More power to me

Since my last message, I've been at my dad's house in Bowie without power. We had just hooked up his new computer and his cable modem+wireless network when the power flickered for the last time and went out. I'd been able to surf at high speed for about 30 seconds total before everything went off. The neighbors across the main road from his house never lost power, and the neighbors directly across his street got their power back Friday afternoon, but as of 1 PM Saturday, my dad's side of the street was still dark. As much as I enjoyed visiting with him and my stepmother, tonight I'm at my brother's apartment in Baltimore, where he's had power the entire time. On Sunday I'll be out in Virginia with some friends who also have power and whom I'd hoped to see earlier in the week had Isabel not screwed up my entire plan. I've got some good pictures of the non-flooded areas of Baltimore that I'll upload sometime, probably Monday afternoon when I'm back in NYC.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

My plans to visit friends and finally tour the Holocaust museum are on hold now, as the governments and businesses of the DC area and the Metro system are shut down for Thursday and presumably Friday as well. I have no idea if I'll get to see anyone while I'm here, aside from my family. I'm already sick of the storm coverage. They've hyped Isabel to the point that if it isn't an earth-shattering cataclysm of a storm, people will be disappointed. They're all going to be at home, waiting to be impressed, and if all we get is some rain and a little wind, people will complain about the time and money lost. OTOH, if it flattens everything in its path, I'll feel better being stuck out here in Bowie instead of being caught downtown out in the open. Maybe I'll get out to Virginia on Sunday to see some people. Who knows? Virginia as we know it may not be there by Friday morning.

Since my father hasn't gotten his cable modem installed yet, I've been reduced back to dial-up. I hate "narrowband" Internet access.

I've gone back to school

I'm back at Georgetown University today, the first stop on my five-day vacation trip to DC. After a dull early-morning bus ride here, I hauled my luggage across campus to my father's office in St. Mary's. Those of you who lived there once would not recognize the halls -- they've gutted and renovated it into an entirely new office space. My dad gets a cubicle at one end of the 4th floor, where the ceiling is mostly exposed concrete and steel beams. I had a bacon cheeseburger at the Tombs for lunch and then I checked out the new addition to campus, the southwest quad. I took some pictures that will be online as soon as I can get them uploaded to the laptop. It looks good from the outside, and architecturally fits in with New South and Village C. I couldn't get inside, of course, so I can't speak for what the dorm rooms themselves look like, but it's a quiet corner of campus with a brand-new two-level dining hall. Apparently the students walk up Tondorf Drive (the road behind Harbin and Village C) to classes on the upper part of campus, instead of climbing the Village C steps and walking through Red Square. And they trip on the stairs in the cafeteria while carrying their food from one level to the other looking for friends. Now I'm sitting in the Leavey Center lounge surfing wirelessly on the campus network, which is blessedly open to the public. My firewall "shields" are up, however; there's no telling what manner of worms and viruses are buzzing around me. Speaking of which, MSNBC is reporting that another Blaster-like worm is about to spread. Just in time to foul stuff up with a hurricane coming. This should be a fun couple of days.

Gadgets to drool over

This article over at MSNBC.com explains why none of the cool stuff is out on the show floor at TECHXNY/PC Expo. Apparently the top manufacturers show their new toys to the press in closed evening events, and the public can't attend. I wouldn't be surprised if there's only one tech show in New York next year, and I'd be even more surprised if it were worth attending, even for free. For all my troubles today, I have magazines, a hat, and some sore legs. I would have liked one of those Siemens phones at the top of the page, though.

My old cell phone is dying (though it's been behaving for a few days) so I broke down and bought a new one at an AT&T store today. I got the Nokia 3595 mostly because it was free after a rebate. It's a GSM/GPRS phone, so I'm expecting to have some issues with the network now, but I'm hoping it will be a good choice. TDMA is on the way out, and GSM is the wave of the future. I'm on the hook with AT&T for another two years now, but I don't have any complaints about their service or the network so far. My old phone was the Nokia 3360, and the only reason I bought that one was for the infrared function that I never used. It cost me $30 and withstood almost two years of moderate use, so if the 3595 lasts as long, it'll be a good choice.

I'm coming to you live from PC Expo at the Javits Center, and you're not missing anything. This show gets smaller every year. Hardly anyone brought any hardware to the show, and the biggest crowds are at AMD's booth where they're giving away coffee and at a DLT booth with free popcorn. I'm writing this from the Olympus booth while watching a camera demo and borrowing Internet access from HP's booth next door. As usual, the best freebies are from the magazine racks out front. I've got plenty of reading material for my bus trip tomorrow. It's just sad that the vendor turnout and hardware selection is so sparse. This industry desperately needs an economic upswing.

And you thought your job was bad

Popular science has posted their list of The Worst Jobs in Science. The jobs themselves are terrible, disgusting, and just plain boring in some cases, but while you enjoy the descriptions, don't miss the icons that conveniently code the jobs for you. Where else would you find astronaut, barnyard masturbator, and stool sample analyzer on the same list?

This is how I spend my vacation?!

I am trying to figure out some formatting for the blog itself. I'm not ready to abandon this template entirely, so I'm just playing around with the links and trying to eliminate some of the whitespace at the top. The "what's Phil listening to" section is gone, since I've stopped using WinAmp in favor of the Quintessential Music Player and I haven't looked for a BlogAmp plug-in for it yet. The real problem is that I don't remember many of the tricks I learned back in the early days of HTML coding. Once upon a time, I designed web pages for a living, until it became the domain of people with visual arts skills instead of hard-core coders like myself. Futzing with Blogger templates involves much HTML manipulation, and I just don't have the time or inclination to worry about it. In the end, I'll probably just dump the template and use a new one.

ESPN.com - Page2 - The best time of your life

The Sports Guy's latest column is up on ESPN's Page 2, entitled "The best time of your life." He spent much more time playing dorm games his freshman year than I did, but it still brought back lots of memories. My freshman buddies and I played dorm room horse with a closet-mounted plastic hoop and foam ball, played catch in the hallways, and generally made fools of ourselves. The lacrosse players on my floor were far more destructive, and I vaguely remember some sort of contest involving cafeteria brownies and the hallway wall, ending with a chocolate mess of frosting and crumbs. Back then, it wasn't a good weekend for them unless it ended with the lounge locked up until they cleaned up the mess.

Those were the days.

I'm sitting in on Gene Weingarten's weekly chat on the Washington Post web site, and someone posted this link about badgers. I'm not sure what it's about, but it's funny in a stupid way. I'll be hearing the "mushroom, mushroom!" bit in my head the rest of the day.

Today was my fourth New York City Century bike ride. It was my second time riding the full 100 miles, and this year went much better than last year's 12-hour debacle that ended at dusk as two weary riders (James and myself) straggled into Central Park to find the organizers packing up all the food and supplies. This year, I started at 6:20 AM from the park, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge just after sunrise (the sun on the bridge and Lower Manhattan may have been the most beautiful thing I saw all day), and got to the first rest stop at Prospect Park by 7:30. Last year, James and I started an hour later, took our time all day, and paid for it with our late finish. This time, I covered the 20-mile distances between rest stops in about 1 1/2 hours each. I got to Canarsie Pier at 9:10, Alley Pond Park at 11:20, and Astoria Park at 1:10. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get to Van Cortlandt Park from Astoria, only 17 miles away, but that time was lengthened because of the slow crossing of the Triborough Bridge. Climbing and descending the bridge path's stairs and negotiating the narrow path took about 30 minutes, but it was a good relaxing start to that leg of the ride. Last year, the route in the Bronx was longer, so leaving the Van Cortlandt Park rest stop we had 20 miles of bike paths and steep hills before we got back to Manhattan and a long coasting descent on Riverside Drive. This year, the organizers wisely eliminated about 9 miles of bike paths and changed the exit from the park so that we went straight to the Riverdale hills. After 90 miles, the hills weren't much fun, but they weren't as difficult as I remembered them from last year. My ride ended with a long coast down the east side of Manhattan, on the newly reopened Harlem River Greenway. When I pulled into Central Park at 5:05 PM (total ride time, including rests, was 10 hours 45 minutes) I had hoped that triumphant fanfares would play along 110th St. Unfortunately, the orchestra wasn't there, so I had to settle for music in my head instead. I hung around the finish for about 40 minutes, chatting with a few people I knew and enjoying a few more snacks. Eventually I realized that all good things must end, and I went home just before 6 PM.

Now my legs hurt, my ass is sore, and I'm sure I'll feel like crap tomorrow. But right now I'm still on an endorphin high that won't quit. I can't wait for next year's Century, and I'm seriously thinking about some long rides on Long Island in October. I'm definitely in for the Tour de Bronx this year; I had a great time on that ride two years ago.

Let's try using a title!

If I took the time to use all the Blogger features, this could be one heck of a blog. This time, I'm trying titles.

I've changed the domain pointer of www.fiveguysproductions.com to point to this blog, instead of my primary home page. There's not much there worth looking at anymore, and this is the page I want people to see. Now I need to fix my template to use the old link and put a link to my Webshots page on the side as well. Why am I writing this? Because I feel a need to update with only the most mundane information possible.

My friend Jessica has started her own blog. It's much more interesting than this one. Check it out, and tell her I sent you. Then tell me, because I'd love to know that someone other than me reads this thing.

