Oregon and Seattle trip recap

Thursday

We arrived in Portland late Wednesday night after a six-hour flight on JetBlue. Liz's aunt and uncle picked us up and we had a 90-minute drive to Sheridan to their house. After sleeping in Thursday morning, we had lunch at an art gallery/café, then visited two wineries in the Willamette Valley. We sampled several delicious varieties of wine and bought a few bottles to ship home. We had dinner at a brewpub in McMinnville and went home.

Friday

We stopped in McMinnville for lunch and picked up our rental car, a compact Kia sedan. We left for Seattle around 1 PM and arrived about 5 1/2 hours later, about what we'd expected. On the way, we enjoyed the beautiful Pacific Northwest mountains and forests, along with weather that changed from cloudy to sunny to torrential rain every twenty minutes. We also got a chance to try out my Belkin TuneCast FM transmitter for my iRiver MP3 player, which I wrote about just the other day. We had dinner with our hosts Tanya and Jeff and one of their two daughters and then went with them and their French bulldog Emmy for a walk along West Seattle's Alki Beach. Later that night we watched (or perhaps "endured" is a better choice of words) National Treasure and made fun of the major flaws with the movie.

Saturday

Liz's friend Muse picked us up in the morning and dropped me off at the Cinerama theater in downtown Seattle. After I picked up my ticket for Revenge of the Sith, I met my cousin Elly for lunch. I hadn't seen her since my wedding in 1998, so we had a lot of catching up to do. She's about to graduate from the University of Washington with an art degree. She had to go home to work on a paper, but was kind enough to drop me off back at the Cinerama, where I waited in line for about an hour and a half to get into the theater. I have already posted my review of the movie and the theater itself, so just check out that post below.

After the movie, Liz and Muse picked me up at the theater and we went back out to West Seattle. Later that evening we had dinner at the Palace Kitchen, a restaurant that was coincidentally right across the street from the Cinerama (though there was enough of a gap between the movie and the dinner reservation that hanging around the neighborhood didn't make any sense). The meal was excellent, and so was the people-watching. There was a group of older women waiting impatiently for a table and one of them kept pushing her way past us to bother the hostess about their wait. Then she ravenously devoured a plate of spring roll appetizers, to the point where I was concerned that she'd eat my fingers if I shook hands with her. About an hour and a few drinks later, on her way out, she stood in the restaurant's doorway and hollered at her companions across the room. When the evening showing of Revenge of the Sith ended, a few costumed fans came into the restaurant, Darth Vader helmets removed but capes still donned.

Sunday

We left Seattle around noon and made the drive back to McMinnville in four hours, in what Liz's aunt Candy described as record time. Since they live in a house way up in the mountains, at the top of a steep, winding driveway that seems to be accessible only to cars with four-wheel drive, we had them pick us up in McMinnville instead of driving back to their house ourselves. We got there in time to catch the season finale of Desperate Housewives, which along with the movie was the other big pop-culture event of our vacation that I couldn't miss.

Monday

We drove to Portland and had lunch at Papa Haydn's, a café with unforgettable desserts. Liz had the carrot cake and I had a mint chocolate torte cake. Now logy from too much food, we rolled ourselves to Music Millennium where I loaded up on used CDs of Bruckner and Mahler symphonies. After that we drove across town to Powell's Books, and I filled my summer reading list with books by William Gibson, Brian Greene, Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy. (I haven't read a Clancy book since Debt of Honor, so I'm continuing in the Jack Ryan sequence by reading Executive Orders and Red Rabbit.) We ate dinner at a sushi restaurant downtown before making the drive back home.

Tuesday

Our first stop was the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, where Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose is on display, along with many other military and civilian aircraft. Then we drove out to the Pacific coast, where we had lunch at a brewery and took pictures on several windswept beaches. These aren't swimming and sunbathing beaches -- it's too windy and cold -- but there were a few hardy surfers out in the waves.

Wednesday

Since our flight home was a redeye and didn't leave until 11:55 PM, we had most of the day to spend in Portland. We had lunch at a little Mexican restaurant that a friend and former Portland resident had recommended to us, then we walked along the riverfront and enjoyed the best weather of our vacation. Workers were setting up rides for a carnival, so we made many jokes at the expense of "carnies." We took our time getting to the airport, and even after we checked in, we had plenty of time to visit with Liz's aunt and uncle and show off many photos from my four-year collection of digital images. The flight back was a little less than five hours, but the limited legroom and uncomfortable seats made sleeping difficult and eventually impossible. We landed at 8 AM and had a rush-hour-impaired cab ride home, but the cats were happy to see us and we them after a hard night's traveling.

Traveling with your MP3 player

Sunday's Washington Post reviews several options for using your iPod or other MP3 player in your car. They review two FM transmitters (the iTrip and the Belkin TuneCast II) and three cassette deck adapters. The reviewer prefers the iTrip to the TuneCast and doesn't have a problem with any of the cassette adapters. He does note that most cars don't have cassette decks anymore and that neither one is superior to the simplest (and least common) option: a line-in jack on the front of the car stereo.

Last weekend, on our drive from Portland to Seattle and back, we used a TuneCast II to listen to several podcasts and albums on my iRiver H140 through the car stereo. The TuneCast did its job as designed, but suffered from the same problems that the reviewer points out: it sounded tinny and distant most of the time, like any other FM radio station, and we had to adjust the frequency on the TuneCast every hour or so, as we moved in and out of the range of various FM stations. It was better for rock and blues music than for classical, as we found out during a brief attempt to listen to Beethoven. The audio sounded slightly better when I placed the TuneCast next to the gearshift, but maybe I was imagining a difference. I admit that it's an imperfect solution to the problem of using an MP3 player in a car without a direct connection to the car stereo. On our drive to DC for Easter weekend, I used James' cassette deck adapter with the iRiver and the sound was just as good as the CDs he brought along. But for $30 I was happy with the results.

If you're going to buy a TuneCast, get the "II" version, as it allows you to transmit on any FM frequency between 87.5 and 108.1 MHz. Earlier versions used four preset FM frequencies, and if there was a stronger radio station on those frequencies, you were out of luck. At least with the TuneCast II you have a chance to avoid any radio stations in your area by choosing an empty frequency. Also, get a fresh set of AAA batteries before you hit the road, as the TuneCast only lasts about three hours on one battery. For $20 extra you can get an in-car power adapter for the TuneCast that lets you run the transmitter off the car's power. I don't know why Belkin packages it separately from the TuneCast, except that it can also be used to charge your iPod instead, so maybe they're aiming the charger at a different user group.

quick "Revenge of the Sith" review

I saw the movie on Saturday at the Cinerama in downtown Seattle. (It did in fact remind me of the Uptown in Washington, DC -- it had the same large, curved screen and incredible sound system that the Uptown has, though the Uptown is larger and holds more people. But if you want a great movie experience in Seattle, the Cinerama is the place to go.)

I thought the movie itself was great. Definitely better than the first two, and an excellent way to wrap up the trilogy. Of course, the effects were better than anything I've seen lately, and the lightsaber battles (all five of them) were beyond anything in Star Wars films before. The fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan was especially tense and thrilling. I suppose if you're not planning to make any more Star Wars movies, you'd better make your last battle the best one. Maybe the best parts were the ones I was expecting: the beginnings of Darth Vader's career, how the droids end up where they do, and what all that blather about the midichlorians and disappearing ghostly Jedi really meant.

Some of the dialogue was cheesy and wooden, and the two little girls sitting next to me giggled at every bad line. Also, it ran a bit long for a Star Wars movie, I guess because George Lucas needed to get every last item into the story. But I really enjoyed it, and I can't wait to see it again when I get back to New York.

Here's one quick spoiler (scroll down a bit):








R2-D2 knows everything!

vacation time

Liz and I are leaving for Oregon this evening, where we will visit her aunt and uncle for a few days. We are also going to visit some friends (and in my case, my cousin) in Seattle over the weekend. While in Seattle, I will be taking in a showing of Revenge of the Sith, since there's no possible way I could wait to see the movie until we get back next week. (I will have to wait until Saturday, though.) I'm going to see it at the Cinerama, which is one of those old-style movie theaters with a wide screen that's been renovated and restored like the Uptown theater in Washington, DC. Since I grew up watching the Star Wars films, I'm as excited as I could possibly be to see this latest film. I liked but didn't love the first two prequels, despite the lackluster reviews. Sith is getting good-to-excellent reviews from many critics, so I don't think I'll be disappointed a third time. If I have a chance, I'll post a review up here over the weekend.

Blogging will be sporadic, or even less frequent than usual, while we're on the road. I think Liz's aunt and uncle have broadband, though they live in a rural area up in the mountains. I should really learn how to survive without being connected 24/7.

By the way, the cable TV is working again after I installed the new box. The new box has a few minor enhancements for program searches and recording, and the picture looks better than it looked with the old box. This time, we put the cable box inside our entertainment center, instead of on top where one of our cats would sleep on it. We put the VCR up there instead. If the cat breaks it by sleeping on it, it's not a big loss.

