Story Archive - April 2008

In Which I Discuss Hats (04/19/2008)

What we've come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One: People aren't wearing enough hats. - Executive (Meaning of Life)

I am a big fan of hats. Summer is here and I have began the seasonal activity of porching in front of my house as weather permits, but upon looking through my hat collection at my winter beanie, my depression cap, my gothic fisherman cap, my black leather fedora, etc., I determined my only appropriate hats for porching are my baseball caps.

It is my opinion that in modern America people are simply not wearing enough good hats. Don't get me wrong, I have a few baseball caps, and while they make up an important piece of my hat ensemble, they are not a cornerstone of my hat-wearing career. They are of course best-suited for playing baseball or wearing backwards when wanting to be a ass.

A couple years ago I was out grabbing coffee at Sharon Park, a secret strip mall known only to the wealthiest of Palo Alto (and to me), and noticed there was a hat shop there. Excitedly I went inside to look through the collection and saw a gorgeous shelf of panama hats. I pulled down one of the nicer hats from the middle rack and tried it on. As I was checking out my sexiness in the mirror, the shopkeeper complimented how nice I looked in it. I smiled. She said, "that is one of our middle priced hats, let me show you one of the good ones from the back." She stepped into the back and I took a look at the price tag. It read "695." This spark a strange bit of disbelief in me. I assumed there was no way that it would be only $6.95 but at the same time $695.00 seem ridiculous for a bit of woven straw. Sure enough, she came out with a $1,200.00 hat that looked only slightly different from the one I had. I smiled and with sheer terror in my heart, gave her back the more-than-thousand-dollar hunk of woven straw.

Still, as I have been porching out there in the blazing sun in my crappy baseball caps, that story came back to mind. So I made a new trek out to a better hat store (*cough* Amazon.com *cough*) and purchased myself a new reasonably priced panama hat. It arrived this week. I feel very happy to have it. If only I had an all-white suit to go with it.

I have been carefully watching the presidential candidates position on hats. While my heart with always be with Johnny Sunshine, his fantastic hair is not something he ever chooses to cover with a hat. Now Hilary seems like she has the best opportunity to wear impressive and fashionable hats, but she chooses not to do this. Barak? Barak, why are you the only candidate to wear a hat? Worse, why was it a cowboy hat?

On Being Rich (04/13/2008)

[The perfect amount of money to leave children is] enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. - Warren Buffett

When I think about what it would be like to be rich, I don't think about the material possessions. I never think "if I were rich I would buy a yacht" or even "I would buy a sports car." I think if I were rich I would drive the same car. I think if I were rich I would live in the same apartment. I would wear the same clothes. The big difference is that I wouldn't work at the same job. Really, I wouldn't work at any job.

Each day after work I've headed home and taken a seat out on my porch and each day after work it has been cold. I've had to put on a sweater and still the weather would creep though. You don't get good weather by sitting in doors. I used every ounce of my will to push the weather warm.

On Saturday, I was rewarded. I was rewarded with disgustingly hot weather. Apparently my will power is far stronger than I had suspected. On my walk into town on Saturday the sun beat down on me. It beat down on me very hard. By the time I got home, drenched in sweat, I was ready to collapse. Instead I went outside with a bottle of wine and deck of cards and played cribbage with friends.

I sighed a relaxed sigh. "See, this is what being rich means. Playing cards on the patio with friends, but doing it every day." As I've been enjoying the warm weather with the hot sun I realized I don't have a summer hat. I have my black leather fedora, but nothing that says "I'm going to sit on the patio with a glass of whine." I'm working on that.

Living in the Air (04/05/2008)

An amateur built the Arc. The Titanic was built by professionals. - Dave Barry

As you may or may not know, I "upgraded" to the MacBook Air when it came out back in February. I had some hesitation about the whole process since it involved dropping about twenty gigs of storage and moving to the slowest computer that Apple sells, but overall, I do what Steve tells me.

Two months into things I am a very happy person. When I pickup my old MacBook Pro all I can think is "how did I ever manage with something so heavy?" It feels like it has the density of absolute matter. I don't miss the elbowroom of the old drive yet; by not polluting my Mac with Windows, I've got some extra room to grow. Still, I've got an external drive I call MacBook Earth.

After a few days at the office getting really sick of plugging in my USB keyboard I gave in and bought a wireless keyboard and mouse from Apple. Both of these take a bunch of AA batteries and I must admit, knowing how any replaceable battery Steve is, it cracks me up that the two devices I would choose to build non-replaceable and rechargeable batteries into are the two devices Steve has chosen not to. Of course, these two devices are named MacBook Water and MacBook Fire.

When I'm out hanging at the cafŽ with my Air the people ogle it. That is the real reason for my purchase.