentations, and expanded my network. In the end, I kept the "B" in "B-School" with an A- in Entrepreneurship and a B+ in Starting New Ventures; my GPA remains firmly in the 3.3-3.4 range.
• The last three years have been all about the basics of business--accounting, marketing, economics, organizational behavior--and now it's time to put it into practice as part of the time-honored tradition of being an American small-business owner. I'm in the process of getting my own company off the ground; in a nutshell, we will develop location-aware and augmented-reality applications for mobile devices, focusing on gaming and related marketing and advertising opportunities. By the time I graduate in May, Aberdeen Interactive will be a real company.
• Of course, you need cash flow, so I'm doing consulting work to make ends meet. Right now I've got one main paying client and one client for whom I'm working on an equity basis; more than just trying to make a buck, I'm learning everything I can from each of them. They're both startups in different sectors and different phases of development, and both have a lot to teach.
• Kara is being exceptionally patient with me as I embark on a new career; if she didn't have a great job (and equally great health insurance), this would not be a possibility. It's scary and exciting all at the same time, and while she prefers the more stable career path of working for a paycheck, she's giving me some freedom to try to make a go at my dream of being self-employed. This is an experiment, though...if it doesn't work out, we'll pull the plug and I'll go get a regular job. My internal deadline for bringing home enough bacon to survive is the end of the summer, 2010.
• This is Dot-com 2.0 for me. But while the first dot-com era was me struggling through with no experience and not much direction, this time, I know what I know...and I know what I don't. The successful entrepreneur doesn't have to be smart, but he surrounds himself with smart people. I'm trying a lot harder to do that this time. I'm also realizing, as difficult as it is, that you cannot just go it alone; you need support from those around you to get a business off the ground.
• The holidays were very good and both Kara and I spent quality time with family and friends, and gave and got some great gifts. Given the general economy and my current cash flow situation, we tried to scale back a bit, and I found that I enjoyed Christmas a lot more when I tried to think of more creative gifts without just throwing money at the problem. For my part, I got lots of culinary ingredients, cooking lessons for the two of us at the Boston Center for Adult Education, books, toys and games.
• In strict industry terms, the gaming industry is a tough nut to crack. But if there's one industry I know better than any other, it's gaming...an added bonus is that gaming time can now realistically be considered "research". Right now, I'm playing Torchlight, the Diablo clone from some of the original creators of the series (can it be a clone if it's from the guys who wrote the original?). It's an enjoyable dungeon romp with plenty of unique items to satisfy the power-up packrat in me, and it runs reasonably well on my 4-year-old laptop. I also got the new DS Zelda game for Christmas, and I'm enjoying that as well. It's very similar to Phantom Hourglass with a few new puzzles and items; I really like the train as the primary vehicle for traveling around Hyrule. Not as jaw-droppingly innovative as Hourglass, but still fun.
• Speaking of gaming, Kara will accompany me to the first-ever PAX East this year, where I've promised her we can make fun of the cosplayers together. I'm really excited...I've never been to a gaming expo before, and I'm really really going to try to get the first version of my first iPhone game out there in time for the event, so we can do some marketing while we walk around and talk to people. My first boss, Mark, will also be there with his family, and it'll be great to catch up. It's funny...as interested as I am in games, most of my friends are not. But I'm sure I'll meet some interesting folks there; I'll have plenty of business cards on-hand to pass out.
• Writing-wise, both my submissions were rejected, but I have a good idea on how to retool one of the stories to make it more plausible. The feedback was that it was funny, at least, so that's good. As far as the blog goes, I think I'm moving in a slightly different direction--again. The articles I've been writing were genericized to the point where you couldn't tell who the audience was that I was writing for. I'm done with that: I know who reads this blog. So I'll be writing articles and stories just the same, but it's coming from me, Mark Dalius, to you. I definitely plan to go back to writing about what's going on in life as well--no articles about what I had for lunch, though.

That's all for now. As I recall, my resolution for 2009 was to keep on doing more or less what I was doing, and I think I stayed true to that goal, at least for the first three-quarters of the year. 2010 is going to be about new horizons and new opportunities, about working both hard and smart towards careful strategic goals, and to bringing new innovations to market. If '09 was about being on cruise control down the straightaway, '10 is about getting into the curves and standing on the accelerator.

So hang on for the ride!

Happy New Year!

While planning, we came to the conclusion that a cruise is a really convenient way to see a good number of countries and destinations on a trip; you can "check off a lot of boxes" without much trouble. You only need to unpack and repack once, you don't have to bother with passports or visas at most destinations, you don't need to worry about learning a bunch of languages (beyond at least the polite "hello" and "do you speak English?"), and you've got a number of ready-made excursions ripe for the choosing.

Of course, you're never going to get the sort of in-depth exposure that you would if you stayed in a place for longer than 8 hours, but you're also never stuck for a week in a place where there's really only about 2 days worth of stuff to see. It's a sampler plate, and if you really like something, you can always come back another time for a full meal.

We decided to book an Eastern Mediterranean voyage, which would take us to Croatia, Turkey, Greece, and back to Venice. Not as exotic as a Kenyan safari or a beach in Thailand, but a little more unusual than the standard holiday in Dublin or the Bahamas. We found at least 9 sights, tastes and experiences definitely worth writing home about.

1. Old City of Dubrovnik
Croatia is one of those countries you definitely need to look up on a map. Most people will remember it as a part of former Yugoslavia which broke away during the war there in the 90s; most Croatians, however, will point out that it was an independent state long before the communist regime assimilated it into part of a larger country.