This week's New Yorker has an article on the past, present, and future of New York City's water supply. In case I didn't have anything else to worry about (finances, blackouts, terrorist attacks), now I can add the water supply to my list. The two main water tunnels are so old and decrepit that they may be leaking or ready to break, but the shutoff mechanisms are so old there's no way to shut them off to check them. City water officials are afraid that if they shut off the supply to check the tunnels for leaks, they won't be able to open the tunnels again. And any sort of break or serious damage to either tunnel would mean that most of the city would be without water for several years. Yes, that's years, not days or a week or two. There's a third tunnel under construction, with modern valves and cutoffs, but it won't be ready until 2020 at the earliest. On the bright side, I was fascinated as always by the subterranean design of this city. There's almost as much complexity below ground as there is above it. And I think that it would be difficult for terrorists to damage something that far underground. I'll use my worrying energy to focus on more blackouts, subway disasters, and other airline-related incidents.

Last night we enjoyed Memphis' best barbeque for dinner. We had ribs, pulled pork, chicken, and baked beans from Corky's, via the magic of mail order. I supplied corn salad, and our friends who did most of the cooking also made macaroni and cheese and biscuits. And we had Corky's fudge pie for dessert. I ate way too much but it was impossible to hold back. Today we're taking it easy. It's raining, so I doubt we'll even go out for groceries. And it wouldn't feel like Monday if I didn't spend most of my day in front of the computer.

...and it looks like it works. Excellent.

This is a test entry from PocketBlog. It runs on my iPaq and should let me post and sync later.

With Mars at its closest to Earth in hundreds of years, a renewed interest in astronomy led me to Celestia, free software that lets you explore hundreds of stars, planets, asteroids, and more. My favorite feature is the "go to" button that takes you on a trip to your heavenly destination, flying at many times the speed of light to get there. My only regret is that I live in stargazing-unfriendly Manhattan, and that even if the lights were turned off again (please, no more blackouts!), there are still too many tall buildings between me and the western horizon for me to be able to see Mars. I missed Halley's Comet in 1986, so this one is no big tragedy for me. (That time, it was my own ineptness: I looked for several weeks, but either I was looking in the wrong part of the sky or the moon obscured it, because I never did see that comet. Thanks a lot, Odyssey Magazine.)

Fans of The Daily Show will recognize the characters at this web site from a recent re-airing of a Mo Rocca interview. Don't miss the "about" page with the complete display of posters in the ad campaign. My favorite is "Transmission." I can't believe these posters are actually visible around San Francisco, or that people thought that the campaign would be effective. I look forward to the cartoons featuring the characters in the posters. I'd say more but I like to keep this blog PG-13 so you'll have to click on the link to learn more.

On Wednesday we got our PVR cable box from Time Warner. It hasn't changed our lives yet, but we're getting there. So far we've recorded episodes of the Simpsons, Futurama, some soaps, and a few of the Adult Swim shows on Cartoon Network. I love the ability to pause and rewind live TV programs whenever I miss a line of dialogue or action. And the best part is the price: $7.95 on top of the digital cable charges, no equipment fees. So instead of buying a TiVo and figuring out how to wire it into my system, I got a box from Time Warner that does almost all of the same functions, for much less money. The only thing it doesn't do is let you record any program featuring any actor or genre you like. But I can live without the collected works of William Shatner collecting on my box's hard drive.

Now that the power is back (for now? I hope it stays on!), I thought you might want to hear what happened to me, and later, us.

Yesterday afternoon, I was at my desk, enjoying a frappuccino from the Starbucks in my building's lobby, when the overhead lights went out. The computers and lights in our cubicles stayed on, so at first we thought someone had just turned off the lights in the computer room (there are light switches for our office outside in the computer room itself). Then I noticed that the large A/C units in the room were off as well. Our desks, PCs, and servers are all on a large battery backup system, that's why they stayed on. Maybe it was just our room, I thought. No, the rest of the floor was off too. Then came the announcement from the building management that the power was off in the entire building. Immediately, I packed up my laptop and grabbed my cell phone and Blackberry off my desk. If we were about to evacuate, I wanted to have everything with me. I was also thanking God that I hadn't waited a few more minutes to get my coffee, or else I could have been stuck in the elevator.

Then my boss told us to start shutting off the file servers gracefully, so that the battery system could stay up longer. For the next two hours, we shut down servers, figured out what we wanted to leave running as long as possible, and I watched the local news over the Internet. Our Internet connections and firewalls were still up, so as long as I didn't have anything important to do, I relayed news to others. The biggest debate was between marketing people and our web site management group, about what message to put on the firm web site and how to get it there.

Finally, around 6:15, my boss announced that we had done all we could and that we were leaving. We raided the cafeteria for water and snacks: I took a few bananas, some almonds, and water bottles. One guy loaded up his duffel bag with all sorts of junk before my boss told him to stop. Damn looters. :) We walked down to the 19th floor where someone offered us a ride on the freight elevator the rest of the way. The elevator got us to the 5th floor and stopped there, so we walked the rest of the way down.

So it was about 6:30 when I set off with David, who lives at 1st and 64th, about 24 blocks south of me, and Hazem, who was the looter I mentioned before. In addition to the food, he also carried his laptop and his smelly gym clothes in his bag. I kept cursing myself for hauling my own laptop with me, but guess what I'm e-mailing you from now? Anyway, we walked up Broadway to City Hall, then went up Center Street past the courthouses, to Lafayette Street, to Fourth Avenue, to Park Avenue at 14th Street. Along the way we kept trying to call our wives on our cell phones, to no avail. Hazem's Blackberry/cell phone combo device died on him, so he kept stopping to find paper clips or other pointy objects with which to poke its tiny "reset" switch. We passed a massive crowd heading for the Brooklyn Bridge, lots of people walking in both directions, and all sorts of signs of New Yorkers helping each other out. One mission near Canal Street moved its food service outside and gave dinner to anyone who wanted it. Lines at payphones and sidewalk vendors were orderly, and the bars were crowded with people who either gave up walking home or lived in the area.

Around 14th St. Hazem stopped at a payphone to try and call his cell phone provider for help. David and I left him there; David said he was slowing us down with his huge bag. At 23rd St. we turned and headed east to 1st Avenue. By now the sidewalk traffic was mostly moving north and the car traffic was severely backed up, with everyone trying to get to the Queensboro Bridge to Queens or further uptown. At a few intersections, regular folks helped the cops direct traffic. Past the Bridge at 60th Street the car traffic almost disappeared, and with no streetlights, it was extremely dark. But there were still plenty of people on the streets, and most of the restaurants were open by candlelight, so we were able to find our way. David went home and I was on my own for the last 25 blocks. My pocket flashlight showed me the way, especially up the dark stairs to my apartment. Liz was just fine when I got there, though she was a little scared and a lot lonely, with just the cats for company. I got home at 9:10, about 2 hours and 45 minutes after I left my office. Today, my legs and back are sore, but not excessively so. I may forego a big bike ride this weekend, though.

We spent the rest of the evening trying to keep cool and listening to the party outside in front of the bar downstairs. Around 11:30, for me much earlier than usual, we blew out the only candle we had and went to bed.

Partly because of the heat, and because of the situation, I slept for a long time, but I kept dreaming of the power coming back on when we woke up. Unfortunately, it wasn't. We took cold showers and ate energy bars for breakfast, not daring to open the fridge to see how the food was doing. About 11:30 we ventured out. While lots of businesses were closed, many others were open, including grocery stores and delis. Heading south down Lexington Avenue, we were about to turn and head for Central Park when I noticed that the stoplights were on a few blocks down. Around 75th Street, the power was on, so we stopped in a store to get an extra flashlight, another candle, and a transistor radio. For me, the worst part of the situation wasn't the lack of power, it was the lack of communication. The last news reports I'd heard were at 6 PM the night before, and waking up I had no idea if the power problems were getting better or worse. We found a pizza restaurant on 2nd Avenue that was serving everything but pizza, so we had lunch there. (Apparently the pizza oven chefs hadn't made it to Manhattan yet.) After lunch, finding no other place with power and room for us to sit down, we went home, around 2:30 PM. We still had no power, so we napped, listened to news reports, and read. Finally, a few minutes before 6 PM, I heard a few beeps and buzzes, and saw the LED panels on our electronics light up. On the street, people cheered and cars honked as lights went on in the restaurants and stores.

Life will get back to normal in short order. Unless I hear otherwise, I'm supposed to be at work tomorrow morning at 7 AM to turn the computers back on. Hopefully I won't be there long and I can try to enjoy the rest of the weekend. Our cell phones are working again, but circuits are still busy. If you left me a message, I'll check it when I can.

The new Led Zeppelin album is incredible. It sounds like Zep is playing a concert at my desk. I loved the BBC Sessions album from a few years back; I think I've found its replacement in my CD/MP3 rotation.

On the return flight from Frankfurt I watched "Down With Love" which was a charming romantic comedy, and a few minutes of the end of "X2." Then, to keep my good mood going, I broke out the laptop and watched the director's cut of "Almost Famous." That's still one of my favorite movies of all time, and it always makes me smile and cry at the same time. Yes, I admit I get a little broken up watching it. Maybe the plane was dusty. This time around, I really liked the kid from "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" who plays the rabid Zeppelin fan. I hadn't noticed before, but he's wearing a shirt that reads "To be a rock and not the road" on the front and "Have you seen the bridge?" on the back. How Zep-fan geeky is that? I want that shirt.

We spent all day Sunday in the office working, finishing up the bits of work we didn't do on Saturday. By 7 PM we were all done, so we went to a restaurant on the other side of the river for dinner. It's been extremely hot here for the past few days, and though our table was inside, the restaurant had large doors to the patio wide open and our table was just inside the door. So we sweated through a delicious meal. I had sea bass over orange-ginger risotto and a raspberry mousse with mango ice cream for dessert. I enjoyed playing "name that tune" while listening to the pianist: he played continuously for about 45 minutes at a time, with everything from old jazz standards to Gershwin to "Strangers in Paradise" to Paul Simon's "The Boxer."

