In spite of the gray beard, I'm Generation Y.

What generation are you part of, really? Take this test. » Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

"And, remember, you'll save money."

The old Spag's buildings on Rt. 9 in Shrewsbury will likely be torn down and the property developed for residential and retail use.

In 2002, six years after Anthony "Spag" Borgatti's death, Building 19 bought the Spag's business. Jerry Ellis, owner of Building 19, said, “It just didn’t work; not everything does." Because the business was neither Spag's nor a true Building 19, both groups of customers stayed away in droves.

Spag's was, in marketing parlance, a destination. In the 80s, my father went on a canoing trip in northern Maine. When the guide saw the Massachusetts license plate, he asked my father, "You shop at Spag's?" The guide and his family would drive the 300 or so miles to Spag's a few times a year and load up their cars with camping gear, laundry supplies, and Cheetos.

It was nearly impossible to buy only the thing you came for. I'd go to Spag's to get Wolf's Head motor oil for my three-cylinder, two-stroke, mix-oil-with-the-gas Saab and return with the oil, writing pads, sneakers, a couple pounds of coffee, and a catnip mouse.

My favorite suspenders, the red paisley ones, cost me five bucks at Spag's.

While waiting for the papers

Our newspaper carriers are having a tough time. Here it is, whatever time it is, and the papers still aren't here. Weekdays, we get two papers and on the weekend, three. If I don't get to the papers first thing in the morning, the papers wind up on my reading stack, a pile of newspapers, magazines, and books. The bottom layer of my reading stack has turned to coal.

Friend Patti brought my attention to a charming time-sink called Twitter. In brief, Twitter is a cross between blogging and instant messaging. It asks the basic question, "What are you doing?" The widget on the left side of this page shows what I'm doing now. You can also send and receive text-message updates via your cell phone. I can already hear the cries of "Can't we ever get away from the Internet?" Um, no. Even the Amish have a web site.

There is no sky in Ann Coulter's world

Ann Coulter vs. Elizabeth Edwards: Sparks fly after Coulter remark on terrorist assassination of John Edwards - On Politics - USATODAY.com: "On Monday, on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter said: 'I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.'"

Radio silence

In a protest against increased music royalty fees, a number of Internet radio broadcasts are observing a National Day of Silence by turning off their feeds today. A partial list of the participants is available at Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter site.

Radio, more than TV, newspapers, or other media, is about sounds from far away, often in the night. While listening to WKBW (Buffalo, New York) after dark in the wintertime in the 50s, I'd learn about lake-effect snow in towns such as Lackawanna, Cheektowaga, and North Tonawanda. For a while, I was more familiar with these names than with the names of Boston suburbs.

So, for several reasons, today would not be a good day to purchase a Tivoli Networks radio, either a table-top or portable that plays Internet broadcasts using a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection.

• The aforementioned day of silence.
  
• The radio isn't for sale yet.
• We have too many radios already. We average slightly more than one radio per room at home, at the camp, and in our cars, not counting the shows and podcasts that I download to my iPod.
  

Of course, all of our radios are tuned to the left end of the FM band, 91.9 and lower, where the public, college, and other non-commercial stations hang out. I'll spare you my usual rant about the dreadful state of commercial radio and just ask that, if you know of a good radio station anywhere, please let me know. By good, I mean stations that treat listeners with a bit of respect, that are locally-owned or listener-sponsored, and who could mix Mozart, John Coltrane, Jefferson Airplane, and a few performers I've not heard before. Give the keys for all parts of the music library to the DJs and listen to what happens.

Office pilfering starts at the top

Obvious. Paging Capt. Obvious.

A recent study reports that 20% of employees admit to stealing office supplies from their companies. The study further concludes that 25% of people who bring home $75K or more admit to bring home stuff, more than twice the rate of pilfering among the lower paid workers.

More than a dozen years ago, Scott Adams published a book that pretty well summed up workers' relationships to the supply cabinet - Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies.