The Blog of Many Hats

As I've mentioned before, I have a lot of CAO cigars in my humidor.

I generally like CAO's product line. They are not the best cigars in my humidor, but they are pretty darn close. And some of their cigars, I really love (current CAO fave: the Criollo).

Every now and again, even knowing how good their cigars are, I get a nice surprise.

Last night, I opened up the "Miscellaneous CAO" drawer in my humidor and my eyes were drawn to the humble CAO Maduro. It ain't pretty, the wrapper is nothing fancy, it's just a plain-old maduro cigar.

I suddenly recalled that I'd smoked one of these before, as part of a sampler pack, and that I'd really enjoyed it. Really really enjoyed it.

"Why haven't I had one of these in a while?" I wondered. The one in the drawer had been there at least six months. It seemed strange that something I liked so much would be left to linger for so long, so I decided to end the wait cycle and took the CAO Maduro out for a spin.

To make a long story short, everything I remembered about the CAO Maduro was accurate.

With the first puffs, I began to experience that classic maduro flavor. You know the one I mean: that taste of slightly bitter berries that fills up your sinuses and gives you a full-head cigar sensation.

Next, came my favorite thing about CAO cigars: they consistently delivery big mouthfuls of smoke. When I'm smoking a cigar, the last thing in the world I want is wimpy smoke output. I want the smoke to enter my mouth and coat everything, so I can really taste it, send some out my nose to smell it, and still have plenty left over to do a group of smoke rings (if I'm so inclined). This "big smoke" characteristic is typical of the CAO brands, which is one reason I keep coming back to them.

The flavor kept on building as I smoked. And it kept getting better and better, adding richness and complexity with each puff. Usually, I read while I smoke, but the flavor of this cigar was good enough that I found it hard to concentrate on my book.

If there is one complaint to make about this particular cigar, it's that about 2/3 of the way through, it started drawing poorly and wouldn't stay lit. But that self-corrected after about 10 minutes.

Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable smoke, and I found myself wondering "Why don't I have more of these?"

That's a good question. One that I'll have to answer next time I'm at the tobacco store.

Waiter Rant has been out of commission for several days now.

For anyone wondering what happened, the good folks at SoundQue -- who host his site -- have confirmed that the WordPress software Waiter uses was hacked.

I suspected a hacker when, on the first day I began to get suspicious, I looked at the HTML source and saw that there was a hidden <iframe> tag that was downloading content from http://www.allddos.biz. None of that sounded good to me.

In any event, I'm assured that Waiter will be back on the air in a couple of days.

Where I work, everyone's e-mail address is first initial, last initial, at vgei.com. So if you are Pomerania Elbergort, your e-mail address is pevgeicom.

My e-mail, naturally, is bsvgeicom.

Do you have any idea how maddening it is to give that address out to somebody over the phone? This is what I usually wind up saying:

"Yes, that's 'B'-as-in-'boy', 'S'-like-'Sam', no, not 'F', 'S'! 'S'-like-'Sam'! at 'V'-like-'Victor', 'G'-like-'Gary', 'E'-like-'Edward', I dot com."

It makes me want to shoot myself in the head every time I have to say it.

This morning, for the first time, I felt my Daddy-Sense(tm) tingling.

My wife put our daughter down around 4:50am after 2 hours of struggling to get her to go back to sleep.

Around 5:00am, she started making fussy "eh eh eh" noises like she sometimes does after we put her down. We usually just wait these out, because she stops and goes back to sleep.

This time when she stopped, instead of the "ah, now I can go back to sleep" relief I normally feel, I felt a very strange sensation that something was very very wrong.

I got out of bed on auto pilot and went into the nursery. Our daughter was in the crib, struggling to breath. She had spit-up and had aspirated it. She was choking and rocking back and forth.

I picked her up quickly and started patting her back. She was breathing, but I could tell it was very labored. We spend so much time wishing she'd stop crying that it felt weird when I found myself wishing, desperately, that she would start crying.

It took us almost 20 minutes to get her to cry. Those 20 minutes were marked by labored, panicked breathing. Needless to say, we were scared to death.

When she finally started crying, we were desperately relieved.

She's OK, of course, but now she's absolutely terrified to be put on her back. I wonder how long it will take before she feels comfortable in that position again?

Now that I have a new baby, I'm learning all kinds of things.

I'm also understanding things that I've never understood before. Stuff about how parenthood changes you.

One thing I now understand that I never understood before is Selective Parent Deafness.

Selective Parent Deafness, or SPD, is the ability of a parent to stop hearing the screams and wails of their own child. The wails and screams of other children can still be heard, but their own children are effectively mute.

Before becoming a parent, I was dumbfounded at parents who would let their children have meltdowns in public and subject the rest of us to the concomitant high-decibel caterwauling.