Dubrovnik is a coastal city in the southwest of the horseshoe-shaped country, and it boasts an impressive, walled Old City which was the first stop on our tour. Winding stone streets--where cars wouldn't fit even if they were allowed--flank cafes, restaurants, museums and churches. The city could be a movie set. There is no shortage of tourists, although they are certainly less thick than in some places, and the dollar seems to retain some value against the Croatian kuna.

The big draw here is the setting of an ancient, labyrinthine city which still feels relatively undiscovered, at least by Americans. Definitely worth a visit.

2. Temple of Apollo
Ruins are ruins because they were put up by somebody, then fell down. The Temple of Apollo, outside of Kusadasi, Turkey, however, was never entirely finished in the first place. So you get the unusual experience of seeing a place where the reconstruction can only go so far; the site, in its heyday, might not have looked all that different from the scattered pillars and masonry of today.

That's really the secondary impression, however. The first impression is one of wonderment and awe as you stand amongst tall pillars and marble walls, a work of architecture that would be impressive even today, built with modern tools. Pictures cannot really do justice to the feeling of putting your hand on a fluted column, tracing its form up to the sky, of seeing where masons carved designs into the rock, and where they stopped working, never to begin again. It's big and old and a little overwhelming, like a cathedral open to the sky, but built long, long before the birth of Christ, to a totally different sort of god.

3. Ancient Ephesus
If you can be overwhelmed by standing inside what is essentially a particularly old cathedral, there are no words to describe the feeling of walking down an ancient city street, flanked by the walls of what were once shops, pillars that once supported stonework to keep pedestrians out of the rain, and grooves cut into the slick marble like grip tape on a primitive wheelchair ramp.

Ephesus, also in Turkey, was built and abandoned four times. It was once a port city, and was abandoned only after the sea actually silted up to the point where it is now miles from the ocean. Imagine the nearest hill to where you are now, and imagine that you could row a boat right up to the base of it, and the effect is the same. Only a very small percentage of the ruin has been excavated, but you can still walk into the shells of old stores and apartments, see modern-looking clay pipes that made up the sewer lines, and even see an advertisement (for a brothel, natch) carved into the old marble.

Legend has it that the Virgin Mary spent the last days of her life in Ephesus; the "Ephesians" mentioned in the New Testament are the people who lived here.

4. Turkish Rugs
These rugs have a reputation for price that probably exceeds their reputation for quality, but the reverse should be true. Yes, they are pricey, but how much would you pay for something that can take a single person a month--two months, even years--to weave by hand?

We saw rugs woven of wool, of wool and cotton, and of silk. One was designed in such a fashion that it changed color depending on the viewing angle. All can be put on the floor, but the more expensive might be better hung on a wall. The weaving process is just as mind-numbingly arduous as it would be to paint the Mona Lisa by filling in tiny squares of graph paper.

And yes, we did buy a small rug. It's made of undyed wool, and is in shades of white, black, gray and brown. As our Turkish friends put it, the white comes from white sheep, the black from old sheep, the brown from dirty sheep, and the gray from old sheep.

5. Cliffside Village of Oia
The trip up the cliffs of the Greek island of Santorini is accomplished either by taking a tour bus up an impossibly winding road, or by taking a donkey up a different--but still impossibly winding--road. Fortunately or unfortunately, our tour chose the former method.

Our first stop on the island was the village of Oia, pronounced "ee-yah," which perches on pumice cliffs, overlooking the caldera where the volcano that formed the island blew itself apart. The walls are impossibly whitewashed; many roofs are painted a shade of blue. There are no cars in the older parts of the village, and the streets wind pleasantly here and there, occasionally opening up to spectacular views of the Aegean Sea.

6. Gyros in Greece
With all due respect to the Arlington, Massachusetts Greek Festival, their lamb sandwiches don't hold a candle to the real thing.

We probably spent too much money on our lunch in Santorini, being as it was in the touristy section of the main town, and literally just above the cable car that provided an alternative to either foot or donkey travel back to the ship. But it was very, very good food. Greasy, yes, probably laden with fat and calories; the pita had more in common with fried chicken than with a healthy wrap as served back home.

But so worthwhile. There's a reason why the gyro is to Greece as spaghetti is to Italy, and I'd take another gyro over a plate of pasta any day of the week.

7. Old Town Corfu
The island of Corfu has some nice beaches, a few historic sites, and a pleasant Old Town district which feels like a blend of Paris and Venice, sans canals. If there were one island to skip on this itinerary, this would be it, but if you happen to get there, the relatively wide streets and plentiful vendors make it a nice shopping destination.

We visited a leather goods shop where you can buy handmade leather coats or handbags at a relative bargain, even given the weakness of the dollar. In a lucky find, we happened down an alley where we met Tom, a woodworker who machines ladles, jewelry, bowls, canes, wine bottle stands and even miniature globes on a positively ancient lathe. All are made from olive wood, which grows everywhere on the island.

Corfu is a good place to buy olive oil and other olive products, which are made there, as well as a kumquat liquor, made from kumquat plants long ago imported from Australia.

8. Glassblowing in Murano
Murano is a small island in the Venetian Lagoon, on the same vaporetto (the "water bus") as the "main" island of Venice. It's known far and wide for its glassblowers, who make everything from simple trinkets to chandeliers to impossibly expansive (and expensive) sculptures out of nothing but molten sand.

