Meanwhile, just where the heck have we been, you ask? After all, we said we'd be back last Tuesday, and you're only finally hearing from us on the Monday after that. Well, as it turns out, kids, our announced weeklong "necessity hiatus" ran an extra three or four days due to a "confluence of obstructive factors." One was the onset of some sort of temporary narcolepsy that hit Jack after the extended sleep deprivation he experienced while he scrambled to get a new MacAddict article in before deadline. (Fun fact discovered during a recent five-day stretch during which Jack slept no more than 9.5 hours total: after 41 consecutive hours awake, words shown on an Apple Cinema Display actually start to bend and melt before your very eyes. Screensaver, schmeensaver; that was entertainment, buster.)

So here's the thing: two full weeks after the article was done, Jack is still falling asleep-- a lot-- during seemingly random inopportune and/or comical moments (e.g. while standing in line at the coffee shop, halfway through entering a PIN at the ATM, while holding the Evil Galactic Overlord at blasterpoint, etc.), which is a state sadly unsuited to the rigors of AtAT production. Then it so happened that we flew back to Boston right in the middle of the Democratic National Convention, when the city was so locked down for security reasons that we spent the next four days and nights sitting in traffic, subsisting entirely on ketchup packets and stray Cheerios in and around Anya's car seat. As it turned out, we were never in danger of starving, since there were enough Cheerios in there to feed a family of four for at least six months, but the occasional Froot Loop or Quisp fragment would have really broken up the monotony.

And then we got hooked on Geneforge 2, which is only slightly less addictive than popcorn-flavored crack. Curse you, Spiderweb Software!

Anyway, we're finally back home and mostly functional again, although we're still negotiating the north face of Mount Neglected Stuff, which always seems to get a lot steeper after we leave town for a week. We will say this, though; between the Children's Museum, BoSa Donuts on University near Snelling in Saint Paul, and the delightfully disturbing Mall of America (why doesn't every mall have two Victoria's Secrets, three Sunglass Huts, multiple indoor roller coasters, an underground shark tank, and an Apple Store? Enthusiastic greetings to Warren and the gang!), the Twin Cities have a lot more to offer than just a Mary Tyler Moore statue. As if that weren't enough.

Of course, as always, apparently all sorts of fun stuff happened while we were on the road, of which the biggest was probably RealNetworks resorting to some desperate-- and possibly legally shaky-- measures to keep its RealRhapsody downloadable music service from tanking. No doubt you folks are far more up on the sitch that we are, but in case there's anyone else out there who crawled under a rock for the past fortnight, here's a quick recap: remember when Real CEO Rob Glaser was whining to the press about how Apple's refusal to license its FairPlay digital rights management system was tantamount to Stalinism? And then Rob proposed to Steve that Real and Apple "form a common front against Microsoft in the digital music business" just two weeks later; gee, we wonder why Steve told him to go stream himself?

Well, Real took matters into its own hands last week by announcing Harmony, software that makes RealRhapsody downloads iPod-compatible-- without Apple's permission. According to MacMinute, Apple is "stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod" and is "investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and other laws"; meanwhile, Real claims that Harmony is exempt from the DMCA because the law "explicitly allows the creation of interoperable software." And so a lawsuit is presumably just days or weeks away.

Personally, from a strict revenue standpoint, we can't imagine that Harmony could hurt Apple; the company makes money from iPods, not iTMS sales, so if people who use Rhapsody suddenly find out that they can finally shell out $299 for the world's best portable digital music player and listen to all their Rhapsody tunes, iPod sales go up. Still, if Apple has some grand plan for world domination that requires preventing Rhapsody content from being played on iPods, we suppose it has the right to take whatever legal action it feels is necessary.

Wanna know our favorite part of all this, though? It's the fact that Harmony allegedly arose from Apple's refusal to license FairPlay to third-party companies-- and then just one day after Real dropped the Harmony bomb, Apple and Motorola announced that next-generation Moto mobile phones will be able to play FairPlay-protected iTMS songs. Our only disappointment stems from Steve's press release quote, which was woefully devoid of the phrase "eat it, Glaser," but hey, we can read between the lines.