PowerBook issues? It's nice to show it to a real person and explain what is going on, and have an expert do an initial diagnosis so you know what to expect while it's fixed. The Apple Store on Prince Street offers this service and does it well.

You walk up the stairs and make a left to the "Genius Bar." There, you wait in line (benches are available for sitting; a free hot spot is available for surfing) until you are sent to the next available "Genius." There are designated iPod Geniuses and standard Macintosh Geniuses.

I was able to go through each of the non-urgent but nonetheless irritating problems and create a case number and explanation in my record, so that when I finally do send it in, that's all done.

That said, the general market for Macintosh repair service in New York City seems flawed. The leading service centers, Digital Society and Tekserve, both look at you like you're absolutely out of your mind if you want your machine fixed in less than ten days.

The Apple Store is less pompous and more pleasant. It seems like the best first stop from now on.

Here's a secret you won't hear from just about any meteorologist or weathercaster: the forecast for this week beyond Thursday is pretty much complete guesswork.

Today marks the start of the annual ritual called the Very Annoying Cutoff Low. In this phenomenon, a core of energy gets cut off from the jetstream and loses its forward momentum. It simply wanders around for several days producing clouds and rain. Here in Manhattan, the effects are especially dismal because the persistent onshore winds bring in cold, damp air. (It's 36 in New York City now and 44 in Burlington, Vermont.)

Late March and April are prime time for cutoff lows. And the computer models are hopeless when it comes to predicting when this so-called blocking pattern will finally break down.

Some forecasts are calling for sunshine this weekend, but I would not race to plan any outdoor activity until at least later on in the week.

It's amazing how the concept of "almost home" can change dramatically depending on the trip length. When I ride the subway from downtown, Times Square is almost home. Today, driving from Montreal, Albany was almost home. That was three hours ago.

5) The 2/3 line, Chambers Street through Park Place to Fulton Street. Two sharp curves on this stretch make you wonder at how subways can put up with this time after time. Bring earplugs.

4) The F/V from 23rd Street and 6th Avenue to Houston Street and 2nd Avenue. It's Chelsea to the East Village in a few minutes, covering significant distance with limited stops. And this serves as one of the few crosstown or diagonal subway routes on the island.

3) The L from 14th Street and 8th Avenue to 14th Street and 1st Avenue. Fine, so the L doesn't come that often. But at the 8th Avenue terminus, you can sit in the train before it leaves, and once it does, be all the way over to 1st Avenue in several minutes.

2) The A or D express from 59th Street to 125th Street. A blessing for Yankee fans and anyone else venturing uptown (or downtown).

1) The 2/3 express from 72nd to 42nd Street. High speeds and sweeping curves lead to the downhill descent into Times Square station. Who needs skiing? This is the most fun subway stretch in Manhattan.

Abercrombie & Fitch has mastered the art of publicity through offensive business decisions--effective, if only from an economic perspective, for its target demographic. So the latest episode, about the t-shirt that says "West Virginia: It's All Relative," is not surprising. (The Governor of West Virginia, in protest, demanded that Abercrombie destroy its entire inventory of these shirts.)

What seems to have gone underreported is that the state t-shirt idea didn't originate with Abercrombie. Last year, Urban Outfitters had its own line of slightly offensive t-shirts, including the colossal hit "New Jersey: Only the Strong Survive."

Abercrombie certainly didn't invent the art of ticking people off. But somehow they are able to use it to gain what is perceived by some of its customers as favorable PR--even for re-purposing someone else's t-shirt idea.

Great idea! Let's spend $600 million so the most meaningless franchise in sports can play 8 games a year in Manhattan.

It ain't over til it's over.

That assumes it's going to be over. The winter that won't give in had yet another "final" installment yesterday, with the high temperature equivalent to the coldest normal high of the year--which occurs in mid-January.

Of course, winter was supposedly over after two snowstorms last week, until a short-term Arctic outbreak appeared on the horizon.

Last year, winter wasn't really over until June, when umpteen consecutive weekends of rain and temperatures in the 40s finally ended. Then it was summer.

Let's just say that winter is on some kind of hiatus.

It's a good thing AT&T Wireless will be acquired by Cingular. When it comes to PR and advertising. the company America trusts is also the one that can't buy a victory on the PR and advertising playing field.