I'm back in the office again today, but there's not too much for me to do. At lunch I'm planning to buy some chocolate to take home, and I might take the tourist elevator to the top of the Main Tower to take some pictures. I uploaded a few more pictures last night, and I'll put more up today.

They have all these little cars here that look like go-karts or bumper cars. I can't believe how popular they are. The "SMART" car looks small enough that I could drive it into my hotel room and pack it in my carry-on bag. There's a sports car convertible version that looks slightly better, but I don't think I'd buy one. The "KA" is just ugly. There are few SUVs on the roads; in fact, I'm not sure I've seen one, but my colleague here says that he has seen a BMW version. There's nothing like the Lincoln Navigator or Ford Excursion here. But they do have plenty of bikes. There are on-street bike lanes, and on the busy streets, bikes share the sidewalk with pedestrians. I keep expecting to be run over by a cyclist, but they go slowly enough that there aren't any accidents. There are also these rent-a-bikes parked every so often on the sidewalks. You use your cell phone (also called "handy" over here) to call the number printed on the bike (or or send an SMS message, we're not sure), and give them the serial number printed on the bike lock. You get an unlock code in response, and the bike is yours for however long you need it. When you're done, you lock it up again, and I suppose you call back to let them know where you left it. The charges could go to your credit card, but I bet they put them on your cell phone bill. Anyway, pictures of some of the cars and the bike should be available at my Webshots URL (see below) by the time you read this.

I'm ready to go home. I like traveling, but I want to sleep in my own bed again and do my own cooking. Besides, the relaxed schedule of the office here and the convenience of staying in a hotel less than five minutes from the office is too soft. It doesn't feel like I'm actually working while I'm here. And all the rich food is undoing the good work I've put in on my bike and in the gym. Getting back to New York will put my whole system back in order, and I'm looking forward to that. And, of course, I miss Liz and the cats. They're the best reason for wanting to go home.

Saturday's upgrade work went well, after some initial troubles and worries. We've got to go back tomorrow to finish a few things, but the bulk of the job is done. I was too busy most of the day to upload pictures, but I should definitely have spare time tomorrow. I don't have to be in the office until 10 AM, so I even get to sleep in a little. After spending all day indoors, I didn't want to go straight back to my room, so I sat out on the hotel terrace enjoying a beer and the night air before a late dinner. I didn't eat until after 11 PM, but the food and the atmosphere were worth the wait. Tomorrow night, the locals have promised us a big dinner to celebrate the success of the project. "Excellent."

I've posted some pictures from Thursday on my Webshots page. You can see the meal I had yesterday for lunch, the office tower where I'm working, and a few of the sights of Frankfurt. I'll post some more pictures on Saturday when there's a lull in the work.

Today wasn't too interesting. Thai food for lunch, Chinese for dinner, both in the same street where there are many different restaurants with sidewalk service. We did some more prep work for tomorrow's upgrade, but they're well prepared here, so there hasn't been much to do. I have to be up extra early tomorrow, so I'm back at my hotel flipping through the channels and trying to understand German TV.

I haven't tried speaking German yet. Everyone we've dealt with at restaurants and shops has spoken English as soon as I or my colleague start talking. I felt bad for the girl behind the counter at Haggen-Daz tonight, where we got some ice cream for dessert. When I asked her how much, I could see she knew the amount in German, but had to think what it would be in English. I wanted to hold up some euro notes and say "just take the one you need." But after a few seconds she figured out the number.

After lunch we took a walk from the restaurant row down to the river, where there are carnival booths and rides set up for the festival that begins tonight. There were several booths selling different kinds of sausage, like currywurst and paprikawurst. There were others that were even more unappetizing. There may have been a tunawurst, or maybe it was tuna pizza. Either way, I'm not interested.

Today's entry comes to you from the Frankfurt office. I arrived this morning after the usual uneventful flight. I think I slept for about an hour, though I can't be sure. I don't feel quite as tired right now as I did at the same time in London a few weeks ago. You can check out my hotel's web site if you like, so you can see my luxurious accommodations.

My hotel is a few blocks from the office. My colleague and I found the office by my remembering the street name and our knowledge that the office is in one of Frankfurt's newest and largest office towers (specifically, the Main Tower). We're sitting in the IT director's office here, with a beautiful view of the city laid out below us. I'm so jealous of the IT staff here: everyone gets a window with a view. Meanwhile, I get stuck in a cube in the server room back in New York.

This afternoon, one of the IT staff took us to a biergarten restaurant just outside downtown Frankfurt. I had a mug of the restaurant's dark beer and a giant skillet filled with bacon, sausage, pork, steak, peppers, green beans, kidney beans, and potatoes. If not for the copious amounts of caffeine I'm now consuming, I'd be passed out on the desk. I can't let every meal be like that one or I'll have a heart attack by Monday. I haven't seen too many overweight Germans so far, so there must be something in the beer that keeps the metabolism up and processing the fat.

I've taken the plunge and turned on Earthlink's advanced spam blocker feature. This action makes me a hypocrite, as I posted on Slashdot a few months back that I'd never use a feature like this, because of the adverse effect on unknown senders (they get a link to an "add me to your contacts" form, and I get a daily notice of unknown senders). I've been using Mozilla's advanced spam filter, and that blocks about 80% of the spam I receive. But that only works when I check my e-mail from my home PC or work laptop. Lately I've been traveling and reading my e-mail on my Blackberry, which doesn't have any spam filters. So I spend about 25% of my Blackberry time deleting spam, especially while I'm on the road. It's become too much of a pain in the ass to ignore any longer. Since I'm leaving for Frankfurt on Wednesday, this seems like the perfect time to give the feature a week-long trial. So if you're e-mailing me and I don't know you, you'll get a strange response but I'll add you to my contacts if you're legit. Otherwise, screw you, spammer!

I wish I'd had my camera when I visited with my buddy Jon "Bear Magnet" Amato on Saturday. Jon has been walking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine since the spring. He hasn't shaved or had a haircut in over three months. I didn't know this, so when I saw him for the first time since he started his hike, I was shocked by the mountain man who greeted me. The clean-shaven Amato is no more; he has been replaced by Grizzly Adams, Jr. He says he won't cut his hair or shave until he returns to Washington, DC in October, so I'll get a picture of him then.

Photos from London and Mississippi are now available at my Webshots site. I need to update my web site with the new link.

I haven't posted anything for a week, but I've got a good excuse. I've been on the road again. Liz and I just got back from a week in Mississippi for her grandmother's 90th birthday. She was surprised by all the people who showed up for the weekend, including us and her youngest daughter. We had a great time catching up with her family and eating delicious food from Little Dooey, Harvey's, and other Starkville restaurants. It's good to be back in New York, if only for a week before my next trip out of town. I picked up Liz's German phrasebook while we were at home. I'm looking forward to gorging myself on knockwurst, schnitzel, spaetzel, and who knows what else for a week. I'm sure that by the end of the trip I'll be sorry to leave, but I'd prefer to spend most of my summer at home where I belong.

Pictures from London and Mississippi will be posted whenever I think about it.

Despite my planning, I woke this morning at 5:45 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I scheduled myself for the later flight today (12:45 PM) so I wouldn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, but it seems my body had other ideas. I've been up for a while now, and I don't have anything to do until at least 8 AM, when Tesco opens and I can buy more Cadbury's chocolates to take home for Liz. So I've been surfing and planning the next two days, which promise to be busy as I get home and have only a few hours tomorrow to finish arrangements for our trip to Mississippi on Thursday.

On Sunday I went to Broadstairs to visit my grandmother and cousin. I had a good time seeing them, and it was a refreshing change of pace to get out of the city for a few hours and see rural England again. My grandmother is still in good health and looking forward to coming to California in a few weeks. I had hoped to get some work done or at least play around on my laptop on the train, but the train was crowded in both directions with beachgoers and the seats were far too cramped for me to do anything, even read comfortably. Amtrak it was not -- more like a commuter train. At least I had a seat both ways. After I got back to London I had to walk around Leicester Square for a while to stretch my legs out. I remembered Rob Truhn's comment about taking the bus from Washington, DC, to New York ("it's the train for my ass") and wondered how he would handle this particular train.

Monday was a mostly normal work day for me, albeit in a different city. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant, Wagamama, where I had a chicken and rice dish with a thick broth of mushrooms and vegetables and some duck gyoza dumplings. After work we went to the Bishop of Norrich pub near the office for some Old Wallop, and then to a Thai restaurant for dinner. I had pork and prawn dumplings and a seafood stir-fry, plus some pad thai-style noodles. I also enjoyed enormous quantities of wine, so I'm glad that I don't have much of a hangover this morning. I don't think it would be too pleasant to get on a plane feeling queasy. But I did accomplish my goal of getting drunk on my firm's dime.

One other bit of news: my travel schedule has changed. One of my co-workers isn't able to go to Frankfurt at the end of July for that upgrade, so I'm going in his place. It wasn't entirely unexpected, though I wish it were Rome instead. Aside from the beer, I don't think there's much to see or do in Frankfurt. And I don't speak a word of German anymore (I had learned a little when I was in preschool, many years ago). Maybe now is a good time to go to the Heidelburg Restaurant at 86th and 2nd so I can get a preview of the cuisine I'll be eating for a week. At least I'll be done with my work on this project one week earlier, I won't have to go to DC for their upgrade, and I get the rest of August to enjoy the new apartment and prep for the NYC Century ride.

That's it for me until I get back to New York. Time to pack my stuff and get outta here.