We watched a glassblowing demonstration at one of the many glass shops that lined the canal; there was initially a fee, which as waived after we made a few small purchases. The glassblower began by making a small pitcher, first blowing out the bowl, then wrapping a strand of glass around the neck, then attaching a handle.

You can see plenty of videos of the process on Youtube, but several things stood out: first, glass is hot, much hotter than it looks. At one point, one of the glassblowers reached out to grab a gossamer strand of glass that looked like a bit of hot glue or a spiderweb blowing in the wind; a second later, there was a visible puff of smoke rising from his hand, followed by the smell of seared flesh. He plunged his burnt hand into one of many cooling buckets near the furnace. Second, that hot glass stays hot, hotter than you think, and longer than you think: once the pitcher was finished, the singed glassblower put a small rolled-up bit of newspaper into the neck. Within seconds, it was smoldering; it then burst into flames, and the pitcher shattered. Third, these guys are so good that they made a beautiful pitcher, and then destroyed it. To us, it seemed like destroying a work of art. To them, it was just so much broken glass.

9. Venice Streets and Canals
There are a few things you need to do in Venice: eat a meal somewhere by a plaza or a canal, see St. Mark's Square, ride a gondola if your wallet can handle it.

But far and away my favorite activity is simply walking up and down the twisting streets, letting your feet take you where they will. We spent the better part of a day doing just this; on one occasion, it took us by an interesting modern art exhibit featuring a long "tunnel" made of strands of videotape and a "wave" made of great sheets of aluminum that looked as if they were breaking upon stone columns. On another, we ended up dead-ending at a canal, where gondolas streamed by as if they were cars on a train. On still others, we found hidden plazas, bridges, tiny shops, an Italian grocery store, unintentionally funny direction signs (one that pointed both left and right to get to the same destination), and, perhaps most pleasant of all, tiny snatches of pure silence in the hustle and bustle of Disneyland Italy.

We did break down and take a gondola ride; it was pleasant, a fun way to see a few places you couldn't see on foot. But my favorite activity in the city of canals is still a directionless stroll.

I had a great opportunity to do some travel in the Eastern Mediterranean with Kara and friends MJP and Stephanie, and we just came back yesterday. I think the trips would lend themselves to list-type articles. Maybe I'll even bang one out this afternoon.

Also, if you haven't heard, I am out of a full-time job as of the beginning of this month. However, a very intriguing opportunity to do some contract consulting work has emerged, which ought to be kicking off in a week or two. So, I won't be idle very long. I'm also working on a handful of startup opportunities with some other folks from BU, which might bear fruit, and will be very interesting to be a part of, if nothing else.

I've recently come to the conclusion that the "web development" arena has changed significantly over the last 10 years, and it's put me in a bit of a bind. The fact is, there used to be two very distinct jobs:

• programmer - somebody who worked with C++ and databases, was mathematically inclined, and was interested in the fine details of producing efficient code, usually without much input into what was being built. A highly-skilled bricklayer.
• web developer - somebody who worked with HTML, maybe some database stuff, was entrepreneurially inclined, interested in the general details of translating a business concept into a reality, with just enough technical skill to be dangerous, and a lot of input into the actual design of the application. A general contractor.

I started out in the biz as a guy who knew Photoshop and general principles of information design. I saw the potential of the web as a place where cool new ideas could get done; from the beginning, I had an entrepreneurial mindset (although I didn't realize it at the time). I didn't (and don't) care much about the details of how things got done--which language, which architecture, which database, etc.--just that they got done and were available for people to use. If you needed more speed, throw hardware at the problem, or hire a consultant.

In retrospect, I probably should have taken a post-college job offer I got from Modem Media, which would have gotten me into the process of interactive media development (and probably would have had me unemployed by 2002 as well). But, I took the money and the webmaster job in Maryland, and started down the road of implementing applications that were designed by other people. Soon, the question was "Can you do database-enabled applications?" which seemed like an awful lot more programmy than I wanted to get, but that's where the money was, so I followed. And then it was "Can you do some shell scripting?" and "Can you do some Java?" and on and on, and before I knew it, I was working as a programmer.

And I wasn't bad at it. But I wasn't great at it either, and not because I couldn't have been, but just because I didn't have the passion for the nitpicky little details that true programmers have to care about. Discussions about how to structure functions and how much abstraction was appropriate were, to me, religious arguments, a distraction from the problem of getting the work done. I still maintain that position: a lot of programmers waste a lot of expensive hours crafting unnecessarily elegant solutions that may be beautiful to them, but which are wasteful to their employers. Somewhere, there's a balance.

So, web development gradually became programming; programmers implemented business solutions for the web using languages increasingly indistinguishable from those used in shrink-wrapped software. Don't believe me? Somebody just wrote a version of Wolfenstein 3D that runs in Javascript. Looks like Javascript isn't just some "scripting" language anymore.

There was a point when I really wanted to get good at programming, to be an amazing coder. But at the same time, I saw that my input into the what of the business was being required less and less--not just my input, but the input of my peers. So I decided to go for an MBA, to learn about the business side of operations. In some ways, that was career suicide: I don't think I have ever had a conversation with a programmer who didn't look at me with at least initial disdain when I revealed my interest in business. I found myself having to actually defend wanting a graduate degree.

I can understand the perspective; I too once mocked "suits" who "didn't have a clue what was going on." Turns out that they didn't have a clue about the actual inner workings of the code, because they were usually too busy trying to make sure we made money and could get paid. This isn't to say that there probably wasn't some real discrimination on the business side for the "code monkeys" as well. But any programmer would welcome a businessperson trying to learn more about technology, and I thought it unfair to look down upon a technical person wanting to get a better understanding of how technology translates into paychecks.

