A little over five years ago, back when Janet and I were living in Boston, I used to work for a Macintosh Hard Drive /CD-Rom drive OEM. We were the people who sold drives under the Mac Zone, Mac Connection and Mac Warehouse private label names. In reality, it was all our drives, placed in our cases with their logos silkscreened onto the front. The name of the company was Spirit Technologies. I say was because Spirit folded a few years after I moved to San Francisco under what some people in the industry say are unusual circumstances.

Back then, I was a real Macintosh Evangelist. I would preach about how the Mac was superior to all other systems aside from the NeXT (which I still have&#41 which was also the brainchild of Steve Jobs. Five years later, I still have my crappy old Macintosh Classic II taking up space in the closet next to the old winter clothing. You see, when I left Spirit, Apple was losing market share… all of the software was slow and clunky, and for the money, you could get a better machine if you went with a Microsoft machine.

Anyway, one of my last assignments at Spirit Technologies was to coordinate the beta testing of our new Hard Drive Driver Software (called RedLine&#41. We had contracted with a professional testing house called Turning Point Software, and I was the liaison between Spirit and Turning Point.

The lead technician on the Turning Point side was a young programmer named Rich Siegel. Rich was a great programmer, and ripped into RedLine like Paul Prudhomme rips into a bag off Ruffles. Within days, hundreds of "bugs" were found in the software. Within weeks, we knew that RedLine was about to get black listed.

Back then, Rich was working on a text editor for programmers to use. He gave me a copy… as I wasn't programming, it just sat there on my desktop… never to be run. However, all of the C programmers at the office loved it.

Fast Forward to December, 1998.

I was surfing the web and I happened to notice a logo that said "Created with BBEdit" and for some reason BBEdit sounded familiar. So, I clicked on the logo and it brought me to the home of Bare Bones Software. Hmm, still familiar but I couldn't figure out why. One click later, and I was reading the bio of the founder: Rich Siegel. A few minutes later, I sent an email to see if he remembered me… and about 10 minutes later he emailled me back to say that he did.

A few emails later, we decided that when he was in San Francisco for Mac World, that we would get together. Mac World started this Tuesday, so I decided that we would get together after the show closes on Wednesday. My plan was to meet him at the south entrance of Moscone Center after the show closed at 6:30ish.

However, yesterday I decided that I might as well go into the show and check it out. Heck, even if I'm not a Mac person anymore, computer shows are always fun. So, I brought up the Mac World website to see what the entry fee was. Ouch! I wasn't about to pay $45 just to go in for an hour to see products based on a computer that I didn't even believe in anymore. But, when I read on further, I noticed that the press can get in for free.

That's when I realized that writing for Cigar Lifestyles could really pay off for me. I grabbed a copy of the latest issue of the magazine, and called the publisher, asking her to fax me a letter stating that she wanted me to cover Mac World for a possible story. Fifteen minutes later, I had all of the documentation that I would need to get i, according to the website's instructions.

4:30 came and I was off to see if this would actually work. I mean, sure… I had all of the requirements for a press pass, but my press credentials for a computer show were based on me writing for a cigar magazine. I guess it didn't matter, because a few minutes later, I was walking through the exhibit hall… press badge in hand.

If you've never been to a computer show, imagine a convention space filled with every imaginable geek out there. There are people running around with oversized foam mouse hats and gaudy t-shirts advertising the latest release of some unknown product with fifty buttons advertising anything under the sun, as long as it had a bad marketing slogan on it.

I walked through the throngs of people milling around trying to fill up their bags with marketing slicks, buttons and free pens and ended up at the Bare Bones table. Rich recognized me immediately and we talked for a few seconds before he was pulled off to do more business.

Since I had made the effort to go to the show, I figured that I might as well check out the new iMacs. So I walked over to the immense Apple display and jumped on an iMac. Boy, the Macintosh has sure changed since I had last used one years ago. I actually (gulp&#41 kind of liked it. I played a little bit of Future Cop LAPD, and then posted a message to the Scowl Message Boards saying that I was on an iMac. Still, I want to see the new NeXT Step based Operating System for the Mac before I ever take the plunge into Apple again.