The London office server upgrade went better than I expected today. We only had a few minor hiccups along the way, and though it took about 15 hours to complete, I think we've done an excellent job and the users here shouldn't have any problems on Monday morning. So tomorrow (Sunday) I'm off to visit my grandmother in Broadstairs. Hopefully no one will call me in a panic, since I'll be over two hours away.

I'm not sure if I'm souring on the hotel bar here, or if I'm just not interested in drinking alone and making a spectacle of myself. I had one drink there tonight and after twenty minutes, that was all I needed. There was a DJ working tonight so the music was extra loud, but the crowd wasn't as big as the previous two nights have been. While I still think it's the greatest bar in the world that will allow me in to drink, I realize now that I had a great time here three years ago because of the people I was here with, not because of the bar or this hotel in and of itself. I can have a great time at really crappy bars and restaurants if I'm in good company. And I'm not enjoying this bar anymore, mostly because of my lack of company. And I don't think there should be anything wrong with that opinion. I guess I don't want to admit that I'm maturing and I'd rather spend my free time sitting in my room listening to music or reading than at the bar drinking by myself. I still think my office owes me a drunken evening. Maybe that's what I'll do on Monday night. It doesn't matter much if I'm hung over for my flight back.

I got plenty of sleep last night, after a delicious dinner from the Asia de Cuba restaurant at the hotel and a few drinks at the Light Bar. I drank alone, which isn't my favorite activitity, but since no one was around to drink with me, I wasn't going to let my singleness keep me out of my favorite bar in the world. I'm sure I looked pathetic, standing around by myself while others partied with huge groups, but I didn't care as much as I used to. Back in college, if I was alone at a party, I worried about what everyone else thought of me. This time, I didn't care so much. I'll be back there tonight, but I can't allow myself more than one drink. I have to get up early Saturday morning for the upgrade, the reason I came to London in the first place. It would be a good idea for me to be responsible and make sure I get to the office on time.

I've arrived safely in London, gotten settled at my hotel, and spent most of the day at the office, getting reacquainted (I was here three years ago). I haven't slept since Tuesday night, since I can't ever sleep on planes, so I'm keeping myself going with crappy coffee and water. If the caffeine doesn't keep me running, the constant trips to the bathroom should do the trick. I had a bit of an adventure this morning, getting to a Citibank ATM a few blocks from my hotel, then finding my way on the Underground to the office. Before that, I had a two-hour car ride in from the airport. Next time, I'm taking the shuttle train from Gatwick to Victoria Station: it's quicker and cheaper. Not that the cost matters when the office pays, but I like the convenience of the train.

I'm just about ready for my trip to London. I leave Wednesday evening for six days in the greatest city in Europe (my biased opinion, but hey, it's my blog). I'm working on a major network server upgrade for my job, and the upgrade requires some of us to travel to the overseas offices to do the work. I'm only going to London; one guy from New York is going to Paris, Rome, and Frankfurt. If I'd thought about it, I would have requested Paris and tried to schedule the upgrade so that it was the same weekend as the end of the Tour de France. But I'm happy with London. I know the city, I speak the language, and the people in that office are friendly and fun to hang out with. I get to fly business class and stay in the same fancy hotel I stayed in the last time I was in London, the St. Martin's Lane Hotel. You can check out the entire Ian Schrager group of hotels on their web site. Aside from its location in Leicester Square and its comfortable rooms, the hotel features the best hotel bar I've ever seen. The Light Bar is (or at least was in 2000) a hip hangout for models, celebrities, and hotel guests. Basically it was a swanky club that would never let me in, except that they have to allow hotel guests. So I got to drink and drool over attractive models and the occasional celebrity partygoer (John McEnroe walked right by me several times). I hope it's still as popular as it was then. If not, at least the drinks are good and my firm is buying.

Liz and I saw Finding Nemo on July 4, in the small multiplex at 86th and 3rd. The movie was wonderful: great for little kids who will like the story and the colorful fish, but entertaining for adults who will appreciate the celebrity voices and more sophisticated gags. Liz pointed out that the lobsters who walk through one scene speak with New England accents. I missed that one, but there are many other such jokes. I liked it even more than I enjoyed Monsters, Inc.. It's another triumph for Pixar and Disney, which makes me wonder how Disney's bottom line would look without the Pixar films on the ledger. IIRC, the last few Disney-produced animated movies have not been so successful, but everything Pixar does is cinematic gold.

Last night, we attended the New York Philharmonic's free concert in Central Park. I think the threat of rain kept people away, because we arrived in the park around 6:30 and found a good spot underneath a tree about 150 yards from the stage. Usually showing up that late means you're forced to squeeze in between early arrivers or find a spot far away from the stage, where you can't hear anything. Also, the audience listened to the announcements from the stage to please keep quiet so that we could all enjoy the music. The first time we went to one of the free concerts we were far from the stage and surrounded by noisy groups, so we hardly heard any music. This time, every note was clear, and the music was fantastic. It was an all-Russian composers program: Borodin, Tchaikovsky, and Moussorgsky. The Tchaikovsky violin concerto was exceptional: the soloist, playing on a 1715 Stradivarius, had a clear tone and total command of this difficult work, and the orchestra was excellent as always. I know every note of this concerto, as it's one of my favorites, and this performance was energetic and compelling. I don't know about anyone else, but I was hanging on every note. The second half of the concert was Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, another of my all-time favorites. Listening to this piece brought back memories from my childhood of my brother and I trying to play it on the piano and studying the orchestral score, comparing it with the piano original. For the record, my brother had more success at the piano than I did, to my eternal chagrin. What I love about this work is that it's so chordal: since it's originally for piano, it's full of great chords for brass, winds, and even strings in some places. There are huge, booming chorales for brass, quiet harmonies for winds, lumbering marches for strings. For about a half hour, I was 14 again, sitting in front of the stereo in my room with the score, discovering the finer points of orchestration.

I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. It's a great book, full of adventure, mystery, and humor, but Goblet of Fire is still my favorite in the series. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I won't post any sort of review here. But for those interested in parallels between Harry Potter and another great sci-fi universe, please see this detailed list over at TheForce.net. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't notice most of them.

For my next book, I'm continuing to broaden my literary horizons and read classics that my wife has always loved. So I've started Dickens' Great Expectations. I saw the 1997 movie with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert DeNiro, but I'm trying not to imagine those people in the key roles. Besides, Liz tells me that the movie is not an accurate representation of the book. My last experience with Dickens was A Tale of Two Cities in high school, of which I read little. Instead, I'm not proud to say that I used the Cliffs Notes and got an A on the exam anyway. I couldn't get into that book, and I was extremely busy with other work at the time. But so far, GE is more approachable that I would have expected, and I'm already absorbed in the story.

After this book, if I can stand another tough one, I'm hoping to tackle Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I've read some great reviews of that novel, so despite warnings of its difficulty, I've got to see what all the fuss is about.

This morning, I noticed this item on ESPN.com. I don't know much about Marvel Smith, but obviously the Steelers have great confidence in him if they're giving him this much money. However, this sentence in the article bothers me:

"Another key element: Despite three full seasons in the league, Smith won't turn 25 years old until August, and locking him up for six more seasons means the Steelers won't have to worry about the crucial left tackle position for a long time."

Thanks, Len. Why don't you just jinx him? For some reason, I foresee an injury-filled two seasons for Smith, after which he's released by the Steelers. I hope that doesn't happen, but I've got a bad feeling about this.

Late at night, the traffic outside our apartment is beginning to annoy me. Apparently trucks aren't allowed on the FDR, so they use 1st Avenue to go uptown through Manhattan. And they all seem to do it starting around 10 PM, continuing all night. Our bedroom is far from the windows on the 1st Avenue side of the apartment, so we don't notice the noise while we're trying to sleep, but it's a big problem when we're trying to watch TV. I hope we're not bothering our downstairs neighbor by using the stereo and turning up the volume to hear the TV over the traffic. I'm also annoyed by the late-night revelers at The Gaf, the bar next door, but since it's a decent place, I can forgive them. Maybe in a few years, when I become an old man and completely anti-social, I'll get really upset.

We continue to discover great new channels on the digital TV system. Last week I watched a program about the development of the Luftwaffe's escort fighter on Discovery Wings. Last night, Ovation ran a three-hour marathon of The Phil, a late 1990s documentary on the Philharmonia orchestra in London. Late one night, VH1 Classics had a show called “The World's Fugliest Rock Stars” on the schedule, but it started at 2 AM and I had to go to bed.

We installed our air conditioner on Saturday afternoon, and now that we're finally getting some summer weather, we're happy we did. We also bought a new bed and mattress, a variety of household items at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the new Harry Potter book. I'm about 200 pages into the last item, and it's good so far. It is far darker than the other books, and Harry's quite the moody teenager. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else, so I'll keep my other thoughts on the book to myself.

I had to pay for the cleaning and painting of the old apartment, but now it looks fantastic, like we never lived there. I may have complained loudly about the apartment, but the truth is that we had too much furniture and junk in there, and a more creative decorator could live comfortably for years. I tried to list the apartment in my firm's daily newsletter, but they rejected the ad because we're using a broker to find a new tenant, and the firm's policy is not to print any real estate services' listings.

So I'll post my ad here.

One bedroom apartment available in heart of Greenwich Village, just off Sixth Avenue. New fixtures in bath and kitchen, large closet. Apartment has been renovated in the last four years and recently painted. Pets OK. Steps from West 4th St. subway station (A,C,E,F,V trains), five minute commute to Lower Manhattan and 10 minutes to midtown. Dozens of great restaurants and shops within walking distance, one block from Washington Square Park. Rent is $1570. Available July 1. For more information, or to see the apartment, please contact Wil Jean-Baptiste at 347-693-4973 or at wbaptiste@citi-habitats.com.