Two months ago, AT&T Wireless announced an unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls option available to its customers with a two-year contract renewal. But it's Verizon Wireless that has gotten all of the great exposure for its competing plan, including the coup of those incredible Donald Trump/"Apprentice" takeoff ads that position unlimited in-network calling as a key to employee productivity. This targets the corporate core of AT&T Wireless's customer base that supposedly made the company worth $41 billion. AT&T Wireless could easily have come up with the same positioning for its own unlimited in-network calling plan, but blew it.

Then, last week in The Wall Street Journal, there was an article about wireless phone companies' Internet data offerings for seamless laptop connectivity. AT&T Wireless has had its "EDGE" network in place for months, but Verizon Wireless dominated the story. A Verizon Wireless customer was featured in the opening anecdote describing how useful this service was. AT&T Wireless received merely a passing mention at the end of the piece.

AT&T Wireless sent postcards to its New York area customers touting network improvements and even saying its GSM network was better than Verizon's CDMA coverage. (This is laughable.) But the marketing people in Seattle forgot to do basic research: the postcard mentions the town "Hastings on the Hudson" when in fact it's called "Hastings-on-Hudson," and mentions Bleecker Street but misspells it as "Bleeker."

When Cingular takes over, there will be lots of integration issues to consider. Deciding whether to keep AT&T Wireless's PR and ad agencies will not be one of them.

5) Turkey Hill Chocolate. Unusually good for the store-bought variety.

4) Ben & Jerry's Brownie Batter. It actually doesn't taste much like brownie batter, but whatever it does taste like makes for a pleasant flavor.

3) Haagen-Dazs Rocky Road. Terrific by itself and even better with Oreo topping.

2) Emack & Bolio's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk. Just short of too busy, it hits the sweet spot in complementary tastes.

1) Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk. There is still nothing close.

It's the winter that won't give up. Every time I look out the window this week, it's snowing.

Snow in March is not that unusual, but this particular situation--extended periods of light snow in between specific storms--results from a few factors. First, there is a messy and disorganized upper level disturbance in the Northeast, generally unsettling the atmosphere. Second, winds have been persistently off the water, adding low level moisture. And finally, the high sun angle fuels this instability, making the moisture rise into clouds that in turn produce more snow. It's not that different from the constant tropical rains in a summertime air mass.

Although a summertime air mass sounds much better right now.

UPS has a great new television ad in which a woman refers to the "lunchtime line" -- that is, the line at the post office. She now avoids it by using UPS to send her packages.

Although I am usually the first to defend the U.S. Postal Service (contrary to popular belief, it doesn't receive any tax dollars; flat-rate postage regardless of distance within the US is still the easiest system to use), this ad launches a fair criticism to stake out a competitive advantage. And why not? At my local post office, the automatic postage vendors are almost always down, and a self-service station has been promised for months. UPS and FedEx should capitalize on this perception of bureaucracy.

This is especially true because the USPS is trying to have it both ways. It has the domain names usps.gov and usps.com. The commercial suffix (".com") is designed to distract the public from its status as a government entity. The USPS should not have been allowed to have anything besides ".gov." I'm not allowed to have ".gov" and pretend I have regulatory authority, so why should the USPS be able to pretend it's in the private sector?

The United Parcel Service TV ad assault is fair game. If the USPS is going to pose as a free market player, it has to take the heat that comes with it.

It is, once again, one of those days when I couldn't imagine using any service except EarthLink.

Granted, I'm a little biased. Through a series of acquisitions, a company I used to work for is now (sort of) part of EarthLink, with the bottom line being that I have numerous friends there.

That said, the service is just objectively better. Today I was able to synchronize my OS X address book with EarthLink Web Mail, so I could set EarthLink's Spam Blocker to its highest setting while automatically placing all recently used addresses on a white list--without any retyping.

With high speed access at home and dialup POP access wherever I happen to be traveling--for the same price as Time Warner's Road Runner service--I don't know how anyone puts up with anything less.

I was so happy with MCI's Neighborhood package. But, as is inevitable in the telecom business, reality hit.

Last night I returned to the city and found that I could not access the voicemail system. It would not work from my home number (by dialing 00) or by dialing the 1-800 access number. A call to customer service was useless: MCI's customer service line is only open Monday through Saturday. (I guess people don't use their phone on Sunday.) A message, however, revealed a technical help line if "you don't have a dial tone." I called that and after waiting for 30 minutes, learned that the entire MCI Neighborhood voicemail system was down, nationwide, for every customer.

