I have a two concerns about the Boston Marathon, which is Monday.

We are forecast to have really horrible weather. I assume that if the weather was sufficiently horrible, 12 feet of snow, they would cancel. But? If they cancel the marathon does that mean everybody in Massachusetts has to have their taxes done on time, since as it is we get another day. Yes, yes, I know that nominally the reason we get another day is because Monday is a state holiday; i.e. patriot’s day. While Patriot’s day is no where as transparent a ploy as evacuation day (aka. St. Patrick’s) we are well on our way to treating Monday’s holiday as Boston Marathon day.

My second concern is fraud. Some years ago we had an extremely amusing case; a women won the marathon by sneaking onto public transportation to avoid running a portion of the race. Riders of the Boston transit system were amazed that was faster.

The usual response was taken; and millions of dollars were spent on technology to assure it those in high offices would never be accused of sloppy book keeping again. Today all runners carry RFID tags in their shoes.

But wait! We have now converted the entire Boston transit system so we use RFID tags for fare collection. I smell trouble!

Here’s a dumb trick you can do with skype. Put a few 800 numbers into your contacts list; it’s best if the ones you put in have automated voice recognition. Then start a conference call and invite them all to talk to each other. Very silly.

I find it amusing that I can get an emulator for my Vectrex in universal binary format before Microsoft can re-release Microsoft Word to run native on the new Macs.

Sad, my Vectrex 3D head set won’t work.