Now I get it. Now I understand that the parents know their child is screaming, but they don't perceive the screaming to be all that bad. They perceive it to be at a much lower level than it actually is.

Armed with this realization, I have decided to do my part to keep public places free of screaming children. I have decided that I will react to any extended crying in public (i.e., more than 30 seconds) as if a klaxon horn was going off right in my ear.

This decision came before I realized that my wife has a much worse case of SPD than I do. Last week, we went to our chiropractor's office and brought the baby with us. All of the doctor's patients are over 18 and, as such, his office is definitely one of those places where screaming children do not belong. Typically, my daughter began having a meltdown as soon as the car was parked. I wasn't about to bring her inside, so I told my wife "Go in, do what you gotta do, then come out, and I'll go in. That way she only cries outside."

I was very proud of my resolve...up until the moment my wife looked at me like this was the dumbest idea she had ever heard of.

"Why do you want to stay outside?" she asked.

"Because the baby is crying like it's been stabbed in the leg by a jagged piece of glass. Nobody wants to hear this." I replied.

"It's not that bad." she said, trying to take the baby.

"NO! Go inside. I'll be here waiting when you get out."

"I don't understand what's wrong. Why do you want to stay out here?"

"JUST GO!"

After shooting me one last glance to let me know she's nominating me for the Moron of the Year Award, she went inside. She was gone for 10 minutes or so. The baby did not shut up the entire time. And she wanted me to subject all of the doctor's patients to that! I realized then that my wife has become one of the insensitive bastards that I used to bitch about.

Then, when my wife got out and it was my turn to go inside, she took the screaming baby from me and followed me in. At that point, I gave up. There was no sense arguing. She was determined that the entire waiting room was going to hear the fortissimo movement from the Baby Concerto.

I'm going to keep fighting this as much as I can but, like any good husband, I can already smell the losing battle. I may be doomed to insensitive bastardhood.

Tonight I was whipping up a batch of Alton Brown's Pantry Friendly Tomato Sauce and, somehow, I absolutely botched it. Too much sugar I think. When I got to the final step and blended it all together, it looked liked it's supposed to...but when I tasted it, it was like eating sugar out of the bag. YUCK!

In vain, I tried to cut my losses by adding some balsamic vinegar, but I was too late. The sauce when from tasting too sweet to tasting like salad dressing. YUCK!

Oh well, it's nights like tonight that pizza delivery was made for.

My inhaler ran out on Friday. On Sunday, I started feeling a little fluffy in the chest, so I went out to buy a new Primatene Mist inhaler...only to discover they're pretty much impossible to buy around here (i.e., Charlotte, NC) anymore. I went to three different pharmacies and they all told me the same thing: "We want to stock it, we keep ordering it, but none ever shows up." I went to Eckerd, CVS, and Wal-Mart.

One of the pharmacy assistants offered "I think they're trying to make it better for the environment or sumpin'", which is in line with an article posted on Fark several months back about the federal government requiring manufacturers of these inhalers to stop using CFC propellants by 2008.

After searching several online drug stores, CVS.com finally offered to sell me an inhaler, so I bought 2. The next day they canceled the order and, when I asked why, sent me a mystic e-mail that said they were unable to discuss the reasons for cancellation by e-mail. WTF?

Finally, yesterday, I found one of the SMALL bottles at a CVS about 10 miles away from my house. It was their only one, and the pharmacist told me they only get about 1 bottle/month.

Does anybody know what the hell is going on with this stuff? The manufacturer's website is silent.

Came to the computer, needing to print. Hit print button. No joy. Look at the display. No display. No flashy little lights on the console. All symptoms point to loss of power.

Can't be loss of power. Printer's had power non-stop for almost 2 years. It's even on the UPS.

Look around the room. Computer on. Lights on. House has power. But printer acts like it has no power.

But it can't be power loss. Printer's had power non-stop for almost 2 years.

Scratch head. Apply Occam's razor. Simplest answer is that printer has no power. Sigh. It's pointless and time wasting, but try anyway. Check power connector on back of printer. It's snug. Follow cable. Follow cable over bookcase. Follow cable under chair cushion. Finally get to wall.

Fuck. Printer not on UPS. Printer not plugged in. Wife unplugged printer to charge cell phone. Why cellphone charger needs uninterruptable power? Question for another day.

Sigh. "That's why we ask stupid troubleshooting questions."

Dammit.

Sorry for the lack of posts. The MBDU (that's Marital Bliss Dispenser Unit, for my non-geek friends) and I have been gearing up for baby!

But while I have your attention: Walter Williams has an excellent piece on Townhall today talking about idiotic ideas like "if it will save just one life, it's worth it." He wisely points out that people who do things to "save just one life" see only the benefit while ignoring the cost. Check it out here.