Did you know that if you start playing an embedded video from YouTube (say, Chad Vader, below) and then scroll the page so you can't see the video, it stops playing until you bring it back on screen? (Or, at least it does that with FireFox 2.0 on Winders).

I love that.

And that's my life in a nutshell.

There's little doubt, I'm constantly behind the times technology-wise. It's not a cool thing for a guy who's spent a decade and half in the industry writing about computers and the Interwebbing tubes, but there it is. I've missed more trends than Carter had peanuts.

The first time anyone showed me a Web browser (a guy named Josiah "Si" Yegerlehner... seriously) I was underwhelmed to say the least. AOL was so much nicer looking.

Or take eBay. I remember having a meeting while at FamilyPC with the woman who eventually became CEO (or maybe was at the time?) and thinking.... auctions? Online? Who cares?

I read an article in my own home pub (Access) about blogs in the summer of 2000 and thought to myself... that shit will never catch on. (I was blogging less than a year later.)

Even when tech has caught on like wild-fire with the teeming, dirty, masses, I'm slow to see the point. Like, for example, MySpace.

I don't get it.

What is the fascination? I can see why LinkedIn is useful -- its professionals, networking with professionals, to help each other out now or in the future, or at the very least, to stay in touch.

But MySpace? It's like going to a particularly loud party you didn't want to go to that is filled with strangers and half of them are high on the reefer and the other half are spray painting the walls and another half -- there's a lot of people on MySpace -- are playing their fucking drums too loud.

That said, of course, I have a MySpace page. For I hate to be left out.

It is a sad, pathetic thing, with one little BNL song to play (not automatically... that is a tool of the douche-tards) and some stuff about me that is already here on this site. And I have friends! Famous friends! That's right, Weird Al Yankovik is my friend.

I am one of 545,224 friends he has...

I have six.

And only one is a friend of mine in real life (tho I'd gladly hang with the rest). I couldn't find Si. Searches back on my high school days revealed only two people I graduated with, and they're not people I have very fond memories of...Sigh.

So, uh, if you have a MySpace account, visit http://www.myspace.com/squishedfrog and "friend" me. Friendship -- it's now a verb!

The aging crime-fighting super duo retires the capes made by their grandmother over 30 years ago (proof that not everything we owned before age 10 was capriciously destroyed.)

The laziest of lazy ass Saturdays.

The majority of my time in the last 24 hours was spent nuking and rebuilding Winders XP on Maui, my beloved Sony laptop. I'm not convinced that she's operating much faster than before -- after you download 100MB of security updates, how fast could any computer be? -- but at least all the nervous tics a computer develops over time are gone. New backup software, stripped out some Firefox extensions, etc. 90% of my computing is done in Web browsers anyway, so now I'm wondering why I didn't just put on something new like Ubuntu Linux... but that would require learning. Bah.

Everything I'm using on the laptop is downloaded shareware. The only exception is also the only thing I installed from a CD: MS Office. That almost didn't happen as my CD drive didn't want to read the disk... I had to boot into Safe Mode, copy the files to the hard drive, and then run the setup manually. Every other disk I put in was fine except this one five-year-old disc.

It's also been a weekend of shit-ass movies. I started out with The Quiet last night, a piece of trash remarkable only for the presense of Elisha Cuthbert, an "actress" known only for once being attacked by a mountain lion while her TV dad saved the world (on 24), playing a porn actress, and being as hot as the sun. Right now I'm watching Firewall, which isn't terrible, but it makes me question the viability of an Indiana Jones 4. Harrison Ford could, however, play my dad in a movie. They look a lot alike. (ooo...he just killed the bad-guy with a pike ax. Awesome sauce.)

I've done a little gaming on my new Xbox 360. I've got two games, Rainbow Six: Vegas, which Joe and I played cooperatively last night (it's nice not to have to shoot him in the face all the time... tho I never want to give that up), and Star Trek: Legacy (Thanks, Bill!) which is, so far, a bitch to control accurately. Probably much like really piloting a starship. No wonder they leave it to androids.