So, here I am. I'm not exactly sure what the future holds for me, just that I have to be a lot more careful in my career path than I've been in the last 10 years. Consulting is an option. Working in industry is another. I'm looking for a way to leverage what I know about technology, without spending my days in a closet, face down in a text editor. I don't want to settle for a job that doesn't utilize my public speaking and writing abilities, for example, or all the knowledge I've gained in the business sector. I'm exhausted and frustrated by jobs where I'm told not to worry about the details of what we're doing, strategically and tactically, but just to worry about the how.

Don't get me wrong: I still love technology. But to use the architectural metaphor, I love the shape of the building, the functionality of the rooms and hallways, the location in relation to the traffic flows of the city. There are other, better, bricklayers and steelworkers, and I'm happy to let them do their jobs.

So, we'll see where things go from here. I'm 31, I have a handful of classes left before I get that MBA, and it's time for a career change. I don't regret the experiences I've gained, working in the trenches for the past ten years, but I'm ready to get up on the battlefield and do something I'm passionate about--and can be really exceptional at.

Rocckstar was a talented band, for sure, but what had really made them a chart-topping phenomenon was their ability to play to the audience, to whip them into a frenzy with just a few riffs and power chords. Chris Kyller might be the voice of Rocckstar, but Johnny Rocck was its heart and soul, and when he played, people listened.

Of course, there were a lot fewer listeners these days. They had worked hard to move up the charts, but the fickle tastes of the public had changed, and they were now playing "intimate" shows, as their rep put it. Gone were the sold-out football stadiums of just a few short years ago. Now they were back in the same half-full small clubs where they'd been only an opening act before their big break.

It wasn't the lack of publicity or money that bothered him the most, though. It was the apathy. Rocckstar might as well be lounge singers, the way people were carrying on conversations while he hopped across the stage, shredding up and down the neck of his custom guitar.

Chris was howling the chorus, spinning around the mic. But with the ho-hum response, he looked foolish, just a has-been reliving his glory days before an indifferent audience.

Johnny looked down at his effects pedals, lined up neatly in front of his monitor. There was his vintage orange fuzztone, the chorus pedal that had been made just for him back when he could still get endorsements, and his very first distortion box, the labels on the knobs long since worn away so only he was still able to tune it to just his custom sound. And at the far end, a dark red box with a single, silver switch on the surface, and an old-fashioned red bulb at the top.

He had come across the pedal in a secondhand music shop in some backwater city, years ago. "Plug your guitar into this," the strange man in the strange little shop had said, "and you'll wail like never before. Your solos will be unstoppable. You'll tear up your fretboard like the Devil himself."

"What's the catch?" he had asked.

"I'll sell it to you cheap," he said, "but there's a price to be paid for playing the Devil's music."

At the time, he had been going through a phase--his rep had suggested that he dabble in the occult, to give his persona more of an edge. So he bought it. But something about the man made him feel uncomfortable in a way that pentagram tattoos and Ouija boards didn't, and so he never plugged in his new purchase.

But a few nights ago, before yet another show, he had come across it in the bottom of a trunk of gear, and hooked it into his effects bank on just a whim. The show had gone fairly well, so he had left it turned off, and the same happened the next night, and the next. But tonight, he was bored. His audience was bored. And Chris looked ridiculous.

The little red bulb gleamed in the stage light, beckoning.

Chris got to the end of the chorus. "C'mon, Johnny, rock it!"

That was his cue for the solo. He was going to try it. He stomped the switch. The red bulb flickered, then brightened to a warm glow.

The guitar began to growl with a sound he had never heard before. He almost missed a note in sheer surprise, but the absolute perfection of the harmonics brought him back. Slowly, he began to work his way up the fretboard, carefully at first, teasing out one note at a time.

Then, without warning, he tore into an off-time arpeggio that screamed from the amplifier, threatening to leave the rest of the band outright, but then bombing back into the main rhythm with a bend on the tremolo that sent the pitch diving far below the bass and almost to the height of human hearing in a single sonic shockwave. He didn't even know what scale he was playing, but it seemed filled with unlikely third-steps and 17th-steps, strange and twisting chords that filled him with violent passion.

His fingertips burned as he worked his way back up the fretboard, and he realized that he was kneeling at the very edge of the stage. He couldn't see the audience; he couldn't hear anything beyond his own playing; he felt the music assault his ears, his lungs, the depths of his stomach. It was so loud, so bone-crushing, a face-melting, soul-destroying solo of unprecedented power.

His vision was fading to static and his head was spinning as he leaned back to the floor. How worth it this was! His eyes were filled with shimmering lights; all he could feel were the strings vibrating in perfect unison beneath his calloused fingers. He wished he could see the audience. They must be loving it, he thought. They must be wailing, screaming, burning alive with the sheer pleasure of the sound blazing forth from his fingers...

---

Mrs. Bellweather had lived through plenty of new musical styles, thank you very much, but she did not care at all for the sort of folks who frequented the club down the street, and if you asked her, it was little surprise to see sirens and smoke coming from the vicinity. The street was cordoned off with yellow tape, and it looked like half the fire departments in the city were outside, as well as a good number of police.

In fact, a pair of them were leading a handcuffed man to a squad car as she wheeled her grocery cart by.

"You don't understand, man! It wasn't me! It was that pedal!" he was shouting, half-sobbing.