More cable woes (not so bad this time)

We got our cable TV and Internet fixed two weeks ago when the Time Warner guy who showed up fiddled with the junction box on the roof of our building and got us a strong signal. He also replaced our nearly two-year-old Scientific Atlanta 8000 DVR cable box with a new(er) one of the same model. Until last night, all was well. Then, around 1 AM this morning, the replacement cable box started rebooting spontaneously. It never got past the initial boot stage -- I could tell because the LED display on the front kept showing the word "b00t" and cycling through what I can only assume are PC POST (Power-On Startup Test) messages. Eventually the display stopped cycling and just flickered faintly before going off completely. I called Time Warner and the technician got it working initially over the phone (he had me reboot it again) so I stalled him by asking some stupid questions until the box shut down again after a few minutes. Rather than wait until after my vacation for another visit from the cable guy, this morning I took the cable box back to Time Warner's office on 23rd St. to exchange it for a replacement. I went early, figuring that I'd find a long line at 8:30 AM on a Monday. To my surprise, there were four people working behind the desk and no one in line. I was in and out of there with my new cable box (a new model this time) in 15 minutes. And no runaround either: the woman I spoke to had no problem taking the old box back and giving me a new one. I'll have to wait until tonight to hook it up and see if it works, so no "PTI" for me today. But the old box had the decency to fail after we'd watched all of our Sunday night TV shows, so we didn't miss anything good. As long as this new box records the season finale of "Desperate Housewives" next Sunday, we're OK.

At least my Internet access has been fine for the past few weeks. [knocks on wood] However, last weekn the MPAA sued a few of my favorite Bittorrent sites for recent TV shows, and most of them disappeared from the Internet within hours. So my options are shrinking for downloading shows that I've missed. Damn studios.

I'm still here...

...I'm just in a Microsoft Active Directory training class in midtown Manhattan this week. It's the same place as last time, in the CBS building on 6th Avenue, where I have no Internet access except for a few kiosks. At least the class is more educational and interesting this time around. We aren't getting any stupid questions, and everyone in the room understands the basics of AD, so we can focus on the class material instead of superhero tangents.

If you're looking for updated content, please check out Eric's account of his recent medical mission trip to Guatemala at Have Cipro, Will Travel. I especially enjoyed reading today's entry about Eric's bano issues while eating my dinner.

Saturday night's alright for opera

On Saturday night, Liz and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary a few weeks early by attending the Metropolitan Opera's performance of Faust by Charles Gounod. Neither of us had been to the Met before, so we were both awed and amazed by the hall and the performance. I'd see operas from the Met on TV, but the small screen doesn't do justice to what a staged opera really looks like. The hall is enormous, but the singers had no trouble filling it with the most wonderful music we'd heard in years. In particular, the actor singing the role of Mephistopheles (Rene Pape) was mesmerizing, and he received some of the loudest ovations. The other leads were equally spectacular, but the Devil had the best lines and some of the best scenes. We had seats near the front of the stage on the orchestra level, so we had excellent views of the stage as well as James Levine in the orchestra pit. I've been a fan of Levine's work for almost 20 years, so it was especially exciting to see him in person.

One of the interesting effects was in the set design. The entire opera was staged on risers set at about a 20 degree angle rising from the front of the stage to the rear. From our viewpoint down front, the whole opera looked tilted, but I assume the set was designed to look right from the upper balconies. It's a deep stage as well, and when the stage was filled with the chorus and backdrops, having a tilted set allows everyone to see the action. The sets themselves were just beautiful and some in the audience applauded each time the curtain opened for another act.

We had such a great time that we're already planning our next trip. In January the Met will stage Julie Taymor's version of Mozart's Die Zauberflote, and since neither of us has ever seen that particular opera, we'd love to see it here. I wish we could afford to subscribe to the opera, but I'll settle for once a year if we can manage it.

The Colbert Report Lives!

Liz and I are addicted to "The Daily Show:" we watch it every night, we bought the book, and we've been to a show taping and a charity comedy event with Jon Stewart and Lewis Black. One of our favorite fake ads during the show was the promo for Stephen Colbert's own talk show, "The Colbert Réport" (tagline: "It's French, bitch!") The promo featured Colbert screaming at the camera, expressing wild opinions, and berating fake guests. Now Comedy Central is giving Colbert his own show, based on the fake promo. It will run after "The Daily Show" and will spoof talk shows with hosts like Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, and Sean Hannity. I can't wait to see it. The only sad part is that it means less Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show," but that's a small price to pay to see more of Colbert four nights a week.

No cable TV and no Internet make Phil go crazy

Our digital cable box has been doing weird things for a few months now, but over the weekend it stopped showing us just about anything above the broadcast channels. About the same time, our cable Internet service went from 4 Mbs downstream to about 400 Kbs, a major, noticeable difference. By Monday it had gone out completely, like the cable TV. I've got a service call for Time Warner to come here tomorrow morning, but I'm really worried that the problem isn't in my apartment or building and is actually in some remote piece of hardware that won't be fixed for weeks. I've been leeching wireless Internet access from my neighbors' open access points for a few days, but some of them aren't working either -- they also have Internet service from Time Warner. I honestly don't know how I'll react if the guy who comes here tomorrow can't fix both problems. I'm fantasizing about cancelling the cable entirely, both TV and Internet, and just getting DSL from Speakeasy or Verizon instead. I'd have to rely on DVDs and Bittorrent to get all my favorite TV shows on demand, and I know Liz wouldn't like that solution at all. But she's right: we pay too much money each month for this cable system to be broken. The part that really bothers me is that it's completely out of my control. When something breaks at work, I either fix it myself or get someone I know and trust to help me fix it. But I don't trust Time Warner one damn bit, mostly because I'm just one consumer and they've got millions of subscribers just like me. Why should they give a damn about me? It's not like I can get cable TV from anyone else, thanks to the local monopoly. (I don't have line of sight to the southwest sky, so DirecTV isn't an option.) It's that helplessness that's driving me insane right now. If I could fix this problem myself, I'd do it already. Maybe it will be something stupid, like one of the cats chewing through the cable wires. But I've got this terrible feeling that the problem is going to require some heavy-duty repair crew work that can only be scheduled for two weeks from now, which becomes three weeks because I'll be on vacation in two weeks. Maybe I'll get a credit from Time Warner for the outage, but it still means I'm stuck downloading shows while I'm at work and trying to find the optimal location at home to pick up my neighbors' signals. And I hope that none of them figure out what I'm doing and lock down their APs. I'll promise this much: when I do get Internet access back, be it tomorrow or next month, I'll open my own access point for a while. Free Internet on my network when it's working.

Sorry for the rant. I'll try to post something better tomorrow.

there's a new guy at work

I've been in my current job for five years, so I've seen plenty of "newbies," especially the ones who have joined my group. We got another one today, the e-mail administrator for whom I gave up the cubicle I'd occupied for four years. It's always fun to see someone who's completely new to the organization. They don't know anyone or where anything is located or how the firm works. They're so gullible, I could tell them all about the secret swimming pool and wine cellar in the building and they'd believe me. Everything is new to them, so normally weird ideas and wacky comments are completely plausible. And, in our technical world, they're essentially useless for a week or two until they learn enough of the environment to do the job for which they were hired. I'm not trying to make fun of the new guy -- we've all been the new person at a job, and no matter what it is, there's always that awkward period while you and your co-workers adjust to the changes. But I've been here long enough that it's difficult to remember the times when I didn't know the people or the firm that well, so it's entertaining to watch someone new go through that experience. I need to remember not to confuse him too much or too often with crucial information and obscure jokes. OK, maybe with the jokes. It's that brief look on their face when they're not sure if you're serious or joking that makes it fun.

A cold but fun Tuesday night at the ballpark

Last night, I was the beneficiary of a couple of free tickets to the Yankees-Angels game courtesy of one of our vendors. Several of my colleagues have been working on a major purchase for the past few months and after much technical, financial, and legal wrangling, agreed to buy a new backup system. In return, the vendor offered to take two of us to the game. The guys who worked on the purchase couldn't go, so my boss and I went instead, along with several of the salespeople who worked with us on the project. They have good seats in the upper deck, four rows from the front, looking over home plate and straight into the Yankees' dugout. They're in excellent foul ball territory. The sales guys also bought us all the beer we could drink and all the hot dogs and peanuts we could eat. The only downside was that the temperature was in the 50s and it was windy up there, so my hands were freezing, especially when I was cradling a beer.

Of course, if you follow the Yankees, or got an e-mail from me last night around 9 PM, you know what happened. Alex Rodriguez hit three home runs off Bartolo Colon, including a grand slam in the 4th inning. Seeing one home run from a player in a game is good, two is even better. When A-Rod got up for the third time, I kept thinking there was no way he could hit a third one. I was surprised that Colon even got the chance to pitch to him, considering the night he'd had and his pitch count (he'd already thrown 90 pitches of what was clearly not his best stuff). Either Colon wouldn't give him anything to hit, or Rodriguez would just manage a single or a double. Besides, the bases were loaded and there were two outs. I don't know much about baseball, but in that situation, I'd be trying to put the ball in play, not looking for the long ball. Instead, on a full count, Rodriguez hit his third home run of the night for a grand slam, and Yankee Stadium went crazy. Even my boss and I, neither of us Yankee fans (he's a Mets fan), were on our feet, high-fiving and applauding A-Rod's performance. 10 RBI in a game is one short of the Yankee and American League record of 11, and only 11 other players have ever hit 10 or more RBI in a game. I was happy just seeing a game for free, so to be there for an offensive performance like that was a real bonus. And it's a great story with which to taunt my Yankee-loving friends who weren't there. Too bad I'm not a Yankee fan too -- I would have appreciated it more.