On my way out, I decided to stop by Bare Bones again to see if Rich was free. He was, so we talked for a good half hour before I needed to leave. We caught up on what was going on in the industry, and whatever happened to the old Spirit crew… and made arrangements to try and get together for a beer before he left for Boston on Sunday morning.

When I finally made it home, I told Janet about the show: how the new iMacs looked, what the crowd was like and how I thought that Apple finally had a shot at making it. Then I pulled out the gaudy tie-dyed t-shirt that Rich gave me. On the front, it had a small Bare Bones logo on it… and on the back, there was a large logo with a slogan that finally makes sense for the Mac…

… It Doesn't Suck.

I present Highlights of Our Gastronomical Tour of New York, Part Two:

Next door to H & H Bagels in the Upper West Side is Zabar's. Zabar's, a Jewish gourmet food store which started out as a little Jewish deli way back when, also had a line out the door. Once inside, all we could do was shuffle through the store amidst all the old ladies in fur coats. Like a way less yuppie, more Jewish version of Dean & DeLuca, there were acres of cheese, olives, rugelach, coffee beans, meats, baked salmon, lox and the best damn crusty rye bread I have ever had. Though many people might think "Oh, San Francisco! So open! So diverse!" that is hardly the case. Being in places like Zabar's and the Crown Supermarket in West Hartford, CT (where I could have shed a lone, happy tear when I saw that they sold things like chicken schmaltz to make chopped liver, chicken bones to make real chicken soup, and Hanukkah presents&#41 is so refreshing after being in homogeneous, sprout-happy SF where Jewish people often pretend that they're not, and the city's exactly two so-called Jewish delis put lettuce and tomato on the corned beef sandwiches.

Our last stop in the Upper West Side was a place called Barney Greengrass: The Sturgeon King. One of Avery's co-workers suggested that we stop in here if we wanted a great plate of eggs, lox and onions. The way he described the place, it sounded like a four-star restaurant…imagine our surprise when we walked into a modest fish shop connected to a small, crowded cash-only dining room complete with Formica tables and paper napkins. We had to share a table with another couple since it was so busy, but all in all, the food was great (I had an egg salad on Pumpernickel that was to die for, and Avery had the salty lox, onions and eggs&#41 and the atmosphere was very relaxing. The couple at our table looked like a grandfather having lunch with his grown-up granddaughter, and as they finished and talked about going for a walk outside on that windy, sunny New York afternoon, I really started to miss the East Coast. There's just something about it that feels so familiar to us.

Since we're on the topic of food, after eight years of marriage, Avery and I just bought our first real piece of kitchenware together. It's so shiny, this Williams-Sonoma pot, so big and shiny, with a steamer and pasta cooker/strainer built right in. After using flimsy $9.99 K-Mart pot-and-pan sets and hand-me-down RevereWare for all these years, it's a treat to use real cookware. It took going to three Williams-Sonomas in town to find it in stock, so for all our troubles we also got a Mexican lime squeezer. As we looked at all the gadgets, I pondered why I always feel the urge to buy things like, say, a honey dripper, when I never, ever eat any honey.

Judging from the numbers on our bathroom scale, I'm going to say that one of our major activities while we were visiting the East Coast was eating. Often. Since our Inner Clocks were all thrown off because of the West-Coast-to-East-Coast time change, we just ended up eating whatever, whenever, no matter if we were hungry or not…not to mention that walking around Manhattan in the 23-degree weather only serves to force you to stop[ into countless numbers of warm shops and restaurants. Some highlights of our gastronomic tour, Part One:

