Walter Mossberg doesn't like the crappy Comcast DVR either. Gregg Easterbrook writes:

Video input note: TMQ gets, and likes, Comcast Digital, but the converters malfunction so often the Comcast guy is practically a family member. Wall Street Journal chip-universe columnist Walt Mossberg, perhaps the most influential writer on personal tech, devoted an entire column last week to complaining that his Motorola-built Comcast DVR digital box was driving him crazy. You'd think the CEO of Comcast would come to Mossberg's home and personally install a replacement!

I thought Comcast and TiVo inked a deal: why can't I get a TiVo Series3 from Comcast?

If I have a good week in Las Vegas, I may just splurge on the WeaKnees version. I wonder if I can get a former roommate discount.

Berton Roueche, apparently the inspiration for many "House" scripts, wrote in the 1960s of a family who poisoned themselves from grafting a tomato plant onto jimson weed in an attempt to engineer a year-round tomato. [MeFi; Dartmouth Medicine; CHEMED-L]

Tomacco in Wikipedia.

Here's an interesting clip of an unedited Daily Show interview: Jason Jones was taking on Carl Monday, the Marvin Zindler of Cleveland, part of a bit intended to make fun of this story, which pretty much stands on its own. Jones isn't the sharpest of the Daily Show interviewers and Monday is probably quicker on his feet than a lot of interview subjects, but it's still interesting to see how much must have ended up on the cutting room floor—in this case, all of it.

I'm just entertained that every time MoveOn has plans to picket my workplace, it's scheduled to rain like the dickens.

	November 2006	2006 YTD	Last 12 months	Annualized rate, life of portfolio
Ted Portfolio	-2.4%	10.8%	10.3%	12.9%
S&P 500	1.9%	14.2%	14.2%	13.2%
Mortgage (cost of capital)	0.4%	4.8%	5.3%

	December 2006	2006 YTD	Last 12 months	Annualized rate, life of portfolio
Ted Portfolio	6.0%	17.5%	17.5%	15.2%
S&P 500	1.4%	15.8%	15.8%	13.4%
Mortgage (cost of capital)	0.4%	5.3%	5.3%

New investments: Wal-Mart $45 call (WWTAI) @ $6.70; UTI @ $19.375; CAB @ $25.21.

Sold: OSTK @ $14.81

Overstock killed my November, and was a drag on the year, and, like Blockbuster, I seem to have sold it near the bottom. I got back into the Wal-Mart calls just as it had bad news that drove down the option, though it started to recover in the last week. But a good December, led by Carmax, pushed me back ahead of the S&P, if not by a lot.

It was a volatile year: three swings of at least 20%.

My hold of Carmax was the best investment of the year, a near-double that almost compensated for stupid decisions with Overstock and Blockbuster. My return for the year would have been 9% higher if I hadn't given up on Blockbuster, and another 10% or so higher if I had avoided Overstock. I suppose I need to avoid turnaround companies where I'm not happy with the product or service, even if I think the stock is underpriced: Pier One and 1-800-Flowers, which I still hold, were losses for the year, too. (On the other hand, I made some good money with Six Flags, though that I held on to a little too long.) Hasbro, Berkshire, Nationwide, Safeco, Discover, and short-term shorts in asbestos stocks produced some good profits.

I need to re-evaluate my cost of capital, since I can now pay off my mortgage entirely.

2007 is off to a rollicking start, already more than 2 points ahead of the S&P.

1. So I'm in the Harris Teeter, staring at the frozen fish, when I get the very first "Excuse me. Are you Ted Frank?" in my adult life. (Getting recognized at Brandeis in the days when I was simultaneously one of the most popular and unpopular students on campus doesn't count.) Apologies to the person who recognized me as my surprised flusteryness may have inadvertently come off as aloof rudeness. But it's pleasing to hear that someone at least claims to read Overlawyered first thing in the morning and use it as a homepage to jump to other websites.

2. Slim on her gift-box from Amazon: "It's a pot. Which is fine, because it's a good pot, which means we can get rid of some of our old crappy pots. By which I mean your pots."

3. I'm told that my ex-wife has announced that she is nine weeks pregnant, which will increase Canadian taxpayers' burden ever so incrementally much at the margin.

Ongoing in the popular "Dogs will eat you if they get the chance" series:

Alex Sanchez told NBC4 he had to climb the tree to escape the dog, which attacked four of his friends. He said he wasn't hurt, but one of his friends was mauled.

"The dog just kept biting him and biting him constantly," Sanchez said. "It bit him on the shoulder and on the leg and bit him hard, like everywhere."

Officers first hit the dog with a Taser, but it didn't faze the 6-old-month female. A police officer then shot the dog, ending the attack and the dog's life.

From Don Boudreaux, an open letter to Lou Dobbs.

I'd snark at this WaPo story on websites where fans can shop for the clothes and wares of tv characters, but Slim looks really hawt in her Veronica Mars shiny puffer jacket.

I haven't seen a lot of movies this year (still need to see "The Queen," "The Departed," and "Letters from Iwo Jima"), so it's fainter praise than deserved that the dystopia-themed "Children of Men" is the best movie I've seen in 2006. The reviews that don't like it complain about the lack of exposition, but the fact that the movie treats its audience as intelligent enough not to need spoon feeding was one of the things I liked most about it. Yeah, there are a lot of interesting things happening off-screen I would have been curious to see fleshed out, but they're not necessary to the structure of the movie, and Cuaron doesn't let them get in the way. Every frame is dense with subtle supporting detail that creates an immersive universe of a post-apocalyptic 2027; the exposition is visual, rather than verbal, a refreshing change of pace from the "message" monologues of most Hollywood movies. The acting, led by Clive Owen and Michael Caine, is superb. (We are fortunate if indeed Emma Watson's scheduling conflict prevented her from playing Kee; the movie is much better for the choice of Claire-Hope Ashitay.) I could take issue with the ending (the movie would have worked better for me without the last sixty seconds or so, though that would have changed the meaning), but the plot and the missing "why"s are not so much the thing as the amazing set pieces. There are two single-take shots in this movie that movie buffs are going to be talking about for decades the way they do about the "Goodfellas" Copacabana scene or the opening scene of "The Player" or the El Rancho nightclub scene in "Citizen Kane." Don't read the reviews: the less you know about the movie going in, the better.