Possibly the worst song ever written about New York

Gothamist covers a newly written song by the guy who wrote Jeckyll and Hyde and Dracula: The Musical, intended to promote New York to foreign tour operators and spotlight lesser-known NYC locations. But the words are so awful, I can't imagine what the song sounds like but I'm sure it won't do much to convince people to come here. Check the link for all the lyrics, but my favorite lines are part of the third stanza:

Take the ferry to Staten from lower Manhattan. It's a bagel and schmear, it's a whole other gear.
It's a hot dog from Coney, a waiter named Tony. Yellow cabs, limousines. It's the subway to Queens.

I'm already opposed to the use of the word "schmear" to mean "something that goes on your bagel;" the actual definition is "a batch of things that go together." Rhyming "schmear" with "gear" is just sloppy. And "a waiter named Tony?" What the hell is that? I didn't know that only in New York can you find a guy named Tony waiting tables, or that Europeans want to come here to meet Tony while he takes your dinner order.

Actually, I think I do need to hear the music. I won't get the full concept of how terrible this song is until I can hear it as the composer intended.

Me at my desk

Because I know all of my readers want to know what I look like when I'm at work, here's a photo of me at in my "workspace" earlier today:





Take a cruise with Bill O'Reilly (but only if you're hot)

This story at Wonkette made me laugh out loud. But you have to read the fine print.

Gothamist interviews Tic and Tac

Today's Gothamist Interview is with Tic and Tac, a street performance duo in Washington Square Park. I used to see them all the time when I would sit in the park and read on weekends. The first time I saw their show, I thought it was clever, but it quickly got old. After a few years of listening to their shtick while trying to read, I began to actively dislike them. Liz and I were back in Greenwich Village on Saturday and of course they were doing their thing in the park fountain, just like old times. My favorite part of the interview is where they say that Alicia Keys' management is working on a movie deal for them. They've been saying that for years.

College Fair 2005

On Wednesday evening, my firm held its 2005 College Fair in conjunction with a local high school with which we have an ongoing mentoring relationship. (I wrote about last year's fair -- see the final paragraph in the link.) Our firm's coordinator said she would contact Georgetown to get materials for me to distribute, so I didn't request any from the school myself. I should have called someone there, because I showed up tonight with my GU banner and found that they never sent us anything. At least I had the banner. I sat there for about two hours and answered as many questions as I could, based on what I knew from my years there and from the few minutes I'd spent looking at the GU Admissions office web site earlier in the day. I think most of them were the same questions I got last year. Despite my lack of any materials or a means to look up answers on the fly (my laptop couldn't get on the office wireless network that I manage, for some unknown reason), I think I managed to help out some kids. I was able to give them the phone number for the admissions office and the school web site. I figure that most of the prospectuses (prospecti?), financial aid brochures, and other paraphernalia the school sends to me for this fair ends up in the trash anyway, so as long as they had the number, the really interested students would be able to get an application and set up a campus visit. And I got a free meal and some chocolate chip cookies while I was there, so at least I had that going for me.

a new office at work

About two months ago, one of my co-workers left my firm for another job, leaving behind his vacant office. None of us asked to move into it, since we all know we're moving out of our current space in a few months and no one wanted to move twice. So it sat, empty, forlorn, waiting for an occupant who would never arrive.

Well, this afternoon, my boss asked me if I had a problem with moving into the empty office. We have a new e-mail administrator starting in a few weeks, and it makes more sense to put him in my cubicle directly behind another e-mail administrator than to give him the office or put him somewhere else. So I took the office, a little reluctantly. I spent part of my afternoon cleaning out the remaining crap the last guy left behind and moving my computers and books. It's the second time I've had my own office at this firm, and the second time I followed this particular employee from one office to another.

So it's great to have more room to spread out, and a door to close when things get noisy. I can turn up my music without worrying about bothering anyone else. But it also means that I get to move my stuff again in a few months when we get the new office space across the hall. I'll enjoy it while I can. Starting tomorrow, as it's really too late for me to be here now.

Joel Achenbach offends some of his readers

In taking a sarcastic tone in his post regarding the pope's funeral, the Washington Post's Joel Achenbach managed to piss off a bunch of people. Take a quick read through his the comments. Personally, I thought his take was funny and not the least bit offensive. He apologized in a follow-up post, saying that the Post's giving him a blog was like "giving a shotgun to a monkey" and that he's probably going to make his readers mad in future posts. I look forward to reading them.

I, too, have Catholic envy this week (as you may have noticed from my earlier post). I've been to Jewish weddings and funerals, and neither has as much ceremony as your typical Catholic Mass. But I always enjoy the rituals of the High Holidays and even the regular Friday night Shabbat service has some great ancient aspects to it -- anything involving the Torah makes me feel connected to the beginnings of Judaism over 5000 years ago. When I was a little kid I used to love the end of the Torah reading, when the rabbi would have someone from the congregation lift the Torah from the pulpit and hold it up so that the congregation could see the writing on the scrolls. And the music at that point in the service always struck me as beautiful and triumphant.

While I'm not down with the idea of Holy Communion (I never really understood the concept of transubstantiation), I like a Mass now and then. I played in a pickup orchestra for Christmas Mass at Georgetown once, and had a great time. Heck, in my first week at Georgetown, I played in a hastily assembled quartet for the Mass of the Holy Spirit to celebrate the beginning of the school year. I'd never even been to a mass before, and there I was playing hymns and marveling at the idea that I was at a school where I could be drafted to play for a huge event like that just because they needed a violist. It says more about Georgetown's lack of excellent musicians than it does about my meager talents.

Speaking of music, the Catholics get all the good religious music. Some of my favorite choral works are masses and requiems by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Even Leonard Bernstein wrote a mass. Lutherans have a great assortment of Bach chorales and cantatas to choose from. Jews have some old melodies that are worth hearing, but my fondest musical memory from my Reform synagogue is hearing the choir on Rosh Hashanah singing a "Hallelujah" chorus from one of Haydn's oratorios (The Creation, I think). That's religious, but it certainly isn't Jewish.

Richard Cohen on John Paul II; me on the papacy

I was going to write something about how Pope John Paul II had done great things to eradicate communism and bring his message to Catholics around the world, but that his church's conservative policies on birth control and the spread of AIDS in third-world countries left much to be desired. In Tuesday's Washington Post, Richard Cohen says everything I would have said, only better.


I'm not Catholic, but I'm fascinated by the rituals surrounding the selection of the next pope. The cardinals gather to select one of their membership to lead the church, using a system that's been in place for centuries with only minor adjustments. What I really find interesting is that once the pope is elected, he has absolute power over the church. I'm used to traditional democratic systems where the leader of the government is still beholden to an elected representative body and the people. The pope can essentially do what he wants. Which includes choosing the cardinals who will elect his successor. It's an intriguing cross of democracy and an absolute monarchy. Actually, it's more of an oligarchy and a theocracy. Or something entirely unique. I'll stop now.


I've also been reading up on past popes. I had no idea about the conspiracy theories behind the sudden death of John Paul I in 1978. And it's always entertaining to refresh my memories from high school history of the corrupt popes in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Good times (if you were pope back then, apparently).

A productive Saturday

Today was an unusually busy Saturday for me. I spent most of the afternoon assembling Liz's new desk for our home office. It's a three-piece Ikea table with a metal frame and about two dozen screws and bolts holding it together. I got a painful blister on my right palm before I figured out that my weightlifting gloves would be effective protection for the screwdriver I was using. I had to put it together upside down and then flip it over when I was done. Since I was alone at home all day (Liz went out to a movie and dinner with some friends) I initially thought I'd have to wait until she got home to flip the desk. But when I was done, I couldn't stand the thought of that desk sitting upside down all day and possibly all night, not while our living room was filled with all the junk I had to move out of the office while I was working. So I managed to flip it and heave it into place myself, after which I grunted enthusiastically and played a little air guitar along with The Who's Quadrophenia (my musical accompaniment for this physical exertion).

Next, I prepared my old Dell computer for my friend Rob, who is still using the computer I bought in 1998 and sold to him in 2001. Last night I wiped the hard drive, and this afternoon I reinstalled Windows XP, Microsoft Office, anti-virus and firewall software, and updated some drivers. It's nearly ready for shipping -- I just have a few more programs to install tomorrow. Normally I'd procrastinate on something like this, since Rob isn't anxiously waiting for the PC. But we still have leftover boxes in the office from when we moved in, and with the new desk taking up so much room in the office, there isn't enough space for my old computer or the box I'm going to use for shipping.

I still have some other Ikea filing cabinets to assemble, but I can't do that until we clear out the boxes, so it looks like we've got our work cut out for us next week. Some of those boxes have junk in them from Georgetown, packed away for nearly ten years and hauled from one apartment to another. If we haven't needed anything in there in the two years since we moved, I can't imagine we need to keep it any longer. For now, Liz and I each have suitable workspaces in the office, and that's something we've both wanted for many years. This apartment is just about the way we always imagined it would be.

