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.

Pat Sajak, of Wheel of Fortune fame, has one of the best kept secrets on the Internet.

On his website, Pat has a little area called Sajak Says. It is updated infrequently, but when it is updated, it invariably contains something worth reading.

In a recent bit on global warming he had this to say:

However, there’s another level on which I have trouble with those who are the true believers [in global warming]. Why aren't they doing more to stop it? I don’t mean offering ideas for regulations to tell the rest of us what to do; I mean what are they doing personally. If I'm driving an SUV or living in a big house, they can accuse me of callous disregard for the problem, but at least the callousness is based on my non-belief. What about them? Why are they still driving that big car or living in that big house? In fact, why are they driving at all? Why haven't they moved into a minimalist home within walking distance of their office? Talk about callous!

Imagine being absolutely certain we are the verge of a man-made catastrophe and not doing everything within your power to help reverse it. Anyone who truly believes it and still uses anything more than the lowest-wattage single bulb or drives one mile more than absolutely necessary is nothing short of a monster! A skeptic's actions can be blamed on ignorance; a believer's can only be chalked up to a shocking disregard for his children’s futures.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

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?