A better bag of chips - get rid of the bag

I am sick and tired of buying a bag of chips only to have them reduced to a bag of chip pieces and crumbs.

I am very fastidious about certain things -- how my clothes are folded, how my work is arranged on my desk, and the shape of my chips.

Normally, I buy tortilla chips to go with my favorite drip -- salsa. And when I shop I closely inspect the bags to determine whether the chips are pretty much whole or pretty much busted up.

When I go to the checkout line, the bag of chips is always -- always -- the last item on the belt, the hope being that they will be the last item to go into one of my shopping bags.

But they rarely make it home in the same shape they left the shelf. Some of the people who bag my groceries treat a bag of chips with the same disregard as they do a bag of frozen peas. Then there's the likelihood of a shifting load in the trunk on the twisty turny drive home, resulting in a squeezed bag of chips and breakage within.

I always come home with buyer's remorse. That bag of chips just doesn't look as good at home as it did in the store.

When I dive into a jar of salsa I want a full chip, not a piece of a chip, not a crumb of a chip.

I don't have that problem with my box of cereal. True it gets a little crumbly at the bottom of the box, but by and large I get bowl after bowl of good looking bran flakes from my Raisin Bran (the lack of raisins, however, is a rant for another day).

Might I suggest that chip makers start packaging their chips the same way that cereal makers package their cereal. I like the idea of having them protected by a layer of sealed wax paper then the box.

I don't care that it's probably less efficient, more expensive, and would be responsible for leaving a size 16 carbon footprint.

A man should be able to eat chips he pays for -- whole ones, not pieces.

Follow the money with classic rock

Walt Mossberg, the ever enlightening and ever entertaining Personal Technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, had an interesting observation the other day.

"I love how PBS now aims its fund-raising almost exclusively at older Boomers. Specials on the Sixties; Peter, Paul & Mary. Follow the $$$."

He offered the comment as a tweet from his Twitter account:

I love Twitter, by the way, in the way it makes you think about what you want to say. It's technology Haiku: Say what you have to say, say it well, but keep it to 140 characters.

Take a look at the program guide for the Public Broadcasting Station in your area and you'll see what Mossberg is talking about.

Tonight, for example (I'm writing this on a Wednesday) my local public broadcasting station, WENH-TV in New Hampshire, is airing:

• From 8 to 11 p.m. -- "Rock, Rhythm and Doo Wop:" Frankie Valli hosts performances by Little Richard, Jay & the Americans and others;
• From 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. -- "Great Performances:" Eric Clapton leads an all-star blues line-up; host Bill Murray.

To begin with, while I may have stayed up past 11 o'clock in college during the early 1970s to listen some Clapton, there's no way I'd be able to stay up that late to watch him these days, much less even stay awake until the finish at 1 a.m. Wilson Pickett may have sung about waiting for the midnight hour, but these days he's doing it without me.

My favorite of these types of shows is "Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night" from 1988. It comes around on occasion and it's great to see the line-up of performers that includes Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Tom Waitts, Elvis Costello and others. And who can hate the do-wop girls singing background: Bonnie Raitt, k.d. lang, and Jennifer Warnes.

The thing about public broadcasting is that it will always try to reach out to the audience with the money, and right now by and large those are the Baby Boomers with enough disposable income to become a member, make a donation.

But I'm thinking ... if it's the Baby Boomers watching what we consider the classic rock artists of our generation, who is it going to be in 40 years? What great performances are going to air to raise money in, say, 2050?

I guess I'm being cynical in thinking there won't be any because I'm selfish enough about Baby Boomer generation music to think that it just doesn't get any better than that.

Is the PBS of the future going to air a Britney Spears performance to appeal to the 50 and 60 year olds of 2050? Or Akon or blink-182? I can't imagine.

I guess I'm glad I'll be too deaf or too senile or too dead to see it.


Please note: This post also appeared as my Baby Boomer Examiner entry today for Examiner.com.

No cash for cash only

Like most Americans I don't live by my plastic credit card anymore. I do leave home without it.

Debt is a big buzzword these days, and everyone is looking to reduce their personal debt as jobs and money get tighter.

So, while I pay down my credit cards, I don't use them when I shop anymore.

I still rely on plastic but it's my debit card, which draws cash right from my checking account. That means if I can't afford it, if I don't have the cash to cover it, I don't buy it.

Pay as you go.

Carrying the debit card has become a lot easier than worrying about how much cash I might be carrying in my pocket. Swipe the card, enter the pin number and you're done.

Everywhere I go these days I assume I don't need cash.

So my wife Jane and I had the interesting experience the other day when we went to lunch on a beautiful sunny, warm day last weekend in downtown Portsmouth.

We ordered food from a bakery/cafe and when Jane went to pay with her debit card it was politely refused. Cash only, we were told.

Cash only? What I throwback, I thought. What an inconvenience, I then thought.

So I stayed behind as collateral in case Jane didn't come back while she went across the street to withdraw cash from a nearby ATM. She did come back, I didn't have to wash dishes, and we had a lovely lunch.

Ironically, the owner said she'd take check, which I found even more odd. I haven't carried a checkbook around for years.

It just goes to show that convenience can become an occasional inconvenience.

Of course all that convenience depends on one small matter ... that I remember my pin number.

Thank God It's Puzzle Day

It used to be, as a working stiff, TGIF. Now, as a semi-retired stiff, it's TGIPD ... Thank God It's Puzzle Day.

The character of Friday has changed. It is no longer representative of the end of a long slog, through a long week of meetings, deadlines, high hopes, failed expectations and, on occasion, wonderful accomplishment. It is no longer the entrance into a weekend of trying to get to the things I need to get to that I didn't get to during the week.

That changed the day I stepped out of the workweek routine and into a semi-retired routine where Monday isn't too different from Friday, where Tuesday could be Saturday and I'd barely notice.

Friday is now elevated to the day the Wall Street Journal arrives, with the Weekend Journal, which contains The Journal Crossword.

It is, by far, my favorite crossword puzzle, the one I take most seriously, the one that I'm willing to forgo hours at a time to solve.

I would describe myself as a moderate puzzler. It is something I picked up from my mother, who always has a puzzle or two going, including the Journal puzzle I copy and send to her each week.

There are, according to one estimate I've seen, as many as 50 million Americans who do crossword puzzles, with varying degrees of passion. There are those who must, must do the New York Times crossword puzzle each day as quickly as they can. The daily puzzle, as is common, becomes more difficult as the week progresses, Monday being the easiest, Saturday the most difficult, and Sunday another beast altogether.

When I was working at a newspaper and had access to a New York Times each day, I'd get get as far as Wednesday.

But I'm not a New York Times puzzle fanatic, like "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, former President Bill Clinton and others featured in "Wordplay," a 2006 documentary about the love for crossword puzzles.

I'm a Journal Crossword fanatic.

I'll do other puzzles intermittently through the course of a week, I even have daily puzzles automatically loaded into my Blackberry. But I look forward to the Thank God It's Friday Journal puzzle.

It is clever like other well-done puzzles, but seems more clever to me. My respect for the puzzle maker is a little higher than it is with other puzzles. It is true art, at least in the eye of this beholder.

The "a ha" of unlocking the puzzle's theme, which can unlock the entire puzzle, is a greater "a ha" than with other puzzles.

And every week as my database of knowledge is tested I come away having learned something new, i.e., a constellation near Scorpius is Ara.

I come away each Friday just a little smarter, which is an absolute necessity once you get to the point in your life of not being able to distinguish Monday from Friday anymore.