I also made some sausage sandwiches with fried onions and peppers for dinner. I took a break from the Final Four games to watch the latest Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons I recorded last Saturday. If only the movies had as much action. The end of the cartoon series leads right into the opening of Revenge of the Sith, so now I'm even more excited about that movie. That Anakin Skywalker guy is getting himself into serious trouble.

Chemex vs. the electric drip coffeemaker

Here's the promised photo from the Easter Sunday coffee showdown. The thing on the left is the Chemex coffeemaker; the one on the right is my father's 10-cup electric coffeemaker. The Chemex comes with a leather strap that secures a wooden holder around the stem so you can pour the coffee without burning your fingers. And the filters the Chemex coffeemaker uses are, of course, proprietary Chemex filters. Given the amount of effort involved in making coffee with the thing, I can't understand why anyone buys them.






New computer update

I've been using the new PC at home since Monday night. It's taken me a few days to get things set up the way I like them, but so far, I'm impressed. I've only played Unreal Tournament 2004 on the new system, and I had no idea just how cool the graphics looked on a top-shelf computer. I haven't had a chance to pick up any new games yet, but maybe this weekend I'll install something new. I also need to get an external USB enclosure for my 40 GB backup drive. One thing I'm really enjoying thus far is the new keyboard. My last Dell keyboard wore out quickly, and Liz and I both suffered with stiff keys for three years. This new keyboard feels more responsive and springy. Hopefully it will last longer than a year.

As for the old PC, my hopes of setting up a Linux server have been dashed once again. There really isn't room for me to have two full-size PCs in the office, especially when Liz gets her furniture in here. I've offered the computer to one of my friends, but I'm still waiting for his reply. I was planning to send Liz's old Compaq laptop to Dell for recycling, but one of my colleagues at work suggested that I post it on eBay. I've never tried to sell anything on eBay before, and I can't imagine anyone would want the old laptop for anything but parts or a museum display. But it only costs a few cents to list it, and who knows? I could actually make a few bucks that way. If there aren't any takers, I can still send it to Dell and do something good for the environment.

Easter weekend travels and travails

Our trip got off to a slow start, as it took us an hour to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn, and then another 20 minutes to find the entrance to the BQE from James & Jess's apartment in Ft. Greene. But by 7:30 we were on our way, and after a stop at a rest area in New Jersey we were fed, fueled, and ready for the drive. We passed the time listening to albums that I somehow missed over the past few years: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Radiohead's OK Computer, and Franz Ferdinand (though I hadn't missed that one). I also treated everyone to some selections from my MP3 collection: the two sample songs from Stovokor (which we all agreed sucked ass), a little Mountain Sprout, and some Beatallica. We got to Bowie around 12:30 AM, chatted with my father for a while, and went to bed around 1:30. It had been a long day for everyone.

When my dad and stepmother got up on Friday morning, they noticed that our rental car was missing. Since no one from our party had gotten up early, they quickly figured out that the car had been stolen. Dad woke James, who got up right away to talk to the police. Liz and I hadn't left anything in the car, but James and Jess had left a few things there: some gifts for our friends' baby, James' coat, wallet, and briefcase, and their portable CD player and some CDs. Around 10 AM James got his briefcase returned to him. He is in the middle of his studies for his conversion to Judaism, and had some rare books that he'd borrowed from his rabbi in the bag. Evidently the car thief was kind enough to drop the bag and books at the synagogue, where a man attending the early morning services found the bag in the parking lot. Due to several complications with the car rental policy, we weren't able to get another car from Enterprise: 1) we'd violated our agreement by leaving the NY-NJ-CT area, and 2) Enterprise couldn't get us another car until they got a copy of the police report, which wasn't going to happen until Monday at the earliest. Liz and I immediately made train reservations for Sunday, and James & Jess planned to take the Chinatown bus instead.

We made some adjustments to our schedule and proceeded with our day. Liz, James, and I took the Metro into DC, while Jess went to Laurel, MD to visit with some other Georgetown friends. Liz and I had lunch with Marilyn (one of Liz's friends from her old DC paralegal job) and Michael (one of Liz's high school friends). After lunch the two of us went to Alexandria to see Rich & Theresa's new baby, Colin. We hung out there for a few hours and got some great pictures of Colin, mostly him sleeping on Rich's chest. Leaving VA, we took the Metro back downtown to Foggy Bottom where we met up with Chrissy and her fiance Michael. We drove out to Bowie and ate at Chili's (yes, the height of suburban chain-restaurant cuisine).

On Saturday morning Liz and I drove over to Gaithersburg to see Rob and Marissa. They were in the process of moving her stuff into his townhouse, so we only had a short time to visit with them, eat breakfast, and catch up. After that, we went back to Bowie and relaxed while my dad prepared the lasagna we'd asked him to make as the main course for dinner that night. My mother and brother showed up late in the afternoon and we enjoyed some of the best lasagna in the world.

We reconvened at 11:30 on Sunday morning for brunch. My father made quiche along with fresh bagels, lox, and fruit. My brother had brought along his 1970s-era Chemex (tm) coffee maker, and my mother insisted that we had to taste-test the coffee made with it next to regular electric drip coffee. They futzed with the Chemex for a while, using two-month old Blue Mountain beans from Zabar's in Manhattan, and argued about grinds, measurements, and water temperatures. During this experiment, my father looked as if he wanted to shoot himself, and even I, an avowed coffee snob, prepared to light myself on fire. We decided that the Chemex coffee was weaker than the drip coffee, but that might have been due to the coarsely ground beans in the filter. Unfortunately, I'd already had two cups of coffee, so I'm not sure I was the best test subject for the project. We chatted for a while after brunch but soon it was time for Liz and I to go to the train station. Another family reunion weekend in DC was over.

We came back on Amtrak, with a man snoring away behind us who could challenge my father for his title of loudest sleeper in recorded history. When we got home, our plans to have fresh pizza for dinner were dashed when the pizza place on the corner was closed. So was the nearby grocery store. We had to settle for frozen pizza from Gristede's instead. Just because Jesus came back from the dead, people think they should get the day off work.

Dude, I got another Dell!

It's the week of new computers here at Five Guys Productions. Liz got her new laptop on Monday, a Dell Inspiron 6000, and this afternoon my new gaming rig, a Dell Dimension 8400, arrived in my office. Here's what I got:

Pentium 4 640 series (3.2 GHz, 800 FSB)
1 GB RAM
256 MB nVidia 6800 GTO video card
250 GB SATA hard disk
SoundBlaster Audigy2 sound card
DVD-ROM and DVD+/-RW drives

It's not the top-of-the-line gaming system I'd get if money was not a factor, but on paper it's a great PC for a good price. Too bad I don't get to take it home until Monday, since I'm leaving straight from work to go to DC for the weekend. I can't even plug it in here at the office to fire it up, because I need to buy a $10 video adapter for my monitor first. And I'd probably get in some trouble for wasting time futzing with it. (No comment on the hypocrisy of blogging from work instead.) So I'll have to wait until Monday night to try out my games on my new monster system. I can't wait to see what Rise of Nations looks like on a system that can adequately handle hundreds of soldiers shooting at each other. And my first new game purchase for the new PC? Half-Life 2. As little Jamshed once said, "Oh, how I have waited for this day." Except that I get to wait just a little longer.

And then there's the question of what to do with the old system. For the moment I'm planning to keep it, and maybe turn it into a Linux file server. However, Liz may insist that I find a new home for it, so we'll see. Now is when I really need my man-cave.

Liz's latest project

For the past several years, Liz has worked with Connie Leung, a personal trainer, as both a client and a business associate. Last Friday, Connie's web site, Connie Leung Fitness, went live, and Liz played a major role in getting the site up. She produced all of the content, layout, and color schemes, while Rob Rotondi did the technical design, artwork, graphics, and coding. If you're in the New York City area and interested in working with a trainer, Liz and I can both vouch for Connie's skills and expertise.

We now return to your regularly scheduled non-advertising related blog posts.

Klingon rock

I give you Stovokor. Kahless himself would be impressed.

I can't be certain, but they just might be singing in Klingon. I didn't understand a word of either song I listened to on the way home, and the subway noise had nothing to do with it. But I did have the urge to eat gakh and drink blood wine.

UPDATE: Apparently they're in the movie Trekkies 2. Now I've got to see it.

The craziest sports day of the year

Dan Shanoff highlights all of today's insanity in today's Daily Quickie on ESPN.com. It's the first day of the NCAA tournament, when thousands of office workers either skip out for long lunches or hide auto-refreshing scoreboards behind Word documents. Since I have a meeting this afternoon, I'll be taking the latter route. I've got six brackets: five in ESPN.com's online contest and one on the Washington Post's online game. I don't remember who wins in each one, but at least I had fun picking the early round games differently each time. I guess I'll pick one "master" bracket that I can agonize over for the next two weeks. Once again, I don't have any money at stake, just my pride.