Mistakes happen, but there are some glitches that are unforgivable. An inaccessible voicemail system (for a national phone company) is one of them. In this day where phone traffic can travel via any number of networks, redundant and backup access is technologically easy to provide and should be standard. This is why the Internet will never be down entirely. The Internet is designed so that if one path to a destination is cut off, data packets automatically find an alternate route to reach the same destination. Backing up voicemail data to multiple locations should be a no-brainer.

MCI also failed miserably on that other all-important front: how a company informs customers of problems. The customer help line should have featured a message telling people the company knew of the problem and was working on it. This would have saved thousands of calls into the emergency technical call center. Even Time Warner Cable, not exactly known for its outstanding service, provides this kind of information routinely.

I don't know why anyone would want to be in the commodity business. With telecom, it's always a question of who is least worst.

5) December 25, 1984: Bernard King scores 60 points (40 in the first half), but the Knicks still lose to the Nets.

4) Sometime last season: Kurt Thomas commits an offensive foul from behind the three-point arc.

3) October 1986: Knicks center "Medical" Bill Cartwright, while cheering for the Mets during their journey to the World Series that year, raises his hand in elation and hits his finger against the ceiling. The injured Cartwright misses weeks of action.

2) May 1995: Reggie Miller scores 8 points in the final 8.9 seconds of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals to propel the Pacers over the Knicks.

1) June 1993: In the closing seconds with New York down by 2, Charles Smith cannot convert any of three consecutive layup attempts. The Bulls take Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

In a press release today, Verizon Wireless touts text messaging as the key to a fun spring break for college students. It may just be me, but I can't see your average 21 year-old taking a break from sun and fun to go to the Verizon Wireless pavillion to send text messages.

Text messages are extremely cumbersome to compose and still have serious length limitations. Anything useful I get in return is cut off. The only time I have ever used text messaging was in CLE classes, faced with 7 or 8 hours during which I was both extremely bored and prohibited from speaking. In almost any other situation, I can't imagine why I would want to send text messages.

Whole Foods is known for great food. But not for good grammar.

From the label of Whole Foods brand spring water: "The water is tested repeatedly each day to ensure it's [sic] purity and crisp clean flavor."

It's already debatable whether half the material presented as "news" is actually news. However, the ripple effect from reality shows has produced a greater share of lame excuses for "news" that is definitely not news.

Note to news channel producers: if your media conglomerate sibling has a reality show, interviewing the most recently rejected candidate on Hardball makes me change channels. This is even though I might like that specific reality show itself.

Up next, with Dan Rather: a human interest story about the contestant that won the car on The Price Is Right.

Kudos to whatever department is responsible for finally improving the West 96th Street exit on the West Side Highway.

Before, getting to 96th Street from the southbound highway required an akward (and unsafe) maneuver whereby you got sort-of-but-not-quite back on the West Side Highway going north for a few yards, and then an exit ramp to 96th.

Now, you can't get directly to 96th Street from the southbound exit. You're forced over to the corner of 95th and Riverside, where you can go straight, north or south. Only northbound-exiting vehicles can get directly to 96th. The minor inconvenience is vastly offset by the elimination of this dangerous intersection.

5) July. Who doesn't like the heat? Barely any cold fronts, an increasingly ineffective sea breeze (because the water temperature rises to near 70), and the occasional thunderstorm-- at least you know what you're getting.

4) October. It's always nicer than you expect, before Arctic outbreak season, but late enough for refreshing Canadian air. You also have to love those crisp mornings especially in a good foliage season.

3) December. It can be cold, but it probably won't be bitter cold, and it's generally the first month when snow becomes a probability. The early sunsets are another issue--the actual temperature and other weather conditions are typically not so bad.

2) February. How can this dreadful month, at the tail end of winter with its persistent dull haze, rank so well? There just isn't a more exciting month for snow lovers. Every day, there's another potential coastal storm, Alberta clipper, jet streak, jet stream phasing or negative tilt to follow. Sometimes you get lucky and the blizzard actually happens, like Presidents' Day 2003.

1) April. Frustrating, yes, but for weather hobbyists, the month with the widest swings, the highest stakes, and the biggest forecast busts. It comes down to the annual battle between cool maritime air to the northeast and increasingly warm and humid air to the southwest. Warm fronts line up across the mid-Atlantic region and sometimes make it across NYC, sometimes stall in New Jersey, and sometimes proceed north only to swing back down. Last year in April, the afternoon high one day was near 90, and then the temperature plunged to the mid 40s in the evening. (It didn't recover until late June.) Whether it's a Yankee Stadium snowstorm, a temperature prediction off by 30 degrees, or a sudden sea breeze chill sending sunbathers inside, it just doesn't get any more fun than April, every year.