I'll add that the building is full of friendly neighbors, the apartment itself is quiet since it's in the rear of the building and far from the street noise, and it's extremely safe, even though it's on the ground floor.

I have my precious broadband back. Monday morning, the same customer service rep at Time Warner's office had no problems with giving me my self-install kit for Earthlink. The installation was about as easy as the DSL install was three years ago. I connected the splitter to the cable modem and to the cable box, ran an Ethernet cable to my laptop, and plugged in the modem. The modem ran through its setup process and once the lights were on in the correct order, I had my connection back. There was a minor snag when I disconnected my laptop and plugged in my wireless router instead. The router couldn't get an IP address because the modem had already assigned its IP address to the MAC address of my laptop. But my router has a convenient "clone MAC address" button that lets me spoof the MAC address that the modem sees. Once I did that, I got right back online. My wireless network worked right away, since I didn't have to reconfigure that. The only drawback to the entire setup is that both the cable modem and the router sit in the living room, but the desktop computer is in the office. I've had to run a network cable behind the couch, through the tiny foyer, and along the office wall to reach the PC. I still need a longer cable for the living room so I can get the wire off the floor. But at least the broadband is back.

I had to stop by the old apartment on the way home to pick up a few things the movers forgot and to take some pictures of the little damage we did to the place in four years. It's still really too small, even with all the furniture out of there. I can see how easy it would be to furnish for one person -- there are lots of creative ways to arrange things to create more space than we had. I'm just so happy to be out of there. My real estate broker says that it's been shown a few times already, and he's confident that it will rent quickly. It had better happen soon; the only thing preventing me from enjoying this new apartment to the fullest is the nagging fear that the old apartment won't rent, and that we'll be on the hook for the rent for another few months. Anyone out there looking for a cozy 1 BR in the heart of Greenwich Village?

My day started at 5:30 AM, when Liz and I got up extra early to take the cats to the new apartment. Luckily for us, they cooperated for the most part and didn't put up too much of a fight. I left Liz alone with the cats at the new place and took the subway back to the old apartment. I finished up some unplugging and cleaning up, and waited for the movers to arrive. The Moishe's crew appeared exactly at 7:50 AM. At 8 AM they started packing all of our stuff, while I did my best to stay out of the way. They took a few coffee and smoke breaks, but even so it only took them 2 ½ hours to pack everything we owned. I took a cab to the new apartment, trying not to worry about the crew taking our stuff and disappearing while demanding more money. (I've seen too many horror stories on “Dateline.”) At 11:30 the truck pulled up in front of the new apartment. One hour of unloading later, and the movers were gone. Letting them do the packing along with the moving was the best decision we've made so far. There was no room in the old, tiny apartment for us to pack and live at the same time. And the packing would have taken us an extra week; I figured that if we're paying rent in two places for June, we might as well live in the larger one for as much of the month as possible. The only bad thing about having the movers pack everything was that they didn't label the boxes as they packed them, so we had to open every box to know where things were. But even that wasn't terrible: it was all here, just hidden away in 40+ boxes. At this point, it's 11:45 PM, and we've unpacked the entire kitchen, bathroom, and most of the clothes for the bedroom and the closets. The living room stereo equipment is still in boxes, as is my computer. Usually that's the first thing I unpack, but since I have my laptop, I don't need the PC yet. And I don't have broadband until Monday at the earliest, so I'm stuck looking for open Wifi access points in my building. (So far, I've found two, though neither one is a strong signal. But wireless networking is a fantastic, beautiful thing.) Tomorrow we'll finish the living room and start on the office. The landlord has to finish some painting in the apartment, and the plumber has to fix the drain in the bathroom sink, but by early next week it will be completely livable.

I still can't believe we're here, that we have so much space, and that we are as far along in our unpacking as we are. At 4 PM today, I was happily watching the cable guy set up my new digital connection, while Liz puttered away in the kitchen, stowing our food and cookware. Four years ago, at the same hour of the day, immediately after the move, I was in tears from the lack of sleep and the sheer amount of stuff we were trying to cram into the tiny apartment in the Village. (I'm man enough now to admit that at the time, I cried like a baby. And that Liz told me to snap out of it and get back to work.) So this time around it's a much better experience. I'm not sure we'll ever move again, this place is so amazing. We actually need to buy things to put in our spare storage areas. Is that crazy or what?

We're as packed as we can be for the big move tomorrow morning. The movers are packing our stuff as well, so we just had to clean up and unplug everything in preparing for their arrival. It's amazing the things you find when you're cleaning up almost four years' worth of detritus and assorted crap. We had several sealed glass storage jars we stowed under the kitchen sink when we moved in. I'm certain they were empty when we put them there. A few nights ago, we cleaned out the area under the sink and found the jars, two of which had water in them. One was filled almost to the top, the other about halfway. I know that the sink had been leaking; the wood panel that forms the bottom of the cabinet is warped from water damage. But how did the water get inside the sealed jars? Is it four years' worth of condensation? We may never know.

I had a fun run-in with Time Warner a few days ago. I ordered Earthlink cable Internet service instead of DSL, since we're not getting a phone line. I made the call about the Internet about 10 days ago, not sure yet when our move-in date would be. Earlier this week, when we found out the move was this Saturday, I called Time Warner to cancel the cable TV and set up an appointment for a digital cable TV install in our new apartment. At that time I mentioned the cable Internet setup, for which I was still awaiting a phone call from Time Warner to set up an installation appointment. The TW rep suggested that I go to the TW sales office on 23rd Street and pick up a self-install kit for the Internet service, so I could hook myself up once the cable TV is installed. So on Wednesday I went to the office and waited for another customer service rep to help me. That's when I found out that they couldn't give me a self-install kit, since I didn't have "active" cable service at the new apartment. Apparently you have to be "on" in their system before they hand out cable modems. I tried to argue that I'd have an active connection on Saturday afternoon, after the TV guy hooks up the TV connection, but that didn't matter on Wednesday. Also, I could have scheduled the Internet guy to come out on Saturday as well and hook that part up, but since I hadn't requested a dual install when I was on the phone with the TV rep, I was out of luck. So now I have to hope that my TV is unpacked, or at least in the apartment, when the cable guy shows up tomorrow, and that we get the TV hooked up without complications. Then I can go back to the 23rd St. office on Monday and get my cable modem. In the meantime we might be "borrowing" wireless Internet service from someone else in the neighborhood. That should be fun. I have to remind myself that I've got an entire apartment to set up, and that the Internet is not that high on the priority list for a few days.

Lots of news to report.

Liz and I are moving. The afternoon before my major network upgrade, we saw several two-bedroom apartments on the Upper East Side, none of which had the necessary space for us to consider moving into them. They all had two good-sized bedrooms, but little shared living space aside from the kitchen. With all our living room furniture, we would have had to put all our stuff into the spare bedroom, leaving us with the same situation we have now. The last apartment we saw looked the same as the others, with a big kitchen and two large bedrooms. Then we opened the door to what we thought was a closet and found out that it was another bedroom, the same size as the other two rooms. It was exactly the apartment we'd been looking for. A flurry of activity over the weekend and into the next week resulted in us signing a lease for the new apartment, beginning the process of re-renting our current apartment, and planning a move. Everything happens this Saturday starting at 8 AM, so hopefully by midafternoon we'll be unpacking all our stuff in a much larger space. We're not paying that much more for the extra room, either. Until then, it's going to be crazy around here. I'm taking a few days off to clean up the apartment and make some other arrangements, but we don't have to do the actual packing, we're letting the movers do it. Those who have seen our little apartment will agree that there isn't enough room in the place to pack and live for more than a few hours. If we packed our own stuff, by the time we were ready to move, we wouldn't be able to get to the door to let the movers in. Aside from the added room, I'm excited because we get a home office that eventually will have separate spaces for Liz's stuff and my own. My friend Carol and her husband have a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago with a home office filled with computer equipment. That's my dream, and someday, it will be a reality. For the time being, we'll have digital cable TV and Earthlink cable (instead of DSL) to occupy us.

Adding to the craziness last week was the musical for which Liz and I played in the pit orchestra. It was a production of COMPANY, by Stephen Sondheim, by the St. Vincent's Players, a group of nurses and one doctor from St. Vincent's Hospital in the Village, along with some professional actors. We got roped in by one of Liz's friends who played bassoon in the pit. We had a great time, met some cool people, and we're looking forward to playing their shows again. I'm not a big fan of Sondheim's music, but the songs for this show weren't bad. To try and keep them out of my head, I've been listening to the soundtrack of Godspell, which brings back all sorts of fond memories from Georgetown. Oh, how I pine for simpler days sometimes....

Friday night was one of the longest nights of my life. And it was definitely the worst network upgrade I've ever had the misfortune to be involved with.

We spent 18 hours, from 10 PM Friday until 5 PM Saturday afternoon, trying to upgrade two NetWare 5.1 servers to NetWare 6 and preserve our server cluster setup. Things went well until 3 AM. We had both servers up and running with the new OS and we were re-enabling services that had been shut down. At that point we reconnected the servers to the network storage device (over 3 TB of disk space), and everything went to hell. We spent the next six hours trying to get the servers to "see" the SAN. When they would finally get connected, we'd reboot them and they'd break again. Finally, around 9 AM, we got a solid connection. Then we broke it again and again, trying to tweak things. Around noon, over 24 hours in, we worked on resurrecting the NetWare volumes. By 5 PM, we were goofy from the intense work and the lack of sleep, but the system was working again. Tomorrow I go back to see what bugs we didn't catch the first time through.