It's also Congress' day to grill current and former major league baseball players on steroids. I think if the House really wanted to focus on baseball, they should have put these hearings off until Monday or Tuesday, so they could dominate the sports news cycle. Because that's what these hearings are really about: making news. Congress does have the power to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption, but they're not going to do it over steroids. I agree with Tony Kornheiser, who thinks the entire circus is an excuse for Virginia congressman Tom Davis to rake baseball over the coals for not putting a team in his backyard. I do think that the steroid scandal casts doubt over the records set in the past ten years, but aside from putting asterisks in the books, I'm more interested in what MLB is doing now to combat the problem. And doesn't Congress have better things to talk about than baseball?

And it's St. Patrick's Day. I can't wait to come home to drunk off-duty cops and firemen staggering around the Irish bars on 1st Avenue. I must be getting old, because I'm really beginning to detest any holidays that are just excuses to drink heavily. I'm looking at you, Halloween and New Year's Eve.

I hate tax time

Every year, it's the same routine: buy the tax software, go through ever-increasing numbers of forms and receipts, and watch the refund/owe meter fluctuate every time I enter a number or go back and check something. I went through both the federal and New York state taxes tonight, and watched the numbers jump all over the place. They seem to have settled now, after I wrangled a particularly nasty form into place, and they're not favorable. It's not as bad as 2002, when we owed so much I almost cried, but it's still painful. For next year, we're getting an accountant to do the taxes. With Liz's home business and everything that goes along with it, the taxes have become too difficult for me to do, even (or especially) using TaxCut.

Damn guv'mint, always takin' my money. I blame the Republicans, especially George Pataki.

And we had a major subway service outage on the East Side on Wednesday. A signal cable corroded and broke, shutting down service during the morning rush. It took me an hour to get to work, via a crosstown bus and a West Side subway line. Then, the replacement signal cable broke in midafternoon, screwing up the system again. I got home at a reasonable time, but come on! I pay $76 a month for the subway -- the least I ask is that it runs during RUSH HOUR. Again, I blame Pataki, for not helping out New York's transit system with more federal and state money. Of course, that money just comes out of my tax bill, so I guess I end up paying either way.

Frank Rich on TV, censorship, and a new movie

In this Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich writes about the new documentary The Aristocrats. The film is a collection of comedians all telling variations on the same filthy joke, which is without question the raunchiest, nastiest bit of humor you will ever hear. But Rich's article is also about censorship and how television has changed over the past few years. I think it fits in well with the recent items on governmental oversight of the media.

Credit for the link goes to Liz, who e-mailed it to me on Thursday morning. First Jess sends me a link, and now Liz. Soon I'll have an entire press bureau, or at least an army of sources like Dave Barry has for his blog.

The Most Expensive Album Never Made

I don't read the New York Times that often, so I have to thank Jess for sending me the link to this article this past Sunday about Guns N' Roses' long-awaited, oft-delayed new album, "Chinese Democracy." Maybe all you really need to know is this one line about the excesses of the many recording studios involved in the production over the years:

...Buckethead announced he would be more comfortable working inside a chicken coop, so one was built for him in the studio, from wood planks and chicken wire.

Rolling Stone had a feature on Axl Rose in 2000 that shared some of the same details as this article, and it's amazing that not much has changed in five years. Aside from a few live shows and an appearance at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards, Guns N' Roses the band is as dead now as it was in 1995.

Long ago, about when Slash, Duff, and Matt Sorum left the band, I gave up any hope that the album would be worth a damn. I'd much rather hear what Velvet Revolver does next than wait for Axl's magnum opus. It reminds me of Michael Douglas' character in Wonder Boys, who can't stop working on the followup to his bestselling novel -- at one point we see he's written over 2500 pages.

I think Jess said it best in the subject of the e-mail she sent me:
"Which will happen first: "Chinese Democracy" or, well, Chinese democracy? You make the call!"

Another troubling sign of government intervention

The Utah state legislature has approved a bill that would attempt to ban Internet porn. The details in the preceding link are fascinating. Apparently the lawmakers have no idea how this Internet thingy works. The bill would create a registry of Utah "adult content providers," require anyone who makes or hosts Web sites to rate their content for suitability for minors, and require Utah ISPs to block registered content for subscribers who request it. Never mind that most Internet pornography is created and hosted well outside the borders of Utah, and thus wouldn't be subject to the law. I love this quote from the link:

Creating a registry of Utah-based adult sites will not stop anybody from accessing online sex any more than standing chest deep in the Colorado River will stop its rush toward the Gulf of California.

Like Senator Stevens' proposal to apply FCC regulations to cable and satellite systems, and Jack Thompson's crusade against violent video games, Utah's anti-Internet porn bill is another attempt to remove parental responsibility for child-rearing. Why should parents have to worry about what their kids are watching, surfing, or playing, when they can let the government regulate all the content for them?

why haven't I been posting lately?

Mostly because I'm lazy. But I've also been working on a side project for a few weeks that has monopolized my weekends and evenings, for the most part. When it's done, I'll be sure to post about it. Most of you probably know what I'm talking about, since I've already filled you in, but if you're out of the loop, fear not, for all shall eventually be revealed. It's really not that big a deal, but I'm keeping it quiet until I'm done.

I've had a few thoughts to share with the group lately, so I'll try to put them up here soon.

Senator Stevens wants to regulate cable & satellite decency

This Republican family values crap is getting WAY out of hand. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska told a group of broadcasters that he wants to extend FCC regulation of content to cable and satellite systems. (FCC standards currently apply only to broadcast radio and TV.) He thinks that people don't distinguish between broadcast and pay channels anymore, since most get their broadcast TV from cable and satellite services. I don't think he's got much of a chance to achieve this goal, despite a friendly White House and Congress. Cable and satellite companies have deep pockets and could tie up any legislation in the courts for years. If the government can't regulate indecency online, they're not going to be able to do anything about cable and satellite operators.

But it made me think about what's next on the government oversight agenda: DVDs? Movies? The recording industry? I can get my nudity and foul language from many other sources.

Where do you draw the line, Senator?

Correction

Liz would like me to point out that she has always liked the Scissor Sisters' song "Take Your Mama Out." It's her favorite song on the album. She enjoyed every minute of their performance on "SNL."

Simpson or celebrity? You be the judge

(parenthetical remarks) posted this comparison of two Simpsons characters to a celebrity couple. You'll have to check the link to see who's who.

I love the Internet.

Coping with the end of "Star Trek:Enterprise"

Check out Your Weekly Eye Opener for some survival tips.

I especially like "Take this as a sign to finally grow up and become pathologically obsessed with a professional sports team instead." And, of course, "Publish a devastating social critique on a world without “Star Trek” in your 'Captain’s Blog.' "

Recent additions to our CD library

We've been busy music shoppers in the past few weeks. Here's a quick rundown of our new purchases.

Coldplay -- Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head

I can't believe I didn't discover Coldplay until the latter half of 2004. I had heard some of their songs before, like "Clocks," but I wasn't really aware of how great their music was until "Don't Panic" appeared on the soundtrack to Garden State. Liz played the soundtrack a few times for me and I borrowed the CDs to give their entire repertoire a try. When "The Scientist" started up, four songs into Rush, I was hooked. Their music is mellow, plaintive, yet melodic and colorful. I'm still shocked that I like them so much -- while I will always love classical music both bombastic and relaxing, I'm a hard rock guy at heart. Coldplay is a long way from hard rock, but I love it anyway.

Green Day -- American Idiot

I haven't bought a Green Day album since Dookie ten years ago. But we were intrigued when this album got so many excellent reviews, many of them comparing it favorably with Tommy. When you make a claim like that, you've got my attention. I've listened to the album twice and I still don't have any idea what the rock opera is about, but the music is fantastic. Green Day still rock like it's 1994, and in their case that's a good thing. I wouldn't have thought a punk band was capable of musical storytelling of this magnitude, and I'm pleasantly surprised to be wrong.

Scissor Sisters -- Scissor Sisters

Liz bought this album, not me, but I'm quickly becoming a fan of this band too. When I first heard "Take Your Momma Out," Liz said they were way too new and hip for old folks like us. Then they appeared on "Saturday Night Live" a few months back, and while we weren't any more impressed with that song on the show, they wowed us both with their disco/Bee Gees cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." As many others have noted, they sound much like early Elton John, but they play a variety of styles on their debut album. I'm not sure how to classify them. I'd like to call them pop, but there's some rock and dance in there too. I listen to the album, thinking that I'm not going to like most of the songs, but more and more of them are growing on me.

George Gershwin -- Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, Piano Concerto

We were in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn a few weeks ago for an afternoon and evening of gallery hopping and dinner with friends. After dinner a few of us stopped by an indie CD store on the recommendation of one of our friends. Since my tastes run toward the mainstream, I don't usually expect to find much music I'd pay for. They had a small selection of classical CDs, which I perused just out of habit. So I was pleased to find the three Gershwin pieces on one CD, performed by Michael Tilson Thomas, Garrick Ohlsson, and the San Francisco Symphony. I've been looking for years for a recording of these three works all on one CD; usually I'd find two but not all three. I especially like the Rhapsody in Blue on this disc. The liner notes point out that many recordings of the Rhapsody treat it like a Rachmaninoff concerto, full of late Romantic influences, with a giant orchestra and a pianist pounding out the chords like he's fighting with the instrument. This version cuts back on the musicians and restores the jazzy feeling of the piece. Even though I like giant Romantic recordings, this one is a refreshing, spirited change of pace.