Dean & DeLuca: For some reason we always get their catalog in the mail at home (flip, flip, flip, test tube spice rack, flip, flip, tea from Russia, flip, dried meat, flip, flip, $200 teapot, blah, blah, blah&#41, and let me tell you, the catalog does not do this store justice. I thought that it was just going to be a big, boring gourmet food store. I underestimated. As I stood in front of the cheese counter that happened to be just about as long as a full city block, in spite of my stout non-religious nature, I asked, "Have I died and gone to heaven?" I have never seen so much cheese in my life. They have an olive bar, which I've seen before, but they also have a bread bar, which I haven't seen before. They have a gazillion different kinds of loaves of bread and rolls and muffins and mini-bagels on grand display from which you choose, and the counter people then give you a non-display loaf to take home with you. They have pates galore, ready-made hors d'ouvers like olives wrapped in anchovies and bacon, a butcher counter, a fish counter, a dried-meat counter to complement all the bread and cheese, and they make a damn fine latte. Of course, all this wonderousness will cost you, but where else can you find Meyer Lemons and Key Limes right next to each other in the dead of winter?

H & H Bagels: We visited the Upper West Side twice during our trip, since it had the most stores open on the Christmases Eve and Day. Luckily for us, H & H Bagels was also located there. Now, I know everyone claims to have access to the place that they believe makes "the best bagels in the world, mmm!" but H & H is the real place. No kidding. The place is just a counter in front of a bunch of bagel-makers. No tables, no place to sit, no cutesy-poo ready-to-go cream cheese schmears or anything else. Just bagels, a cooler along the wall filled with drinks and pre-packaged cream cheese, and a long, single-file line that ran out the door. And definitely none of those new-fangled "gourmet" bagels like the ones I was just reading about in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the ones I found on a list that was supposed to tell you where to find the boiled type of bagels rather than the steamed type. The list-makers actually used as a positive selling point the fact that these places had so-called "bagels" in "flavors" like dill-cheddar and pesto-garlic and spinach-parmesan and banana-hazelnut and one monstrosity of a kitchen accident called the "amigo" with jalapenos, serranos, red peppers, salsa, onions and garlic. See, Californians have a nasty habit of trying to put a West Coast twist on everything, but usually end up making a mess of it all. I say, if you can't buy a hot bagel and eat it plain, standing in the freezing cold weather while it warms your hands and absolutely love it, then go get your money back, 'cause it ain't a bagel.   

[Part Two to follow shortly.]

Saturday afternoon, I decided to go out and get my ear-pierce stretched.

For those of you who don't have the foggiest idea of what I am talking about, here it comes in simple terms: if you get your ear pierced at the mall, you're driving a 20 gauge blunt object through your ear. So, for all of you who who have those thin wire earrings, you've got 20 gauge holes in your ears.

When you enter into the world of professional piercing, you realize that you can take your ear from 20 gauge (pinhole&#41 up to 0ga (about 3/8 of an inch in diameter&#41 or even larger. My goal was to get the one piercing up to 4 gauge, because at that diameter, you have a large variety of different jewelry that you can place in your ear… from open hole grommets called eyelets to solid wooden plugs.

Janet and I got to Body Manipulations at 1pm and went to select my new 4 gauge jewelry. They had a nice steel plug that looked extremely conservative for work and I decided to go for it. Forty-five minutes later when they were ready for me, the procedure started.

The stretching procedure is relatively painless. The piercer inserts a conical taper into your existing hole, stretching it to the desired size. Paul (the piercer&#41 inserted the taper and it went through painlessly. Actually, it went through without any stretching… the weight of my old curved barbell had stretched it out to 4 gauge automatically.

So, I asked if we could make it to 2 gauge, and Paul told me that he would give it a shot. So, he went out and brought me a selection of 2ga jewelry. I picked a nice blue pyrex solid plug. However, the plug was flanged, making it larger on the ends to hold it in your ear. That meant that they needed to use a 0ga taper to get it in.

A few excruciating seconds later, I left with my new 2ga pyrex plug embedded in my left ear lobe. It's now Sunday evening, and my ear is still a little tender… but if you could see it, you would know that it was worth it.