Work 'n' geek

Well, push came to shove this morning, or the rubber met the road, or [insert metaphor of finality here], and I went to the Wallingford Tully's early to finish off a stack of responding that I have been delaying action on. I ripped through them in jig time; I am usually pretty darn productive at Tully's. Now, if I could only remember to bring that swell gift card that I got for my birthday...

After work, I returned home to have lunch with Otis between her appointments today. I made the mistake of cracking open a nice Russian lager to enjoy with my bread and cheese; it knocked me for a loop and I spent a half-hour napping on the couch, and I swear there were little birdies or planets circling my head, and that my eyes had turned into little eckses. Thanks A-Wo and KayKay!

After recovery, I made myself scarce again so Otis could do a special. I stopped at the Mac Store and checked out the iTouch - have you heard of this? It's basically an iPhone without phone - but it has the same slick interface and built-in wi-fi for internet connectivity. It has a strange display - rather than re-structuring web pages to fit a small screen, like mobile phones do, it shrinks down the pages to shows them complete on a 3.5 inch screen. But you can tap the screen to zoom in, or do this sweet two-finger scissoring to expand a section. It's very weird and not very intuitive, sort of a mini-version of the moves Tom Cruise made to view his holographic display in Minority Report, so I'm not sure how effective it would be for anything other than casual browsing. It does have a thumb-type keyboard that magically appears on screen if you tap anyplace that accepts text, but I'm not sure I'd want to blog with it.

It also has all the iPod stuff, and iTunes for direct downloading, and video, and all that. So, one more product for me to feel torn about. No wonder I'm still trying to spend the money I got from selling the sidecar two years ago.

After not-buying any iToy, I wandered off the Zanadu, where I did wind up buying the Fletcher Hanks collection, I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets. It's a weird book with weird work - Hanks is sort of the Hieronymous Bosch of comics' golden age - and more of an intellectual curiosity than a "good read," but it looks like fun.

I've been blogging here at Coffee & Comics, but the coffee is getting cold - maybe I'll try to get a few errands in before I head home.