"Please, Mr. Rocck," said one of the officers. "You just walked out of the worst fire I've ever seen without so much as a singed eyebrow. You're only going to make it harder on yourself if you keep lying to us."

"Hey, the judge might go easy on you if you're honest," said the other. "I think he's a big fan of your second album."

Mrs. Bellweather stopped and glared at the man, at his tattoos, long hair and ripped jeans. "Hmph. Devil music, if you ask me." She turned away with a sniff.

The man stopped walking, staring back at her, then began to sob all over again. The officers stuffed him into the back of the car and slammed the door. The street was silent, except for the crackle of flames and wail of sirens.

1. Hiring a Professional Can Be Worthwhile - According to Dennis, our driver, the costs associated with a DUI in California are somewhere near the 10K mark. Ok, he's definitely a biased source. But considering that hiring a limo, van, or car for your wine tour comes with local expertise even while it's keeping you out of the slammer, that $70 an hour quickly becomes very worthwhile. Don't know where you're going? Ask Dennis. Not sure if that next winery is worth the tasting fee? He sure does. It's short money when you consider everything you get. And nobody has to get stuck with DD duty.

2. If You Don't Love People, Stay Out Of Service - If one thing separated the truly amazing winetasting experiences from the duds, it was the person behind the counter. At some wineries, the pourer clearly didn't care whether we enjoyed the wine or not, nor did he or she have much interest in us as potential customers. And at the best wineries, we were treated to friendly banter, instruction, and even a rap about Napa's climate. Regardless of whether we were wine celebrities (we weren't) or average Two-Buck Chuck drinkers (we were), the best places made us feel like we were the most important people ever to sip a glass of Chardonnay.

3. Love What You Do - Richard Graeser left an unsuccessful farming business in the mid-80s to take care of some family affairs after his father passed, and ended up planting grapes on some land he inherited in the upper Napa valley. Over 20 years later, he was cheerfully serving his own wines (with his picture on one of the bottles) to us in the lobby of our B&B as part of a free tasting. I doubt he got any sort of fee for being there (if it was, it was probably pretty marginal), and he didn't bring a single bottle or brand-imprinted corkscrew to sell. Just himself, his stories, and his product. Needless to say, he's found his passion, and it showed in his personality, and his wine.

4. There's Nothing Like A View - By the end of the day, when your taste buds are muddled with oak, tannins, grapefruit, kiwi and loamy earth, a spectacular view across green vineyards and dusty hills is like waking up in a Monet. The wine could be grape juice, and I don't think we would have cared all that much. But add substance (like Domaine Carneros's amazing sparkling wine) to style (like their stone patio overlooking the rolling hills of their estate and the rest of wine country) and you've got a recipe for success. But if you can't wow 'em with taste, at least wow 'em with beauty.

5. Price Doesn't Always Equal Quality, But It Sure Does Correlate - Time and again, we would introduce ourselves as "anti-wine-snobs," and we were pleased to hear that, even in Napa, folks drink plenty of Two-Buck. But prior to this trip, our wine budget rarely went above $8 or so a bottle...with so many palatable wines in the discount bin, how could we justify spending more on something we might not like? But once we had tasted and seen the goodness of California grapes, $20-30 seemed like a bargain for such quality. Oh, we'll still have plenty of budget offerings in our wine fridge...but you'll see a lot more Artesa and St. Supery amongst the Yellowtail.

6. Save the Best for Last - The weekend before Napa, we went to the Hudson Valley in New York for another wine tour. We did it in the right order: while upstate NY wines are fine in their own right, they simply don't compare to one of the world's premiere wine regions. If we had gone the other way around, it would have been like going to Foxwoods or any other Indian casino before a trip to Las Vegas. Now that we've been out west, it'll be a lot harder to justify buying a case on the Finger Lakes. Everything is relative, of course--you wouldn't eat steak every night--but once you've had filet, you stop paying top dollar for rump roast.

See you then!

--Mark

So, SAT review time: Mai Tai is to Caribbean beach as Mind Eraser is to...if you said "wedding reception," I'm glad you weren't at mine. A wedding is a conclave of tangentially-related people who mostly don't want be anywhere but the open bar. There's a protocol to follow: if the bartender is busy making your B52 (flaming, of course, and heavy on the Kahlua), he's not serving Aunt Mildred, and the night could get ugly fast.

Here, then, are six drinks that will keep the line flowing and the bar open:

1. Gin and Tonic The old standby. Clear liquor, a nice lime garnish, about 5 seconds to mix, and strong enough that it's worth sipping it through that tiny straw. Nobody will question your masculinity, and if you think they'll question your imagination, think again: this is a Classic Cocktail, capital C. If it's a top-shelf kind of wedding, nothing wrong with asking for a Tanqueray and tonic (my fave) or even Bombay Sapphire and tonic (which we'll discuss further).

2. Martini Most important: if they've got the blue bottle, Bombay Sapphire is my personal fave. Gin has a rep for causing bad hangovers, and a proper gin martini is always made Churchill-style: popular legend has it that the wily Brit preferred his martinis so dry that merely glancing at the vermouth from across the room was more than enough. So, we're talking about a glass of cold gin, possibly embellished with an olive or two. Or, substitute vodka for the gin. But that's it: we ain't talkin' about no Berry Blush Fruitini here. Just remember the Dorothy Parker quote:

I like to have a martini
Two at the very most --
After three I'm under the table,
After four, I'm under my host.