At the same store I also found a used copy of Led Zeppelin III, which isn't their best album, but I needed it to fill out my collection. Although I do like "Since I've Been Loving You" and "That's the Way."

The Gates in Central Park

Liz and I went to see Christo's "The Gates" art exhibit in Central Park on Sunday. I'm not sure what to make of it. I like it, but I'm not sure it means anything. Even if you think it's a silly idea, it's only up for sixteen days, and it's worth checking out.

"The Gates" do make for some excellent pictures. Mine are posted under the photos link on the right. I'm especially fond of the first one.

USATODAY on podcasting

USATODAY finally published their article on the growing popularity of podcasting. Dawn and Drew mentioned that the newspaper reporter sat in on their show a few weeks back, so it's about time the article finally appeared in print. I guess that means the hipness of podcasting just took a hit. When the New York Times gets around to it in the Circuits section, that's when we'll know it's over for good.

Like blogging, I don't see podcasting disappearing anytime soon. As with anything else on the Internet, the real trick is figuring out how to make money doing it. Dawn and Drew have included advertisers in their podcast by reading promos at the end of the show and once by putting the advertiser's name in the MP3 file's ID tag (so it scrolled across the screen of my player instead of "Dawn and Drew Show"). But other podcasts just exist for the fun of it, without ads. Even Leo Laporte's Tech Guy podcasts are just edits of his radio show with all the ads removed. I'm sure we'll see more professional shows with real ads on the Internet soon enough. But for now, I like the amateurish quality of these shows. It's exciting to witness the beginnings of a new communications medium.

The Baroque Cycle is ended

I finally finished The System of the World last night, after nearly five months of reading. I would have finished it much sooner if I'd decided to haul it back and forth to work last fall, but instead I kept it at home and only took it on trips to Mississippi and New Orleans. Only in the last few weeks have I shlepped it to work as I grew closer to the end of the book. As Neal Stephenson can be described as "heavy reading," my next few books will be much shorter and lighter.

Of all of Stephenson's books, TSOTW had the best ending. Even his fans complain that his books end abruptly and unsatisfyingly. I can't say that TSOTW has an Earth-shattering ending that will blow your mind, but it does bring the trilogy to a worthy conclusion while leaving room for future exploration of these characters, their ancestors, or their offspring. Of the three books in the trilogy, The Confusion might be my favorite, as it's chock full of adventure and excitement. But all three books are excellent, and I look forward to re-reading them in years to come. I also need to re-read Cryptonomicon, as many of the names and places in the trilogy come up again in that book. And his books are just damn good fun to read, whether it's the first time or the fifth. I can't wait to read whatever his next book will be. But having spent the past 18 months reading almost nothing but Neal Stephenson, I need to take a break from him for a while. Next up on my reading list is I'm With Stupid by Gene Weingarten and Gina Barreca. It's non-fiction and significantly easier to carry to and from work.

Easy listening

After using my iRiver MP3 player on my commute and at the gym for several months, I can understand why the iPod's shuffle feature is so damn popular. While I love being able to pick and choose anything from my music collection any time I want, in practice it's difficult for me to decide what to listen to for 30 minutes. I'm notoriously indecisive, so having all of my albums available all the time is actually a problem for me. My MP3 player does have a shuffle mode, but it's inferior to the iPod's version (one of the drawbacks to my iRiver player vs. the iPod). So I pick and choose from shorter albums or classical music that's suitable for the subway. I find myself listening to lots of Bach and Bob Dylan. I can't really go wrong with either one.

The other problem is that when I'm at work, I have a similar dilemma. I may have large chunks of time to listen to longer albums or symphonies, or I might get phone calls or stuck in meetings, thus breaking up those great 80-minute Bruckner symphonies. Until January I listened to WQXR.com at my desk, so I always had classical music on tap. But WQXR just changed their Internet streaming provider to AOL radio, so I can't listen for hours at a time anymore. And with the departure of Drake & Zeke from the radio, I'm left without any of my old Internet radio standbys.

Lately I've been listening to podcasts. For those who don't know what all those kids are into, podcasts are short radio-like programs that you can listen to on your PC or iPod. With the right software and the magic of the Internet, new shows automatically download to your PC and sync to your MP3 player. There's a wide selection of shows on nearly any subject over at Podcast Alley. Some of the ones I listen to, like the Dawn & Drew Show, are just people sitting in their living rooms talking about whatever is on their minds. Others, like the Rock & Roll Geek Show or the Engadget podcast, are on specific subjects. And a few are MP3 versions of broadcast radio shows. For example, this week I discovered the Raven 'n Blues podcast, an MP3 version of a weekly blues radio show in the UK. Most of these shows are between 30 and 60 minutes, perfect for my commute. I get to sample new music, learn more about what's going on with technology, or just listen to another married couple bitch about how cold it is in Wisconsin. Podcasting could be to talk radio what blogging might be to print media. And like my interest in blogging, I've considered making my own podcast, though the problem with that idea is that I have nothing of interest to talk about. And there's a steeper startup curve to podcasting (microphones, software, audio editing skills) than there is for blogging. For now, I'll stick to listening, but maybe in a few months or a year I'll be ready to start talking to my three readers. Aside from the occasional phone call, that is.

TMQ is predictable, but still worth reading

During the AFC championship game, down 31-17, the Steelers kicked a field goal on 4th & goal instead of going for the touchdown. With the score 31-20, I accurately predicted what Gregg Easterbrook would write in today's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. I said, among other things, he would write "you can't dance with the champ, you've got to knock him down," and "TMQ writes 'game over' in his notebook." I was half right. Scroll down to the item just below the "Literary Cheerleader of the Week" for TMQ's opinion of the field goal call. I'm not saying the Steelers would have won had they scored the touchdown (which was no gimme against the Patriots' defense), but 31-24 with the 4th quarter to go looks a lot better than 31-20. And if they hadn't made it, the Patriots would have been pinned deep in their own end. But what's done is done. From my years watching football and reading TMQ, I know better than to expect Bill Cowher (or most other coaches) from going for it in that situation, so I'm really not surprised or even disappointed at that outcome. As my mother says occasionally: if you lower your expectations, you won't be disappointed.

the late great Johnny Carson

As if I needed yet ANOTHER reason to be sad today.

I won't say that I grew up watching Johnny Carson, because I can't imagine spending that many nights in the early '80s watching his show, but I did watch it more often when I was in high school. I remember enjoying the animal segments, and some of his skits and ads were great. I can't really recall any interviews other than his next-to-last show, when Robin Williams and Bette Midler were his guests. Williams did his usual manic comedian shtick, including a joke about Ross Perot (it was May 1992) pulling off a mask to reveal he was really Richard Nixon. I watched his final show the next night with a bunch of my high school buddies. It's amazing to me now that we all gathered that night to watch this guy who'd been on TV longer than any of us had been alive. Even up to the end of his run he was still making all of us laugh.

Coping with the Steelers' loss

While I didn't show it last night, the Steelers losing yet another AFC championship game has me in a bit of a funk today. I'm coping by getting through the aftermath as quickly as possible. I've read all the stories in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, most of ESPN's coverage, and I'll skim if not avoid entirely the Sports Guy's inevitable gloating. I'm also wallowing in a little self-pity by listening to Mozart's Requiem, my old salve for breakups, deaths, and now football playoff disappointment. If I don't feel sad enough, hearing his "Lachrymosa" always makes me feel like crying.

All season long it was hard for me to believe that my team was putting up a 15-1 record, the first AFC team to do that. That's just not something the Steelers do. Even their Steel Curtain teams in the 1970s managed to lose at least two games a season, even en route to the Super Bowl. Last night I said I didn't think the Steelers were ever a dominant 15-1 football team, but James argued that if you go 15-1, you're dominating. I just never got the sense that the team was out there crushing their opponents. They took advantage of mistakes, covered up their own weaknesses as long as possible, and never suffered any key injuries. That kind of season is difficult, if not impossible, to put together again. Next season they won't be overlooked by anyone, least of all the NFL schedule-makers. This year they had the benefit of a schedule that came out of their 6-10 record in 2003. Next year, they're going to have a much tougher schedule to contend with, along with trying to avoid injuries and the added pressure that will inevitably come from within and without to get to the Super Bowl.

