A relatively frustrating day at work - two steps forward and all that. One odd incident - walking into my building today I noticed what looked like a credit card under the tire of a car. I managed to pull it free and found that it was an ABA membership card belonging to one of our in-house attorneys. I gave it to him at a meeting we had this morning, after telling him where I found it (he works in another building down the street and does not park in the same lot I do). He has no idea how it ended up mangled under the wheels of a car. And to think that I just mentioned the Twilight Zone yesterday...

Here are the electronic items I have recently touched that no longer work:
1. iPaq - I gave up my Palm about 6 months ago because it was malfunctioning on a routine basis and had been ever since I got it several years ago. The iPaq was supposed to provide me with seamless integration with desktop applications (Word, Excel, email, calendar, etc.). Instead, it too began to malfunction almost immediately, to the point where it is now unusable. It may accidentally replace that ABA card in the parking lot.
2. Wireless connection at home - it works at my office and our office in Cambridge, but has had continuing problems at home. When it does consent to work it requires running through a checklist of approximately 157 items that need to be changed, along with a half dozen reboots, sacrificing a small rodent, and saying incantations in Esperanto while holding a burning pentagonal candle pointed toward the north star. Other than that it's just swell.
3. Digital cable box - we have three of these in the house. The other two work. Mine will only get the channel that is showing Hollywood Squares. HBO and Showtime won't function at all, nor will the on-demand movie feature. After calling the wonderful people at the cable monopoly, they told me that the hardware that allows them to send a test signal to my cable box was broken, so I should unplug it for 30 seconds, plug it back in, wait 5 more seconds, turn it on, and see what happens. Static on the TV (not even Hollywood Squares anymore) is what happened. They offered me a service call next week to bring out a new box. I think my daughter still has a hamster in her room...

Maybe I should just go back to slate and chalk.

This is a wonderful site, full of great ads from the 40s, 50s and 60s. The cars are wonderful (we had a white 1961 Pontiac Bonneville convertible, maroon leather interior, and a little handgrip thing on the glove compartment that I used to hold onto when I would ride standing up in the front seat - whee! - the roof leaked like a White House staffer at a holiday press party, but it was a great car nonetheless), the decor is fabulous, and the ads for beer are priceless ("In this friendly, freedom-loving land of ours -- Beer belongs . . . enjoy it! U.S. Brewers Foundation, 1953").