Liz and I saw "The Matrix Reloaded" this afternoon. She liked it, but thought it was too wordy. While I enjoyed it again, I felt like I needed a degree in philosophy to be able to understand all the "causality" and "ergos" in the script. And the scene with the Architect isn't any easier to follow on the second viewing. My favorite fight scene is still the one in the Merovingian's lobby, with the swords and acrobatics. That one kicks serious ass.

I saw X2 this evening, at the Loews 34th Street. Tuesday night is a great time to go to the movies. You miss the weekend crowd, nothing ever opens or premieres on a Tuesday, so you get the theater to yourself. The movie was immensely entertaining, and I'm a little bothered by the fact that I liked it more than The Matrix Reloaded. It had a good story, some interesting character development, and the death of a major character by the Spock treatment (sacrifice to save others, possible hints at resurrection in future sequels). The effects were superb, but not as gratuitous as Reloaded. The action in X2 exists because of the story, as opposed to Reloaded, where sometimes the action is the only point. They're both good movies, but I have to give the edge to X2.

In my continuing quest to try every Linux distribution ever, yesterday I installed Slackware 9.0 on my test PC at work. Slackware has been around for a long time; my brother ran it for a few years in the mid-1990s when he was in college. It doesn't have a pretty GUI-based, auto-detecting installer, so I had to know my PC's hardware and settings to make everything run. It doesn't partition your disks for you, either, so it took me five tries before I figured out just how I had to set up the disks to get the system to boot. Once I had the system booting into X/KDE, I configured X for the proper monitor and resolution on the first try (and a good thing, too, since I could have fried my expensive LCD panel if I made the wrong choices). The end result of six hours of work was a system that is about as plain vanilla Linux as you can get. Red Hat and Mandrake, both excellent distros, come with all sorts of custom utilities to make things easier for the user. That's great, but sometimes you want to see how things were before developers tried to make Linux more user-friendly. I wouldn't recommend Slackware to anyone who wanted to try Linux for kicks, or as a substitute for Windows, or on a server (not much in the way of professional support for Slackware). But it's a great desktop OS for the experienced Linux user who wants something other than the Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE designer interface. (I had planned to try SuSE, but since it's a FTP download install only [no CDs unless you pay for it], I gave up and went with Slackware and its one-CD install. Also, I had trouble getting my PC to boot from the SuSE floppies, and who wants to muck around with floppies when you can just use a CD instead?)

The Matrix has me.

I love my job. Last December, I attended a free preview screening of Star Trek: Nemesis, courtesy of Network Associates. This morning, courtesy of the good people of EMC, I got to see The Matrix Reloaded before anyone else. Once again, the screening was at the Loews 34th Street, apparently the place to be for events of this nature. There was a continental breakfast at 7:30 AM, and the program started at 8. An EMC rep introduced an eight-minute promotional video for EMC products. It started out with a few seconds of Powerpoint slides with quotes from happy customers. Then the video itself started, with a woman sitting at a computer terminal, receiving messages like "The Matrix has you." Then she's wearing a tight black halter top, leather pants and boots, and she's executing kung fu moves while the narrator talks about EMC products and other video clips play picture-in-picture style. To me, it said "EMC is sexy!" but it didn't make me want to buy a new SAN. It was as if the video were produced by four or five people who worked independently, assembled their work in a few hours, and an executive said "I guess that will work." After the video came the trivia portion of the event. I correctly answered the question "when Tank asks Neo what he needs to rescue Morpheus, what is Neo's response?" ("Guns. Lots of guns." I watched the Matrix again last night.) I won a doll of Neo in his martial arts outfit, with the helpful comment on the box "recommended for adult collectors". At least the toy companies have realized who's buying their products. After the trivia, it was time for the movie.

I don't want to give too much away before anyone who actually reads this blog has seen it. So I'll try to keep this review spoiler-free. Reloaded reminded me of The Empire Strikes Back. The Matrix was a seminal movie, like Star Wars before it, so seeing a sequel to it was like seeing TESB for the first time: more of the same characters, new stories, better action sequences, and a cliffhanger ending (OK, that's a spoiler, but we all know there's one more sequel in November). The action sequences and special effects are no less mindblowing than the effects in the first one, and won't be duplicated for a long time. The story is excellent, but there are a few scenes that are just talking, explaining things to the characters, and by extension, the audience. It reminded me of my friend James' comment about Commander Riker's purpose in Star Trek: TNG: to explain everything to the audience. It's a long movie (2 hours 15 minutes), so when they get to talking, and no action, it feels like it's dragging. I almost took a bathroom break, but I couldn't be sure when they'd start the kung fu or blowing things up again, so I stayed put. After the first viewing, I'd say it's at least as good as the original. I'll tell you what it's not: it's not The Phantom Menace, or even Attack of the Clones. I don't think Reloaded will disappoint anyone, even casual fans of the original Matrix. I can't wait to see it again, and I'm really curious how the story will wrap up in Matrix Revolutions this fall.

This entry should have been posted a week ago, but I had trouble with the browser and then I just forgot about it.

I've had a busy week at work, as usual. Yesterday, I installed the first NetWare 6 server in our production network. All the prep work we've been doing for the past few months paid off with an error-free installation. After that, I represented Georgetown University at my firm's college fair for Washington Irving High School. The university sent two prospectuses (prospecti?), two pamphlets on financial aid, a stack of about 100 blue response cards for the kids to send back, and a blue and gray GEORGETOWN banner for the table. I wish they'd sent more copies of the prospectus; it was the most popular item on the table, but I couldn't give both of them away. The banner didn't come with anything to stick it to the edge of the table (unlike the other schools, most of which came with silken tablecloths that easily hung off the table), so I fought with a makeshift scotch tape mounting system for the better part of two hours. I spoke to about fifteen students, some of whom were seriously interested in Georgetown, and others who had never heard of the school before. No one wanted to know about the English program, but several asked me about pre-med, business, and pre-law programs. One father wanted to know if his son could major in music and track. I kept asking him what he meant by track until I realized he meant the athletic program. I mentioned the Penn Relays and he seemed to understand that track was a sport, not a major. I think I disappointed them a second time when I explained that the school doesn't offer a music major yet, and probably wouldn't for five to ten more years. I enjoyed the experience, though. I don't do enough alumni work, aside from giving money to the school a few times a year, so this fair was a chance for me to do something to help out the school. And I got a free banner out of it, which means I finally have something to hang on the wall behind my cubicle. I couldn't hang my diploma there, and I don't have any artwork or pictures to put there, so the banner will do.

My wife's parents sent us a care package of goodies from Mississippi, and they tossed in a special toy just for me. I guess they remembered how excited I was at Christmas when their niece's son received a mini-RC car as a gift. He was happy to let me set it up for him and run it around the floor for a while, chasing the dog and cats. Now I have my own mini RC car with which I can torment my cats. I don't really have enough room at home to run the car, but it's fun to startle the cats with it. Vladi is the only one who chases it. Starlite runs away from it, and Magenta just sits there, oblivious as always. Liz is going to be out of the house on Saturday afternoon. It might be my chance to set up an obstacle course with jumps for the car. Where were these cars when I was 10?

Spiderman II was filming in my neighborhood this evening. On my way home from work, laden with groceries and cat litter, I stopped to watch a bit of the production at the corner of Bleecker and Carmine Sts. It didn't look that exciting, and the litter was getting heavy, so I took my purchases home and planned to stay in. But my curiosity got the better of me. On Saturday morning, on my way to work, I had passed signs indicating that they'd be filming in Lower Manhattan on Sunday, and yesterday I forgot to ride past there on my bike. I decided not to pass up another chance to see a movie production up close. There was a small crowd watching from the little park opposite Joe's Pizza, the location of the production. Several people were taking pictures, and the staff kept asking them not to use flashes. Unfortunately, these pleas kept coming AFTER they took the pictures. I saw director's chairs for the cast and crew, including Tobey Maguire, but there was no sign of him on the set. There was a guy in a red helmet who looked suspiciously like him. Finally, after I had been watching for about twenty minutes, Maguire himself came out of the pizza place. He stood on the opposite corner from me, surrounded by production staffers, keeping his head down as people tried to take pictures of him. Since he was wearing the same costume as the guy in the red helmet, apparently helmet-head was his stunt double. After a minute or two Maguire and two staffers walked down the block to his trailer, followed by several of the young women who had been watching this entire scene from my side of the street. He's not as tall as I thought he'd be, and like most celebrities I've seen in Manhattan, I doubt I'd recognize him if I saw him on the street away from the movie set. He came back about fifteen minutes later, and not long after that, I lost interest in the whole thing. It was too cold to stand around much longer, and I still had to eat dinner, fold laundry, wash clothes, and take care of the cats. Back to reality.

While watching The Ten Commandments last night on ABC, I figured out that the debauchery scene near the end, where the Israelites rebel against Moses, was the first spring break. There are lascivious women and horny guys recently released from servitude, abundant alcohol, gold and jewels for everyone, and a complete lack of authority. It looked like every MTV Spring Break special I've ever seen. You see, I never went to the beach for spring break, so I have to rely on what I've seen on TV and heard from friends. Apparently Cecil B. DeMille had been to Daytona, though.

I love my new laptop. I'm using the wireless network right now, at Starbucks on Grove St. near my apartment. Yes, the weather outside is beautiful, and it's stupid to sit inside and surf when I could be outside reading, but hey: it's my life, my wife is out of town this weekend, so I can surf here without feeling guilty for ignoring her, and I will go outside in a few minutes and read more of Doctor Faustus. Only 200 pages to go!