Then there's Ben Roethlisberger. As a Steelers fan, I've suffered through so many crappy or mediocre quarterbacks since Terry Bradshaw retired: Cliff Stoudt, Mark Malone, Bubby Brister, Neil O'Donnell, Mike Tomczak, Kordell Stewart, and Tommy Maddox. In 2002 I wrote that Maddox was the first quarterback in years who didn't make my heart stop every time he threw the ball. Then in 2003 he proved to be just as crappy as the rest of the guys who preceded him. So far, Roethlisberger has been a major improvement over those other guys, but he had a great offensive line and two excellent running backs to take the pressure off him this year. In the past few games, when he had to throw the ball, he didn't remind anyone of John Elway. Whether it was an injury, improved defenses, or just rookie jitters, he looked lost out there at times. That's to be expected of a rookie, although I wish he'd played like that back in September and October and possibly gotten it out of his system. I'm reminded of Kordell Stewart's 1997 season, when he led the Steelers to the AFC championship against Denver (where he threw a few costly interceptions and the Steelers lost). Stewart established himself as a full-time quarterback that season, and in the offseason took full advantage of his newfound fame. He showed up in all sorts of ads. I can see Roethlisberger doing the same thing this offseason. He already appeared in a Campbell's Chunky Soup ad that ran DURING the AFC championship. I can't blame him if he cashes in, but I hope he doesn't do it at the expense of his offseason training. Kordell Stewart came back in 1998 and did not play as well; the team went 7-9 and missed the playoffs. Stewart endured all manner of boos and taunts from Steelers fans for the next three years, and only his and the team's resurgence in 2001 helped quiet them. That's another thing: Steelers fans are notorious boo-birds when the team's play goes south, and they will not hesitate to let Big Ben hear it if he keeps throwing interceptions. (For a good laugh, read some of the e-mails to the Post-Gazette. Along with the cheerful "we had a great run" messages, there's a healthy dose of "Fire Cowher!" and "play Tommy Maddox instead!" e-mails. I'd argue about the intelligence of those writers, but it's just not worth the energy.) I hope Roethlisberger spends more time in the offseason staying in shape, learning the playbook, and working with the coordinators and coaches to get more comfortable with the offense. I don't think John Elway was John Elway his first year out there.

Aside from the Super Bowl, which I will still watch, football season is over. In the absence of hockey, it's time to get into college basketball. Georgetown had a great last-second dunk to beat Notre Dame yesterday, and Mississippi State is still playing well in the SEC. Baseball season is not far off, and the Pirates are likely to contend for at least the first month or so. And then we have the NFL draft and another football season in less than nine months. But for now, on the most depressing day of the year, I'll just be sad.

ESPN.com on Mike Webster

Starting today, ESPN.com is running a five-part series on the life and death of Mike Webster, the great Pittsburgh Steelers center from 1974-1990. It's a tragic story, and it doesn't help that ESPN.com is starting its run on the day after the Steelers' loss in the AFC championship game. Mike Webster gave everything he had to football, and it left him a shell of a man. Inside the NFL ran their own segment on Webster a few weeks ago, and it was touching and incredibly sad. ESPN's version is just as moving.

BLIZZARD 2005!!!!!

That's what the local NBC news is calling the current snowstorm hitting us in the beanbag here in New York. I went out early this afternoon just as the snow started, and it wasn't too cold or too nasty at that point. Twelve hours later, the snow looks deeper and there are far fewer people on the streets, and not just because of the late hour. I'm thinking about going for a little exploratory walk tomorrow morning, but I think I'll just make a pot of coffee and enjoy "Meet the Press" instead.

So, instead of going out to dinner or a movie, Liz and I stayed in all day and watched "I Love the '90s, Part Deux" on VH1. For dinner, I wanted to cook big, so I made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. I was a little apprehensive about my first attempt at fried chicken, and warned Liz that it wasn't going to be the best she'd ever had. While she agreed that it wasn't the best ever, it was much better than we thought it would be. In fact, it was downright delicious. I made a huge mess of the kitchen cooking it, and it was fun. Tomorrow's game day meal is two-crust pizza, a dish that I've only made parts of (everything but the dough). Assuming he gets here with the weather being what it is, James will assist me with the cooking tomorrow, so I'm sure we'll make another mess. If you don't make a mess while you're cooking, you're not doing it right.

New Orleans photos are now online

It's been almost a month, so that seems like enough time to wait before uploading pictures from a New Year's Eve trip. Check the photos link over there on the right side.

a weekend with Mom in NY, and an extra special evening with the NY Philharmonic

My mother came to visit us this past weekend. Since it was the coldest week of the year so far, we tried to stick to indoor activities. On Saturday we watched the Steelers-Jets game at home, then went out to dinner in our neighborhood. We took her to the recently reopened MoMA in midtown Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, then ate dagwood sandwiches for dinner while watching the Golden Globes. On Monday we went to the Museum of the City of New York to see the subway photo exhibits, then met one of her friends for lunch and a stroll along Broadway to Zabar's. I made mostaccioli with mozzarella and basil for dinner, a recipe from my Lidia Bastianich cookbook.

Tuesday night was the real highlight of her visit. We went to the New York Philharmonic to hear Phil Myers, the orchestra's principal French horn, play Strauss's 1st Horn Concerto. My parents went to college with Myers, and when I was growing up my mom would point him out in the NY Phil's horn section anytime we saw the orchestra on TV. I don't know the right words to describe his performance. When he played the opening horn call of the work, the sound just soared through the hall. My mom and I looked at each other as if to say "if this is how he plays the beginning, how great will the entire piece be?" We were not disappointed. He made that horn sound like it was singing. It was just a fantastic, beautiful display of artistry. The rest of the concert was good, too, but the horn concerto was by far the best part. At intermission we went to the green room and introduced ourselves to Myers (or in my mother's case, got reacquainted). He signed our programs and mentioned that he's currently working on one of my grandfather's compositions. There was a growing crowd of people eager to talk to him so we only stayed for a few minutes. But I had the chance to tell him that I'd seen him on TV and in concerts for years, and that it was an honor to meet him in person. Things like that don't happen to me that often, and it made the evening even more rewarding.

Rate your teachers

Today's Black List over at The Black Table has a submission about RateMyTeachers, a web site where visitors can rate and comment on elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Of course I couldn't resist looking up my old high school to see how my former educators ranked. Since it's been several years since I graduated high school, there are only a handful of teachers remaining from my days as a student. Even assuming that some ratings are malicious (from students or former students who had an axe to grind) I'm glad to see that most of my teachers received favorable ratings from other students. Interestingly, even the ones that I remember as tough and unpleasant got good reviews, possibly from alumni like me who look back on those classes and realize that we learned more and achieved more in those classes than in others with teachers we considered to be "easy." Not surprisingly, the teachers who were popular with students back then are still popular now, judging from their high ratings. On a sad note, one of the most highly-rated teachers is Mr. Rudnac, who passed away from a sudden heart attack a few years ago. I never took a class with him and I regret it now, as I had the free time in my schedule and knew then how much his students loved his classes, his attitude, and his skills as an educator. It's touching to see how many people miss him.

Regarding the Steelers...

I haven't written much about the Steelers this season. I still can't believe that they went 15-1 and while it was happening I didn't want to think too much about how they were doing it or what it could mean. I'm excited to see them in the playoffs again, but I'm trying to keep my enthusiasm down. They've disappointed fans in the past, and team's recent playoff record with home field advantage isn't stellar. I think they can get past the Jets tomorrow, though it won't be easy. I don't even want to think about their chances against either the Colts or the Patriots should Pittsburgh get to the AFC championship. All I know is that I will be a bundle of nerves tomorrow while watching the game.

Happy now, Jon? I wrote about something other than my new bag. Wait until I write about our new furniture.

Papa's got a brand new bag

It's gotten so dull around here that I'm writing about the new messenger-style laptop bag I bought Monday night at J&R Computer World. Since I've been at my current job and carrying my office laptop back and forth each day, I've used a succession of free laptop bags and backpacks provided either by my firm or acquired at Novell BrainShare conferences. My favorite bag until now was my BS 2002 backpack, which I used until I tore a hole in the bottom and the straps started to give. I abandoned it in Salt Lake City when I brought back the BS 2004 bag, the wheeled laptop bag that would be perfect for everyday use if I didn't have to carry it up and down stairs on the subway. Instead, I had been using a Kensington laptop bag from my firm for about 18 months, which was great for carrying the computer and any accessories, but not so good for holding my lunch, a book, extra toys like my MP3 player, and so on. I'd been looking off and on for the perfect laptop bag for a few months now. My ideal bag would be large enough to hold my computer, lunch, a book, and a few other toys, yet still look decent on a 31-year-old guy (I'm too old to wear a backpack unless I'm hiking). I read some online reviews of laptop bags, but I needed to see them in person to make the right choice. I had a gift certificate for J&R with a few bucks left on it, and I noticed the Crumpler bags in the store a few weeks ago. I checked out their web site, read some reviews, and stopped at J&R Monday night to pick one up. I got the Very Busy Man (tm) bag, which has room for all my stuff and more, and is far more comfortable to carry than my old bag. It also feels virtually indestructible, but we'll see if it can withstand cat assaults. It even has an extra strap hanging off the shoulder strap that goes around your leg if you want to ride your bike while carrying the bag. Tomorrow I'll try fitting The System of the World in there along with everything else and see if I collapse.

Here's a low-res picture of the bag at the office, packed and ready to go home:

Our trip to New Orleans

As promised, here's the recap of our New Year's weekend trip to New Orleans. It's long, so you might want to get some coffee or a snack first.

