Robert in Seattle

Lawyers, others question radio TIVO-like devices

I had personally pondered developing PC-based audio recorders years ago; just another project that got put on a shelf.

My own comments posted to the Yahoo! Board in response to this lame waste of time and energy:

So what else is new? People have been recording movies on TV for years since VCRs first came along. And I still remember the fuss about how it was going to erode the market for movies and shows to the point of collapsing the marketplace. Or so the damn lawyers said. Instead, we're now seeing an incredible boom in the sale of DVDs (both sales AND rentals) of movies and -- God forbid! -- entire season collections of TV shows (who would have guessed?)! $79.95 for one season of Seinfeld?!!

To all you entertainment lawyers out there kicking up a fuss so you b*stards can carve out another ounce (or pound) of flesh: F*CK OFF! Leave the marketplace alone and it'll pretty much take care of itself. Radio is already drastically changing with the incredible number of podcasts hitting the Internet every single day. Broadcasters need to be more worried about how to produce better content that people will actually listen to rather than trying to protect the poor excuse for miserable content that they've been force-feeding all of us for years. Get over it. And take your damn lawyers with you!

From the Oregon Daily Emerald -- University of Oregon News & Sports: 10 Reasons Not to Kill Bush. Jennifer McBride is a surprisingly level-headed student from Oregon (of all places!) writing about the current discourse in American society today. Well worth the read.

Thursday night was Cake Night at the Barnes & Noble in Downtown Bellevue! Well, actually it was the roll-out for two new books in the Day Hikes series from Sasquatch Press: The Columbia Gorge by Seabury Blair Jr. and The Central Cascades by Mike McQuaide. (Seabury was my soon-to-be-ex Jeanne's first husband - try explaining THAT one simply to people!) Anyway, I did a similar cake for Seabury's first book many years ago (Backcountry Ski Washington) when I was first dating Jeanne over on Bainbridge Island. So the Community Relations Manager from Barnes & Noble thought it might be a fun idea to have a cake for their book release party. A lot of you know that my daughter, Nikki, has been a decorator for Whole Foods as a bakery decorator over the past year. Nikki's worked on a wide range of cakes and cookies now so I asked her to prepare a sheet cake for the party. Here it is pre-decorating: chocolate with mousse and raspberry layers inside, covered with a surprisingly light cream icing. She added the beautiful edging before transporting it home during her lunch hour just as we started into Seattle's first serious heat wave. (Nikki's car was like an oven in the parking lot by the time she got into it.) We actually had a fan blowing in the kitchen the whole time (no air conditioner there!). And the cake was so big, it barely squeezed into a shelf in our fridge for chilling while we prepped all the icings and coloring. (You can see a larger picture by clicking on each image.)

Here's Nikki touching up the crack in the cake I caused by putting one end up on the lip of the shelf to fit that sucker into the fridge -- good work, Nikki! (Bet you didn't know THAT, guys!)

Here I've started to airbrush in the two covers with food coloring that was thinned down for spraying. Unfortunately, it was only then that we realized my water-based colors wouldn't absorb into the sugary, cold frosting (oops). So quick: Plan B. Wait a minute-- What the hell was Plan B, anyway? ( Answer: We wing it!)

Nikki quickly mixed food coloring with white icing and I'm squeezing it out over the airbrushed colors (that still AREN'T drying!), literally painting the covers on to the frosting instead.It's now 5:00! Whew!

And here we are with the finished cake. Once we put the titles and other lettering on the cake, everything pulled together despite the last-minute panic (bet hey -- they'll never know until this blog post goes up!)

And here I am in the store -- and on time! -- with Seabury and Mike and the cake.

Some of the folks at the book party: Ron Holden (gourmande extraordinaire), Lauren Silverberg (the publicist from Sasquatch Books), Seabury Blair, Peter Melvoin (goof-off from Bellevue Community College) and Brenda Gurung (B&N Community Relations Manager)

Here's a happy Jeanne with two of her ex's -- proving once again you can never have enough friends!

Here's a link to a chilling 2-minute flash presentation on the global oil situation. Read it and weep. Then at least think about it...

I'm posting this on my two main blogs and I'd love it if everyone would forward this link to as many people as they know so the message goes out.