Last night, I finally saw The Devil's Advocate from beginning to end. I'd seen the middle section of the movie several times on HBO and cable, but never the entire thing. It's a damn good movie, no great work of cinema, but it was an entertaining way to spend two-plus hours. Al Pacino is in full-on shouting rant mode, but it's never as unnecessarily excessive as it has been in some of his more recent films. Keanu Reeves is not and will never be considered one of the great actors of his generation, but he does a good job here as the young attorney from the sticks suddenly out of his element and forced to deal with circumstances he never could have contemplated. I couldn't help make comparisons between the law firm in the movie and my own firm, something that I'm sure happened often at my office in 1997 when the movie first came out. Both firms represent multinational corporations and foreign governments, both have breathtaking views of the city from offices in lower Manhattan, and both have the power to entertain the elite of New York. However, I'm fairly certain that Satan isn't one of my firm's senior partners.

We had a Passover seder on Wednesday night, at a friend's apartment in Brooklyn. The arrival of my friend's parents disrupted our plans, in that he wasn't available to do any of the cooking that day, leaving me to roast the chicken myself, according to his recipe. If I'd known it was that easy to brine and roast a bird, I'd have done it years ago. So much for buying the rotisserie chicken at the supermarket. Still, even with the craziness, the seder went well. For most of the evening, Jews were the majority of the participants, something that's never happened as long as my friends and I have hosted a seder. We took turns reading the haggadah, though we skipped the songs and the games at the end. The hiding and subsequent search for the afikoman wasn't so much a puzzle as just storing it for later. As usual, the festivities ran long, so we were left to fly through thirty pages of prayers in about five minutes. That's OK; I don't think my mother ever made us sit around the table and read everything that's in the haggadah after the meal and dessert. I think the Gentiles in attendance (most of whom had not been to one of our seders before) left with a little more knowledge of the history and rituals than they had before, and they weren't even subjected to the delicacy known as gefilte fish.

Liz and I spent last weekend in Chicago, at my friend Carol's wedding. Chicago was a fun place to visit, but it was too damn cold all weekend. It shouldn't be freezing anywhere in April, and with the cold wind off the lake, Chicago is ridiculously cold. On top of the nearly unbearable temperatures, on Friday we had icy cold thunderstorms to deal with. By Sunday afternoon the sun was out, but we'd had enough; we were happy to be on our way home. We did have a great time at the wedding and associated festivities (me: bar hopping on Friday night with the groom and his friends, Liz: drag show on Friday night with the bride and her friends). We also went to a few museums, the Art Institute and the Field Museum. At the former, we saw Seurat's Sunday on Le Grand Jatte, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, a few Pollocks and Warhols, and the armaments hall with jeweled swords and suits of armor. The Field Museum has a few dinosaur skeletons and a temporary exhibit on baseball featuring items from the Baseball Hall of Fame. The guy taking tickets for the baseball exhibit asked us if Liz was a fan, or just along for the ride. She answered "along for the ride" but ended up enjoying the exhibit anyway. In the culinary department, we went to Lincoln Park for Bacino's deep-dish pizza which was amazing. We stayed in Evanston, across the street from Nevin's Pub, where we had a delicious Irish pub-style lunch with Carol's extended family on Friday afternoon. And to close the wedding festivities, there was a brunch at a kosher restaurant in Skokie where we had blintzes for the first time in years. So it was a great trip overall, even if the weather sucked.

I got a new laptop at work today. I traded in my faithful IBM T22 ThinkPad for a T30, which gives me a faster processor, bigger hard drive, and built-in wireless networking. The tradeoff is that the screen resolution only goes up to 1024x768, whereas the T22 ran at 1400x1050. While my eyes will eventually appreciate the difference, I had gotten used to the extra screen real estate even at the expense of font size. I get a touchpad instead of the dreaded pointing stick, so that's an improvement. Why am I complaining? It's a laptop given to me by my office. Free hardware is always appreciated.

First, a story I've been meaning to relate for a few days.

On Saturday, Liz and I attended a fund-raiser for the Washington Square Park Dog Run at a Greenwich Village bar. There were several bands playing, hoops on TV, and drinks aplenty. So we settled in for a few hours of drinking and more drinking. The first band was a quasi-Irish group, appropriate for the bar's Irish theme. The next band took some time to set up, and their stage setup included a piece of cloth across the front of the stage, extending from waist height to the ground. The band came out and started with a blues tune, and I noticed that the guitarist sounded quite good. I still hadn't really looked at the band. After the first song, they announced that there was a special guest appearing for one night only, from the Catskills and the "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" show, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Yes, the four-legged comedian was indeed performing for us live. At this point, as Triumph started his act, I noticed that the guitarist was Jimmy Vivino from the Max Weinberg 7, and the drummer was Jimmy Wormworth, the substitute drummer when Max Weinberg is off with the E Street Band. The other members of the band were probably also from the MW 7, but I didn't recognize them. Anyway, Triumph told some extremely raunchy jokes, made fun of dogs, the dog run, news figures, and sang several ribald songs from "Late Night," including "Underage Bichon." At one point, he sodomized Ernie from "Sesame Street." All this to the delight of the audience, including two young children in the front row, who were apparently the drummer's kids. At the end of the show, the band thanked Triumph, and then Robert Smigel, the puppeteer behind Triumph and the genius behind the "Clutch Cargo" segments on "Late Night" and the cartoons on "Saturday Night Live." It was one heck of a show, and absolutely worth the price of a donation and a few drinks.

In other news, Magenta, one of our cats, has been at the vet's for a few days suffering from what has turned out to be a bout of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). He had a senior cat checkup on Saturday morning, when the vet took some blood for tests. After that, he was OK until we gave him some new wet food. From then on, he was vomiting and listless. We took him back to the vet on Tuesday after they said they wanted to monitor his blood glucose for diabetes. At first, we and the vet suspected he was diabetic, since he's ten years old and overweight, but luckily for all he's just fat. He's feeling better now, and the vet says we can pick him up tomorrow night. Just in time for us to leave town for the weekend. Liz and I were really worried for a few days, but now we're feeling better that he won't need insulin shots. He's an extremely friendly cat at home, but at the vet he becomes nasty and growls and bites. I'm sure he's giving them a hard time. I can't imagine having to inject him every day; I'd end up with more insulin than him.

This site is one of the funniest things I've seen lately. If you like the Department of Homeland Security, and being scared out of your mind, you'll get a kick out of this.

I've had far too much caffeine and sugar to be able to sleep anytime soon, so I might as well post my Oscar commentary now instead of tomorrow.

I watched the show with a large group of friends, something I haven't done in years. It was definitely the wildest Oscar ceremony I've ever seen, with the war dominating the thoughts, if not the words and actions, of most of the nominees.

Chris Cooper, winning Best Supporting Actor, got the first Iraq comment in at 8:58 (for those who had that time in the pool). I'm glad he won, though I thought the award would go to Christopher Walken instead.

I was surprised by Catherine Zeta-Jones winning for Chicago; I thought Meryl Streep had that award locked up.

I haven't seen Bowling for Columbine, but I'm glad Michael Moore won for it. However, the Academy had to know that by giving him the Oscar, they'd be opening up the podium for just the sort of acceptance speech/diatribe that he gave tonight. I heard more cheers than boos, but either way, it was too much. But it was quite the "Wow!" moment at our party. I'm sure that Gil Cates (the Oscar show producer) will make sure Moore's never invited back.

I cheered for Adrien Brody's winning Best Actor for The Pianist; it was an exceptional performance that completely deserved the Oscar. Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson were amazing as well, but Brody went beyond either of them, adopting an accent, learning the piano, and starving himself for months. His speech was by far the best of the night. Aside from the sentiments he expressed extemporaneously, I'm always impressed when a winner can get Bill "Stick Man" Conti to stop the orchestra. And when else would he ever get the chance to make out with Halle Berry?

Nicole Kidman winning Best Actress wasn't much of a surprise. Despite what the press may have said, I think this was her year, much like 2001 was Julia Roberts' year, when she won for Erin Brockovich. I enjoyed her speech as well. Does anyone else think that her divorce from Tom Cruise was the best thing that could have happened to her career?

When the time came for the Oscar for Best Song, we all had the same question: what happened to the fifth song? Eminem had already said that he wouldn't show up at the awards to perform his song, but I assumed that someone else would step up, or that at least they'd show some form of a video of it. So it was unexpected when his song won. And who was the guy who accepted the Oscar? Apparently someone who knows Eminem well enough to call him "Marshall." Someone at our party pointed out that it will be hard for Eminem to say that the establishment doesn't like him. He's won Grammys and now an Oscar. They like you, Marshall, they really, really like you.

Roman Polanski winning Best Director had to be the shocker of the evening. I thought that the award would go to Martin Scorsese if it didn't go to Rob Marshall. Shows what I know. Again, The Pianist was a fantastic movie, and I certainly think Polanski deserved it, but it was a surprise to hear his name. Too bad that he couldn't be there to accept in person.

Finally, Chicago won Best Picture, so despite the twists and turns of the evening, all is right with the entertainment world tonight. The best picture of 2002 won the award it completely deserved. On a personal note, while I doubt I will win my Oscar pool at work, I did pick Adrien Brody to win, and I correctly guessed that the Best Picture winner would win six Oscars total.

I'd get into a fashion review, but there were no standout bad choices that I can remember right now, so the heck with that. I'll leave that for tomorrow's morning shows.