Thursday

We left New York before dawn so we would have a full day to spend in New Orleans, so we arrived late Thursday morning. After checking into our hotel and finding our way around the French Quarter, we made our first stop: Central Grocery for a muffaletta. It's an Italian grocery that serves delicious muffaletta sandwiches to go. They make the sandwiches a day early and stack them behind the counter for quick access for hungry customers. Since there are only a few seats in the store, we took our sandwich over to the riverbank a block away to eat and people watch. The sandwich was almost 12" across and filled with ham, cheese, olive relish and fatty goodness. We split it and were comfortably full for an afternoon of sightseeing in the French Quarter. In the afternoon we had our first experience at Cafe du Monde, where we enjoyed coffee flavored with chicory and beignets covered in powdered sugar. Cafe du Monde is a huge outdoor cafe that was perpetually crowded with tourists. There was always a line, but it's misleading: if you could find an empty table, you could just bypass the line of unknowing tourists. The coffee is strong and the beignets are heavenly, and I can't think of a better breakfast or midafternoon snack. We went back to the hotel for a quick nap, then out to Acme Oyster House for po' boy sandwiches for dinner. Liz had a soft-shell crab sandwich, while I enjoyed fried shrimp on one half and fried catfish on the other half of my sandwich, and we split some red beans & rice. I tried some raw oysters as an appetizer, and they were tasty too. We wandered down Bourbon Street to Jean Laffite's Blacksmith Shop, which is actually a bar, and had a couple of voodoo daiquiris and soaked up the atmosphere of a bar that is still completely candlelit and dank. Rounding out our evening with some music, we caught the last set of the house jazz band at Preservation Hall. The hall is really just a large room with no seats, drinks, or other amenities. A sign behind the band lists $2 for requests, $5 for obscure requests, and $10 for "[Oh When] The Saints [Go Marching In]" saying that if they asked for less, the band would be playing it all night. The band played three songs and closed with "Saints," opting to play it for free.

Friday

We woke up late on Friday morning and took the St. Charles streetcar to the Garden District for a walking tour of the neighborhood. The Garden District is where Anne Rice used to live (she just moved out to a gated community) and where the wealthy Americans built their houses back when the city was still developing. We toured a cemetery and learned all about the peculiar burial habits of New Orleans (swampy ground means most people are buried in above-ground tombs instead of six feet under) and saw many beautiful old houses. Aside from Anne Rice's old house, we also saw where Archie Manning, Trent Reznor, and Ella Brennan (matriarch of the Brennan restaurant clan) live. Since we'd missed lunch, back in the Quarter we stopped at Napoleon House for a snack of Boudin sausage and a cheese board. We didn't want to fill up too much, as we had reservations at Commander's Palace at 8.

Commander's Palace is one of the top restaurants in the U.S., not just in New Orleans, and we were lucky to get a reservation there on New Year's Eve. Emeril Lagasse used to work there, as did Paul Prudhomme before him. The restaurant was festooned with balloons and banners, and the tables were adorned with streamers, poppers, bubbles, and party favors. And the food! This meal was one of the top five restaurant meals of my lifetime: turtle soup with sherry, veal chops with goat cheese grits, and bread pudding souffle for dessert. Liz had the best lobster bisque we've ever tasted, and a fantastic steak. We were done before 10 PM, so rather than stick around for the midnight toast, we went back to the Quarter to check out the celebration. Jackson Square was filling up with people, so we walked up to Bourbon Street to see how busy things were there. It was as rowdy as I expected, so we got some drinks and walked back to Jackson Square around 11:30. There we got caught in the crush of the now-massive throng, and we couldn't get to a place where we could watch the local ball drop. So we took shelter under a balcony in front of a bar and watched TV through the windows and listened to the noise. After midnight things eased up a bit, so we followed everyone back up to Bourbon. By now the street was really busy, and it was tough just to get out of the way. We quickly learned that staying in one place meant that we were accosted by drunks, especially since we were still dressed up from dinner. So we found a club where we could hang out, sit down, and avoid the mob for a few hours. Bourbon Street was still wild at 3 AM when we went back to our hotel.

Saturday

We woke even later on New Year's Day. Our brunch reservation at Brennan's wasn't until 1 PM, so we had plenty of time to recuperate from our minor hangovers and find our way to the restaurant. Brennan's is another New Orleans institution, known as the birthplace of bananas foster. Again, we had an outstanding dining experience: I had oyster soup, eggs hussarde, and the aforementioned bananas foster. Liz had shrimp sardou, which was fried shrimp and creamed spinach, and crepes with strawberries. Since it was a holiday, none of the tourist sights we wanted to visit were open, so we walked around the Quarter and stopped at the Nokia Fan Fest tent to check out new cell phones and pick up freebies. I got a Sugar Bowl "koozie" which was a foam pouch to hold a water (or beer) bottle and attach it to your belt. (Too bad the New Orleans open-container laws don't let you take glass bottles out of the bars, or else I could have been all cool and stylin' with my beer bottle hanging off my belt.) Later that night we went to the Funky Pirate blues bar to hear Big Al Carson and his band. Big Al is nearly 500 pounds, and he's not shy about his weight or anything else. Let's just say he worked blue. Really blue. The between-song banter was quite raunchy. Around midnight we'd had enough blues (music and jokes) and had become afraid that the sixtyish woman wearing a belly shirt and a navel ring was going to take off the shirt entirely and show us what was left of her bosom. We went down the street to the Clover Grill, a 24-hour diner that, according to the marquee, served the best burgers in town, . At that hour anything would have tasted great, and the burgers were excellent. I can't remember the last time I ate a huge meal like that after midnight.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we once again slept late and went out in search of breakfast before our scheduled afternoon of museums. Finding breakfast in short supply, we opted for an early lunch of jambalaya at Tujague's, a 150-year-old institution that serves a prix-fixe menu every day. Our first tourist stop was the Degas House on Esplanade Avenue. Edgar Degas lived with his American cousins for several months in 1872 and painted some of his works there, including Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton office. The house is actually two buildings now, as it was split in the last century into two houses and both were used for various purposes. In addition to a museum, one house is also a bed & breakfast, although a little too far away from the French Quarter to make it a realistic place for the casual tourist to stay. We also went to the Cabildo, which has served the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana in various capacities over the past 200 years. It was the location of the signing of the Louisiana Purchase and the seat of the state Supreme Court for many years. Now it's a museum. Among their exhibits is one of the four original death masks of Napoleon. It was an interesting museum but the displays were far too detailed for even the two hours we spent reading them.

Sunday's dinner was at Dominique's, yet another gourmet restaurant on our gastronomical tour of the city. The dishes here were the most creative that we'd eaten so far. I had a salmon and caviar appetizer and a main course of three different kinds of lamb: a lamb chop, merguez sausage, and some kind of lamb-potatoes-goat cheese thing that was delicious. Liz had a goat cheese pastry appetizer and a cracked conch entree. For dessert the restaurant brought us green apple cotton candy along with our chocolate souffle and cappamisu (tiramisu but with cappucino). For our last authentic New Orleans musical experience, we went to Fritzel's for more jazz, this time from Ryan Burrage and his band. Burrage played the clarinet, an older gentleman played the soprano sax, and two other guys on piano and drums. The soprano sax player repaired a lot of the damage Kenny G has done to the instrument's reputation over the years.

Throughout our vacation, we had to endure the rowdiness of Auburn and Virginia Tech fans along with the usual people one would expect to find in New Orleans on a holiday weekend. The number of football fans grew as the weekend went on, leading up to Monday night's Sugar Bowl, so each day there were more people in orange clothes stumbling around Bourbon Street and yelling at each other, either about the Hokies or "War Eagle" (which is either the old Auburn mascot or the fight song, I'm not sure which - nor do I care). Apparently if you're attending a bowl game, you're required to wear every single piece of clothing with your school's logo or colors on it all the time. To be fair, despite all the alcohol and competitiveness, everyone was polite, and we didn't see any unpleasant arguments or fights between fans from the two schools.

Bourbon Street is clearly the place to be in the French Quarter: all the great jazz, blues, and zydeco clubs are there or just around the corner, and most of the good bars and restaurants are in a five- or six-block stretch. But with the city's open container policy (anything in a plastic cup is OK), the constant stream of people, and the smell, it reminded me of block parties at Georgetown. Walking along Bourbon sampling music from the clubs and watching people go by was fun for a while, but by the second day and New Year's Eve it became too much to endure. We found ways to avoid the busiest sections of the street even during the day. If I were ten years younger, I would have absolutely loved it. But now that I'm an adult who doesn't like to drink eight hours a day, I had more fun sitting in the jazz clubs and relaxing than I did getting shoved by drunks. And the rules of public nudity applied to Bourbon Street as they did in Jamaica: the people you want to see showing off their chests for beads are never the ones who do. It's always the ones you'd prefer would keep their breasts covered that whip them out.

Monday

Monday was our last day in the city, so we spent it shopping for last-minute souvenirs and enjoying one last meal before our flight. We went to Johnny's Po' Boys for lunch, where Liz got the french fry sandwich and I had one with beef, sausage, and cheese. We took a short walk to burn off some of the calories, and stopped to listen to Mountain Sprout, a bluegrass band that played outside the A&P on Royal Street several times while we were there. We liked them so much we bought one of their albums. They looked like a bunch of hillbillies (the hound dogs laying at their feet helped with that image) but sounded like a professional touring band. By 2 PM we'd had enough of the football fans, the food, and walking, and we left for the airport. We brought back a can of Cafe du Monde coffee, some pralines for co-workers, and an increased risk of heart disease. But we had a great time, and would love to go back sometime. Just not at New Year's or Mardi Gras.

New Orleans trip review is coming...

I'm still writing up a recap of our New Year's Eve weekend in New Orleans. It will be a long post, but hopefully one that you, my few faithful readers, will enjoy. I should have it posted by this evening.