I've done no writing today. Perfect day for it too, what with it pouring out and rotten and with me having no where to go. I use the software re-install as my excuse, but that's lameness personified. I'm just in the throes of one of those crippling bouts of self-doubt, convinced in my lack of talent and skill with the written word. The usual. Tomorrow will be different... which is what I tell myself every day when I don't get anything written.

What did I do that was most important? I picked up about 10 scoopfuls of dog excrement that has been under the snow all winter. Which certainly has to be worth something.

Chad Vader 7: Take Back the Day (Shift)

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I just dropped off the wife so she can go on a four day trip to Ohio to learn how to train dogs (again).

Weee! Total freedom! I can do what I want!

( God, I miss her so. )

I saw a robin yesterday. And all I could think was, "Welcome back to the frozen hellscape, you poor, dumb, bastard."

The true evil of spam is that it takes absolutely no work at all. None. I mean, a guy can crank out 5 trillion email messages with the right list, it costs him nothing, the "message" can be filled with nothing but nonsense -- it might not even be a real language from Planet Earth -- and all it takes is one or two replies for it to be worth his while.

Worse: it makes me almost appreciate the sheer amount of time and effort it took for some crazy-ass to hand write a note to me and pop it in the US Post. It is truly nothing more than a piece of snail-mail spam, but at least it took some work, which I can admire. To an extent. I'd admire it more if it was for porn...

Of course, you know, the message had to be related to saving my eff-ed up, blasphemin' soul. Again.

Here's what the woman from the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses over in Groton, NY, wrote in part:

Dear Neighbor: I am writing you because I am unable to visit you personally, but I have some important information that I would like to share with you.

Have you ever wondered why we grow old? The Bible's explanation of why we grow old shows how God has mad it possible for us to enjoy endless life. Notice what Isaiah 25:8 says: "He [God] will actually swallow up death forever, and the Sovereign Lord Jehovah will certainly wipe the tears from all faces...."

And enclosed is a copy of the pamphlet Awake! published by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of NY.

Sigh.

I'd reply, but I don't really need to start a debate with an infirm woman who thinks she is immortal.

You almost have to admire the article ("Why do we grow old?") as it throws out crazy-ass terms like "DNA" and "cells" and "molecular biochemistry" when of course, there's really only one answer to living past your allotted 80-year-average: Kiss up to the Lord. (They phrase it as "seek God's favor.") Why? Because you can live forever when you get called up in the Rapture. (Or if you die first. Either one apparently counts.)

I prefer the Highlander definition of living forever. At least they got swords.

How do these people keep finding me? Do I give off a satanic glow? Is there a Do-no-call list that the zealots consult? I remain constantly awed by the gall of Jehovah's Witnesses in their desperate need to convert, convert, convert. Do they get extra Rapture points for turning more people to their way of seeing things through a 1,500 to 2,000-year-old book that was written by a committee of guys who left out the parts they didn't like?

I have to say, I much preferred the Awake! article entitled "Preparing your daughter for Menarche." Having never encountered that term before -- I possess the Y chromosome -- I thought at first Menarche was like some kind of born-again Bat Mitzvah. Which, I suppose it kinda is, what with the "becoming a woman" stuff. But without a party. And with blood.

It began three and a half years ago in Boston, Massachusetts. In town for the Wi-Fi Planet conference I helped run, my friend Joe and I drove to a Trader Joe's to buy some groceries. It's my wife's favorite food store, and I promised I'd get some items for her. While we were shopping, Joe bought some Grape Fruit Leather, that ultra-processed foodstuff supposedly made with fruit and vacuum packed so flat and tight that it will outlast mankind and, probably, even roaches when they take over the world. I'm obviously no fan, so how I ended up with any I forget, but I mailed some to Joe shortly after cause I didn't want it. Yuck.

And thus it began, our ongoing game wherein whenever Joseph and I send stuff to each other, we always, always, always (well, almost always) include one or more packages of Fruit Leather inside.