Liz is out of town again this weekend, visiting a friend in Atlanta, so once again I'm on my own for entertainment. I had to be up at 5 AM this morning for a test of my office's disaster recovery plan, so after that was all over I slept until 1 PM. After I got up, I sat around the apartment for a while, watching the NCAAs, then decided I had to ge out for a while. I had hoped to avoid all the war protests in my neighborhood, but I had no such luck. There were hundreds of protesters literally right outside my doorstep. I saw a large group of police in riot gear hustling two protesters down Macdougal Street; the crowd rumor was that they were burning the American flag. After that, I headed uptown and spent some time browsing in Best Buy and Barnes and Noble. On the way home two hours later, I saw more riot squad police jogging down 8th Street, as the helicopters continued to hover overhead. Checking NY1 News' web site, I read that the police are still encountering trouble dispersing the crowd. It's a beautiful day but I'm glad I decided to come home when I did. I'd hate to get arrested just for trying to get into my apartment.

Witnessing all of this makes me think about my opinion on the war. I'm still opposed to it, but not enough to take to the streets and shout about it. I support the protesters' right to assemble and demonstrate against the war; it's the right to this sort of protest that we're supposedly fighting to provide to the Iraqi people. As an American, I also support our troops and the job they're doing over there. I don't think we should have started this war, or even provoked it by our military buildup and strong-arming in the UN, but now that we've started shooting, we need to finish it as quickly as possible. I'm scared of the threat of terrorist reprisals, but I'm reminding myself that the September 11 attacks were not in response to any direct actions by the US, but in response to our way of life. Another attack could come because of the war, or could come even if we hadn't invaded Iraq. I don't think that there will necessarily be a connection between the two (though if there is another attack, the press and the government may try to influence popular opinion one way or the other).

My Final Four picks are Pitt, Maryland, Wake Forest, and Arizona, with Wake losing to the Wildcats in the final. I'm not sure how I came to these conclusions, but they made sense at the time. I've lost several Sweet 16 teams from my bracket already, including the Mississippi State Bulldogs in a piss-poor effort against Butler last night. I enjoyed watching the game with other State fans at a bar uptown, but the game just sucked. There's always next year, of course. And my team, Georgetown, is still in the NIT, so I've got that going for me. How long is it until football season?

So we're going to war in a few days. I'm tired of all the media discussion and the arguments of the various governments. I just hope it's over quickly with as little loss of life as possible. The nation is back on orange alert, so I made sure we had plenty of food and water. That's all I'm prepared to do in case of terrorist attack. Sealing our apartment with duct tape and plastic is virtually impossible, so I'm rolling the dice that any mischief that happens is conventional (and that it happens far away from me.)

I've watched some great movies lately. Last week we rented The Count of Monte Cristo which was one hell of a fun time. This movie has everything: a great story, good performances, swordplay, political intrigue, and lots of cleavage. It's the ultimate revenge fantasy played out in fantastic fashion. Liz didn't think much of the movie, but I liked it enough that I'm tempted to buy it. It's that good.

I just finished watching Children of Dune on the Sci-Fi Network. I enjoyed the network's production of Dune from 2000, but thought that the sets looked a little too fake and not up to the epic standards of the novel, or even the David Lynch version of the story. This new film, of the second and third books in Frank Herbert's saga, outdoes the original movie in production values, acting, and story. I didn't mind the changes to the story (the children are 17 instead of 10 years old, Wensicia is older than her sister Irulan, who was the first born in the novels, no metallic eyes for Duncan Idaho) and I thought that the screenwriter stayed close to the spirit of the novels, similar to the way Peter Jackson has stayed true to the spirit of the Lord of the Rings. Speaking of which, the director even cribbed some details from the end of Fellowship of the Ring at the end of Children, with slo-mo camera work for a main character's death, with dramatic music playing as another character brutally stabs an assassin. And Susan Sarandon tries hard, but her Wensicia comes across as more evil than I remember from the book. And my final complaint is that I only had a clue what was going on because I've read the books several times. Without that, I'd have been completely lost. Even so, I'm still not clear as to why Leto thinks the "Golden Path" is the only way out of the imperial crisis of the story, and the movie didn't help explain it at all. I hope they make a movie of God Emperor of Dune, but I'm not sure the world is ready for a fifteen-foot worm with a human face. And the last two novels are extremely sexual, so those might be even harder to adapt. Still, they've done excellent work so far, and I'm sure future endeavors will be well done and well received.

I really enjoyed the three-day Novell class. Starting class at 8 AM wasn't much fun, but it also wasn't as bad as I thought it was. The course material was interesting enough that I didn't even notice the time. I took my laptop with me, and Novell was kind enough to provide a wireless network with Internet access for those who were inclined to use it, so I was able to keep up with work e-mail while following the class. Instead of the usual desktop PCs and monitors for class work, Novell provided four laptops per two-student group instead (and mine made five on my table). I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to not have to share my work area with another student so I didn't get bogged down on the lab work in conversation with a partner. I offered to talk to myself instead, but no one thought it was a good idea. Anyway, I'd definitely recommend the advanced, intensive Novell classes to someone else who was a real Novell geek like myself. I don't think someone who works with Novell products only part of the time would enjoy this type of class as much.

So it's back to the regular grind tomorrow. Ehh, I had a good run.

I've got three days of intensive Novell NetWare 6 training starting tomorrow, so I might not be able to post much until Friday. (Not that it would be something new....) I hear bad things about these classes: they're extremely long (8 AM to 5 PM), breaks are infrequent, and during such breaks you are strongly urged to do lab work, and there's no Internet access. However, no one who's gone to these classes from my office has been a Novell guru, so I'm hoping to get the definitive experience here. If I don't get anything out of this class, I'm not about to recommend it or any like it to my co-workers. For the same price, I could be taking a five-day class counting toward my certification, and I'm sure that will factor into my impressions of this class.

On Saturday night, I accompanied Liz to a Tori Amos concert at Radio City Music Hall. I say "accompanied" because the music of Tori Amos is not something I would normally choose to listen to of my own accord. I'm familiar with some of her songs, but I'm definitely not a fan. My wife is, though, so I went with her to the concert. I was not alone: the audience consisted of groups of women and couples of women and their sensitive male significant others. I thought I saw a sympathetic look on the faces of some of the guys, as we recognized our collective predicament. Most of us would have preferred to be at any other event, but we were doing our coupled duty by being there. As far as I can tell, it was a good concert. The audience was most appreciative of Ms. Amos' performance, and she responded with two encores. Unfortunately, since it's not my kind of music, and the hall was warm, and I was digesting a large meal, I found myself dozing off during the show. That's quite a thing to consider, falling asleep at a rock concert. Now I need to find a concert or sporting event to which I can drag Liz, so she can return the favor.

It was Phil's Big Weekend At The Movies.

Since Liz was out of town, my entertainment options were limited. I won't go to restaurants or bars by myself, and I don't relish the idea of spending all my evenings at home with the cats, so that left me with the movies as a relatively cheap way to pass the time. Unintentionally, I went to the same multiplex three days in a row, and while it wasn't all bad, I don't want to be a regular at the AMC Empire in Times Square. So I won't be going back there for a few weeks. Anyway, here are my reviews of the two new movies I saw, and a few comments on the movie that I saw for the third time.

Friday night: Frida, starring Oscar nominee Salma Hayek --

Frida was better than I expected from the reviews. Hayek and Alfred Molina are excellent as the leads, and the director does a great job integrating Kahlo's artwork into the movie. I don't feel like I have the complete picture of Kahlo's life after seeing this movie, but I've got a decent idea. Hayek's Oscar nod for this role is well deserved, but even though the Academy tends to like roles where the actor has an affliction or handicap, she's not going to beat Nicole Kidman.

Saturday night: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers --

I'm a geek, so I had to see this film one more time in the theater. The orcs still lose the battle of Helm's Deep if you see it more than once, and I didn't see anything new this time around. But I did notice more of the film's emotion than on the previous two viewings. The theater got a little dusty when Theoden visited his son's grave. I think that Arwen's departure from Rivendell can be seen ambiguously; we're led to believe that she's leaving Middle-earth, but I think we'll find out in Return of the King that she's defied her father and gone to Gondor instead. Since that book ends with their marriage, unless there's a radical departure from Tolkien's story, she's got to end up there anyway. Besides, she has to bring Aragorn his sword (I'm still upset that they didn't give him a re-forged Narsil before the Fellowship left Rivendell). Also, at one point in TTT, Aragorn embraces Arwen and caresses her ears with his fingers. I mentioned this to Jess, and she suggested that he has a fetish. Finally, at one point in TTT when Gollum is screaming and howling, I wanted to turn to someone else and say, in my best Graham Chapman voice, "What an eccentric performance!" But no one I knew was there to hear my witty remarks.

Sunday afternoon: The Pianist, starring Oscar nominee Adrien Brody --

I've seen several movies about the Holocaust, and I knew I wasn't ever going to be in the mood to see another one. And for the first half of this movie, I questioned my need to see any of the events depicted. We know that the Germans are going to humiliate the Jews in the streets. Then they're going to start shooting them randomly. And now they're loading them onto trains for Treblinka. Having seen all of these things in Schindler's List and other movies I saw back in Sunday school (yes, Jews have Sunday school, at least in my community growing up), I knew exactly what was going to happen before it showed up on the screen. But then the movie takes a different turn, as the lead character avoids Treblinka and ends up hiding out in a series of apartments in Warsaw, watching through window cracks events like the ghetto uprising and the eventual defeat of the Germans. Adrien Brody is fantastic as the pianist who goes from playing on the radio to combing through bombed-out buildings for scraps of food. His performance is every bit as good as Daniel Day-Lewis' in Gangs of New York or Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. But I think an Oscar for him would be an upset; Day-Lewis is the clear favorite here.

I'll write an Oscar picks entry in a few weeks. Clearly that's something much on my mind at this time of the year, and unusually enough I've had the chance to see most of the nominated films and roles of 2002. Liz and I aren't doing our usual Oscar picks bet this year, so I need some way to express my views on the nominees. Damn, I'm excited about writing that one.