Which might be fine, depending on the wedding. I prefer three olives.

3. Scotch and soda I recently went on a whisky cruise around Boston Harbor, sampling everything from the always-behind-the-counter Johnny Walker Blue to The Peat Monster by artisanal distiller The Compass Box. There was a time when I would cringe at the thought of adulterating a Scotch whisky with anything but spring water or a single ice cube. But, considering that most weddings are serving Dewar's as a top-shelf, much less something that costs upwards of $70 a bottle retail, I have no problem with a little Scottish bubbly.

4. Whiskey sour I add this because I love sour and salty things, because I do have a soft spot for what is definitely a "chick" drink, and because I can't have more than one of these before running for the Prilosec. If you've got to have something sweet, fruity, and with a cherry in it, this is the go-to. Show off your cherry-stem knot-tying skills when you're done, and the next (shotgun) wedding could be yours!

5. Cape Cod There's an unwritten rule that men should only ever have clear or amber liquor at bars. In the event that you're not a man, or you don't believe in such stereotypes, this drink is just vodka and cranberry juice. It's tasty, it's red, and it comes in a cocktail glass. It coordinates nicely with either a little black dress, or a poofy white one, for any brides out there. And cranberry juice is good for your prostate...it's practically a health drink!

6. Captain and Coke Also known as spiced rum and cola, but just use the brand names and they'll substitute appropriately if necessary. Here's a drink that truly bridges the gap between the sexes: men, women and children can all proudly stand and declare that they have a little Cap'n in them. Substitute Diet Coke to make this one Weight-Watchers friendly, then have twice as many.

Of course, the best way to make the night last is to stick to beer or wine (either/or!), and light beer if you can stand it. That way, you'll still be standing when the afterparty kicks into high gear. Aunt Mildred will be so proud.

1. They did what??? As a homeowner, you're going to find that not all homeowners treat the homeownership process the same, in terms of maintenance, or knowing anything at all about stuff beneath the drywall. If you haven't built your house yourself, you're probably going to inherit some surprises.

For example, when we bought our condo, I noticed an unlit overhead light in our bathroom. "Is that hooked up to a switch anywhere?" I asked. "Um, we're not sure," was the reply. I assumed that the light had been disconnected at some point while installing a light over the vanity mirror, and just hadn't been removed. We left the rogue light where it was for several years, until I decided during our recent renovation to pull it out and patch over the hole. Fortunately, I use a current detector pen, and imagine my surprise when it lit up as it brought it closer to the socket.

The new light bulb makes our bathroom look much brighter.

2. I take two trips in the morning, I take two trips in the afternoon... Before you head to your local hardware store or building center, you should stand back and mentally walk through the job. Prepare a careful checklist of supplies you'll need to complete each individual task. Then you can throw that list away, because you are going to have to make a second trip, no matter what.

Even if you somehow managed to fit an entire Lowe's into your Jetta (more on that later), you will inevitably find that you're missing some key part that you didn't consider, didn't know about, or didn't need until you broke the last key part during the "prep" phase of your project. On the flip side, you're almost as certain to not need something you purchased, so this is one time you definitely want to save your receipt. Bottom line, if you can manage to only make two trips to the store, consider it a great success.

3. Contractors have pickup trucks for a reason. Size is so misleading. What seems like a manageable cardboard box in the store may become a nightmare of dimensions as you struggle to push your new vanity into the trunk, then into the back seat, then into the front seat, finally making it fit if you keep the window open and rest it on the gearshift lever and up against the steering wheel.

Of course, I'm not sure that this isn't a conspiracy on the part of the suppliers to actually make the boxes expand when you leave the store. I wouldn't be shocked if what seemed to be a set of blinds and a new porch light somehow failed to fit in the bed of an F-250.

4. It will be faster if I just use this power tool. I like to make fresh salsa. I've tried various methods for chopping the tomatoes and onions a little more quickly. But food processors and blenders simply turn the tomatoes into sauce, and using canned tomatoes lends the salsa a store-bought jarred salsa taste. There's no substitute for the chunky texture you get when you undertake the somewhat laborious process of chopping by hand.

So it goes with home improvement. After scraping away with a grout saw at the stained top layer of bathroom grout, I decided to use the Dremel to speed up the process. The first bit simply burned the grout, the second bit simply wore down the bit, and the third bit went right through the grout and into the subfloor.

I like the grout saw just fine now.

5. I promise the water will be back on by tomorrow...or the next day. I am a terrible optimist. I thought we would get our entire condo painted within a few weeks of us living there. Of course, we were still sanding and priming months later.

The water went off on Saturday morning, although I did manage to get things set up so that just the sink was unusable, and the toilet and shower were still fine. It's now Monday. I'm sure we'll be able to brush our teeth in the bathroom again tonight.

Maybe.

But Pub Trivia is actually a very good time, and there's nothing wrong with working a little competitive knowledge-slinging into your weekly booze-up. It's also a great activity for a group of friends, like a monthly poker game without the tears, recriminations and debt.

Be warned: it can be a little disconcerting if you're trying to drown your sorrows quietly at the end of the bar, only to have somebody yelling questions about winning sports teams and Oscar recipients into the mic every few minutes. So keep that in mind if you're in a bar on an "off" night...a lot of bars are using trivia as a (very smart, I might add) way to drum up business on a slow night, like a Sunday or a Tuesday. You can certainly be a team of one, but up to six is kosher (you can have more, but if you do, your team can't win first place).