Here's a hot investment tip: there's a company out there whose stock goes up when the temperature is between 45 and 50, but goes down when the temperature is below freezing. I don't know what that company is, but I'll bet I can find one. Whatever the trading trick, you can always find a company to fit the new gimmick du jour.

With that in mind, I was very interested in an article published in Investor's Business Daily. This article declared the 200-day moving average rule: when the 200-day moving average starts to trend down, it's time to sell. The case in point, which of course provided a chart to support its argument flawlessly: General Electric. Take a look. The 200-day moving average descends. The stock goes down. Should have sold. Easy.

Good thing they didn't analyze IBM. If investors in IBM had followed this rule, they would have been screwed. A chart of IBM's performance, plotted against its 200-day moving average, tells a different story. The moving average started its decline in early 2000. Had you waited until that decline, you would have been exposed to a precipitous drop in the actual stock price in 1999 from 130 to 100. And if you sold in early 2000, you would have missed a subsequent rise from 110 to 130.

There was another time the 200-day moving average declined a couple of years later. If you waited for this cue, it would have been too late: the stock already tanked from 120 to just below 100.

It turns out that IBM follows another weather rule. If it's sunny or cloudy, choose an index and ignore these other gimmicks.

Microsoft has unleashed a flurry of television and print ads that try to communicate the joyous aspects of personal accomplishment at work. Using Microsoft Office, of course. (These ads don't show people frustrated by arbitrary re-alignment of margins in a whole paragraph when all you wanted was an extra space between two words.)

I think we've already been there and done that, and it doesn't play so well. Two years ago, AIG had a downright bizarre "whistle while you work" campaign, showing brainwashed employees blissfully going about their corporate duties with peace of mind about insurance. Thankfully, the ad campaign's life span was short. I don't know how anyone could think that such a campaign, with its connotations of alternative political systems, could be well received in the United States.

At least the Microsoft campaign is about personal accomplishment, which stands a better chance of playing well with American audiences. But achievement isn't without a cost: first you have to register for dot net, get a Microsoft Passport and provide your personal information so it can be shared with every conceivable spammer in the world.

The new Time Warner Center features a high-end shopping mall that is actually a fairly nice space. Sweeping views of Central Park South are visible through the large atrium windows facing east. When it comes to stores, though, there are some hits and misses.

The Whole Foods is clearly a winner. I have already seen a line of 40 or more people to get in, and a line of 80 or more at checkout. Fortunately, the 29 checkout stations move people through quickly. The layout could be better--it makes Times Square Station at rush hour seem orderly--but demand is no problem.

The major missed opportunity is the lack of food court, like in Grand Central Terminal. It would be nice to eat something without spending $500 and making a reservation 3 months in advance. With so many students and young people nearby, a nice food court -- with genuine New York restaurants such as Two Boots and Spice like in Grand Central -- could have been a big hit.

J. Crew is the orphan. Its clothes are generally too preppy for Manhattan and it showed. On Sunday afternoon, Armani Exchange just steps away was absolutely mobbed, while J. Crew had more open space than a golf course.

One of the ways Commerce Bank has made a name for itself is with its free coin counting service. At every branch, there is an automatic, self-service change counting machine called a Penny Arcade. Commerce has even made this fun: you guess how much change you have. If you're within $1.99, you win a prize. (I've never won the prize, so I don't know what it is.) In any case, when the change is counted, the Penny Arcade prints a receipt that you bring to a teller for receiving cash. You don't have to be a Commerce customer to take advantage of this service.

Now North Fork has jumped into the change counting market. It, too, has a machine called a Penny Arcade.

Although the business benefits to the bank are debatable (it is a way of drawing people into their space, but the conversion rate is uncertain), this is great for consumers because it allows them to avoid Coinstar machines at supermarkets. These Coinstar units take out 8% of the total as a change counting fee. This is ridiculous, but it does ensure Coinstar makes money--at least if people use the machines. I marvel at the people dumping $100 of change into those Coinstar machines and lose $8 instead of simply walking across the street. This 8% is the same as the historical average rate of return in the stock market.