The highlights for me:

1) The time I bought him a copy of The 40-Year-Old Virgin on DVD as a gift, and every so carefully I sliced open the security seal on the plastic case and slide the flat snack inside. He didn't know the package was tainted with the so-called-food until he opened it up to play.

2) During a vacation visit to Florida in 2005, I managed to go an entire week without saying anything about Fruit Leather, leading Joe into a false sense of security that there would be no trade during that visit. As I left, I jammed a bunch of Leathers into an envelope and left them on the dresser in his guest room. I called him from the Airport during our lay-over on the way home, pretending to be panicked that I'd left behind something important, and made him rush into the room to find the envelope immediately. Ah, good times.

Of course, this backfires on me: when Joe and his wife were here last October to visit, I tore the house apart after they left trying to find Fruit Leather packages I was sure would be there. But he was serious when he said he forgot to bring any. Bastardo!

He made up for it this week. After some mishaps with his Xbox 360 that made it necessary for him to buy a second console (he and his wife don't go a day without playing!), Joe sold me his original, repaired 360. Which I got yesterday. In the box were, of course, many packages of Fruit Leather. That was to be expected. But the coup de grace was when I opened the Xbox box itself and found this:

(and there was more on the back)

I bow before him.

March 3 may be the earliest point yet for a Griffith Big Summer Project (GBSP^TM). But that's the day my parents picked to install a hardwood floor in their living room. They apparently thought they'd do this without help from my brother or me, which we weren't going to let happen. I still owe them a day of labor for the two days they put in helping with my wood-floor project in 2005.

But it'll have to wait, because I can barely move.

I never got this pain two years ago, but after just one day of constant up and down -- even with my knee-pads on full time -- I'm in agony. I was using muscles in the backs of my thighs I only use sparingly: specifically when I get out of a chair. I suppose that's the plus-side to having a job where I seldom stand up. I didn't really know just how often I do stand until I wanted those muscles to please stop screaming at me.

This morning, 36 hours after I called it quits and drove home with visions of bamboo boards dancing in my head, I was still as sore as if someone spanked me a bit low. Using a 2x4 plank. With a nail in the end. After an agonizing moment thinking I would not be able to stand-up off the toilet after my morning constitutional, I knew I had to do something, so I pulled out the BenGay and slathered it on the back of my thighs.

I went a bit too high.

Two steps later, I had BenGay where no man every should.

Now, for the first time, I truly grasp the worth of that classic gag of putting that stinging, Menthol ointment into a guy's jockstrap. Hilarity must ensue. If you're watching.

I sat holding my underwear, waiting, expecting the sensation to die down at any moment, while instead it continued to burn hotter, like someone was rubbing sticks against my scrotum in an attempt to create fire.

Finally, with my wife laughing at me, I jumped back in the shower and scoured and scrubbed until the groin blaze was tolerable. The sensation is still not totally gone as I write this...

So, now I'm at my desk for the day, not planning to get up at all if I can help it. It still hurts to stand, but more so I'm afraid to let air move past my thighs, even through three layers of clothes (winter in New York means thermal underpants!). It might re-activate the brushfire on my balls.

Viewed yesterday by moi while out and about:
1) The wife and I went to breakfast yesterday at one of our favorite diners and I saw not just one couple, not just two, but THREE sets of couples who sat next to each other in one side of a booth, rather than across from each other. I don't understand this. Do they like to knock elbows? Are their coats so bulky that they need their own bench? I can only assume that they found each other so hideously ugly that to gaze upon their significant other would make them nauseous while scarfing their meat lover's omelet.
2) A frail looking elderly woman, 65 at minimum, with short cropped colored hair. Not that I'm against hair coloring (I haven't seen my wife's natural color in years and couldn't care less). But when you're that age and you're going with a mix of fire-engine-red and hunter's-safety-orange on top of your wrinkly scalp, you've got to expect some stares, right?