There's a company called Stump! that does most of the trivia nights around here, and they run in a standard format. Here's how it works:

You have four quarters, each with its own topic (sports, pop culture, geography, etc.), and there's a halftime between the first two quarters and the last two. Each quarter in the first half, there are 4 questions, and you get 4 point values to "wager" on an answer: 1, 3, 5 and 7. Every time you answer a question, you give it a point value based on how certain you are of your answer: the catch is, you can only use each point value once. So, if you're really sure that South America is south of North America (it is), you give it 7 points. Then, if you don't know the capital of Austria (Vienna), you give it 1 point. Of course, you can only give the remaining questions a value of 3 or 5. So if you get another really hard question, the lowest you can give it is 3 points. For every question you get right, you get the points you wagered. The second half uses the same format, but with values of 2, 4, 6, or 8 points.

There's a special multi-part question at the end of each quarter, which might involve, for example, looking at a bunch of actor photos and naming the character they portrayed and the name of the movie. The halftime question starts with one clue, and if you answer the question in the first clue, you get 10 points. If it takes you two clues, you get 8 points, and so on.

For the final question, you wager a number of points. Get it right and get the points, but get it wrong, and lose half the points you wagered.

At the end of each round, team scores are announced, and at the end of the game, the team with the highest score wins--usually something like a gift certificate to the bar hosting the event. Teams coming in second or third might get prizes as well, depending on the night and the venue.

Perhaps the most creative part of the night is coming up with an original team name, which can range from the lame (Trivia All-Stars) to the witty (Optimus Prime-Rib) to the unprintable. Most tend to err on the "blue" side, which makes it all the more amusing when you're getting destroyed by a team called "I Love Boobs" or the like.

The trivia tends to be more pop culture than Jeopardy; it's probably better to know the winner of Survivor: Fiji (Earl Cole) than the current Secretary of Transportation (Ray LaHood). You almost certainly need a sports buff, as there will definitely end up being some questions about the pitcher with the lowest ERA in the 1984 American League (Mike Boddicker of Baltimore, 2.79). Winning the last game of Trivial Pursuit at home might not automatically make you a winner here, and the guy who watched the Oscars is probably going to have a leg up on somebody who read BusinessWeek instead.

But, it's a fun way to turn an evening of killing brain cells into an educational experience, and you just might learn the name of the show that preceded The Hills on MTV (Laguna Beach).

starch - Not the stuff you put on a collar or avoid while on Atkins, this means toughness, chutzpah, and sheer balls. Actually a pleasant replacement for overused terms synonymous with "testicular fortitude." She's got a lot of starch, bringing a bucket of KFC to an anorexia support group.

pantaloons - "Pants" is a funny word, but it's got nothing on pantaloons. Technically these are a kind of tights, but given that slim jeans are back in style, I think we can stretch the definition. If he doesn't shut up about Kings of Leon, I'm going to kick him right in his designer pantaloons.

spifflicated - A popular term from the 20s meaning to get bombed, plastered, lit, and heavily intoxicated. Remember that it's "spiff-licated", not "spliff-icated," which is an entirely different sort of intoxication. I tried to get into the jazz bar down the street, but the bouncer said I was already spifflicated and gave me the bum's rush.

bully to that - Synonymous with "cheers for that," "good idea," "I agree," and "I think Teddy Roosevelt was awesome." A nice term with a masculine air to it. He told me that after the face-punching contest, we were going to drink whiskey until we're so drunk we're sober again, and I said bully to that!

fisticuffs - A gentlemanly term for trading punches. Like other fancy words, it makes getting into a drunken brawl sound high-class and almost respectable. There's nothing like savoring a little of the old fisticuffs on Monday Night Raw.

greenhorn - In the parlance of our times, a "noob." Just imagine if kids playing Unreal Tournament started inserting this term into their streams of badly-spelled profanity. Quit hogging the rocket launcher, greenhorn, you keep blowing yourself up!

hubbub - This word describes the aforementioned streams of badly-spelled profanity and other meaningless noise. Perhaps best used by Bugs Bunny when he asked a bomb-pounding Gremlin "What's all the hubbub, bub?" That's an awful lot of hubbub for the "small gathering" our keg-carrying upstairs neighbors said they were having.

Right now it's showing something for a Salvador Dali art supplier in New York. I'm not sure what that has to do with Cici's Pizza or Andy Rooney, but that's the state of the art in online advertising technology, I guess.

I've also unpublished a lot of the old content. I'd like to set things up so that I can make some of the old stuff password protected or something along those lines for close friends/family, but I don't think I can do that with my current blogging software. There's nothing published on here that I'm not comfortable discussing on the Today Show, but the story of the last five years of my life isn't the focus of what I'm writing about. So, for now, it's not available, to keep more personal stuff a little more private.

I did leave up two articles in particular: the one where I wrote about my engagement to Kara, which garnered some random comments from other women on the Internet named Kara, and from one of her old high school friends. The other is an article on "cool sword names" which is inexplicably the #3 link on Google if you search for "cool sword names" and has gotten some random internet comments as well.

I'll probably have to follow it up with an updated article to capture the popular "fans of swords" demographic. Write what your audience wants to hear, I always say!

More real and entertaining (?) content coming soon.

Kids these days have it so good with their video games. I downloaded the original Legend of Zelda to my Wii Virtual Console, and that game is tough. Of course, you can download the complete overworld map in about two seconds of searching on gamefaqs.com. In my day, you had to draw your own maps. On graph paper!

Video game boxing was a lot different too. You just moved the joystick and hit a button. If you wanted to swing for real, you'd go hit your brother.

I found a play I wrote in high school when I was in PA this past weekend. It's still pretty funny. There's a character in it named Abdulenzeebibble, whom, whenever somebody says his name, everybody says "Geshundheit!" which implies that the wacky foreign-sounding name sounds just like a sneeze. I'm not sure that Mel-Brooksian semi-racist humor would fly as well today. If I rewrite it, I think I'll change his name to Chad.

I bought some beer on the way home last night. In addition to the usual Coors Light, I thought I'd splurge on a Kriek Lambic, from Belgium. I've had it before; it has a sour black cherry taste that's more like a mixed drink of some kind than what you'd consider beer. It's worth trying--or revisiting--something different every now and then if you have the opportunity.

The cat just wanted to be fed dinner and it's not even four in the afternoon. That means she's going to want to be fed again before bedtime, which isn't going to happen. I don't think she understands the concept of delayed gratification.

All things being equal, I prefer positive people to negative people. I'd much rather hear from somebody about all the wonderful things that are going right in their life than all the things that are wrong. There's plenty to be happy about if you just think for a moment.

I used "their" as a singular possessive pronoun two sentences ago. The correct grammar is "hear from somebody about all the wonderful things that are going right in his life." Somebody = singular = his or her. People = plural = their. But I don't like that the masculine is the default, and I think that using "his or her" is clumsy and gets annoying when you do it over and over. "Their" is widely used for just those reasons and I think it's a sensible, reasonable change in the language.

Riding on a roller coaster, which I did recently, isn't that much different from speeding around in a car. But riding on a spinning ride is very different from something you'd do every day, and it actually made me feel more uncomfortable than the roller coaster. Plus, you can compensate somewhat for the g-forces by moving forward and back, but the constant outward centripetal pull is something you can't really control. That's my explanation anyway.

I wonder why I don't just buy everything but consumables online. The store never seems to have exactly what I'm looking for, and it's almost always cheaper on Amazon. If I were smart, I'd buy bulky items, perishable items, and "fitted" items (like clothes and shoes) in-person, and buy everything else over the Internet.

Massachusetts sales tax is going up to 6.25%. That's a shame. People prefer sales tax over income tax, which is foolish: income tax is progressive, meaning you pay more as you're more able to pay. If you earn minimum wage, that sales tax hits you a lot harder than it his me, percentage-wise: we both pay $6.25 on a $100 purchase, but that $100 is a much bigger percentage of your gross income than it is for me. And even though you're supposed to report online purchases and pay taxes on them, it's pretty much a scofflaw at present. Also, who's more likely to buy online: rich or poor? People don't always vote for things that benefit them the most.

Legos are still a lot of fun. We didn't have all the movie tie-ins when I was a kid, but that's ok: half of the spaceships we built were from Star Wars anyway. I refuse to call them "Lego bricks," though. I know they have to protect their copyright, so we'll just agree that they keep telling me I can't say "legos" and I'll keep ignoring them.

I speak of Cici's Pizza, who taunts me, endlessly, with their ads.

I've never been there; I've never even seen one in person. But I know all about them.

The all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. The various kinds of pizza (and pasta, and salad, and dessert). Their ridiculous $5.99 price, which makes me wonder just what that pizza could be made of if you can eat as much of it as you want for such a pittance. That promotion they ran where they put pennies around their parking lot and if you found one that said "free pizza" on it or something, you ate for free.

How do I know this? Oh, because in-between every other repeat of House or Law and Order or CSI: Wichita, I see one of their ads.

They're good ads. Funny. Memorable. One of their ads plays off the Seinfeld-esque dilemma of the buffet line jumper: if somebody is trying to make up their mind between the sausage and pepperoni, is it kosher to just skip by on your way to the mushroom, or are you guilty of "cutting"? (According to the ad, it's perfectly acceptable, and the pleasant suburban soccer mom you pass will give you a friendly smile as you do so.)

And even beyond the quality of the TV spots, it's a solid product...everybody likes pizza, and who doesn't salivate at the thought of stuffing as much of it down your gullet as you want for the price of a couple gallons of gas? You could probably save some money by showing 30 seconds of people shoveling pizza into their mouths with a repeated Billy-Mays-style (may he rest in peace) voiceover: "Cici's Pizza: All you can eat for just $5.99!"

So we've established that I'm about one nine-volt battery and a safety pin away from giving myself a Cici's Pizza prison tattoo. The issue is clearly not one of brand awareness. It's availability. I just checked, and the nearest location to Boston is outside of Allentown, PA. Hey, it used to be State College. At least they're getting closer.

And it's not like every product is available everywhere. I can't get Middleswarth potato chips outside of central PA. Yuengling hasn't quite made it to Massachusetts. There are no California Tortillas in Brighton.

They also don't advertise here. That is the crux of my issue, and my message to Cici's: stop taunting me! Enough!

I know that the presence of the ads is likely some large package media buy, where somebody bought airtime on the USA Network with no regional targeting. They probably got it cheap enough that it didn't matter that they were covering areas where no restaurants existed. Since it's a franchise operation, maybe it was even a strategic move to get brand awareness in front of potential franchisees.

If I had the startup capital, I'd open one myself. So I guess that worked.

But since I don't have that kind of cash, I suppose that I'll have to be patient and wait for the brand to make its way up north. I'm sure I'll eventually end up with a plateful of cheap pizza.

In the meantime, don't even get me started on Sonic.