2006 NYC Century riding diary

Instead of my usual multiple-paragraph recap of the NYC Century, I thought this year I'd write it a little differently. Some of the times are approximate, as I didn't check my watch or take all of these notes while I was riding.

4:45 AM: I got about four or five hours' sleep on Saturday night, but when the alarm goes off, it's still too early. I get up right away and turn on some lights and start getting ready.

5:30 AM: I roll out onto 1st Ave, notice the two bartenders at The Gaf are still awake and sitting at the far end of the bar, and I ride over to Central Park. I check in at the marshals table, get my orange vest and supplies, and wait to be "pulsed" with the rest of the riders.

6:10 AM: I leave the Park at the tail end of a large group of riders. Like last year, we meander around upper Manhattan over to Riverside Drive, then we take Ninth Avenue to the Village, then down Broadway to the Brooklyn Bridge. My favorite part of the day: riding across the Brooklyn Bridge with the sun coming up on my left.

7:30 AM: I arrive at Prospect Park for the first rest stop. So far, so good. I get some food, stretch, and roll out about 20 minutes later.

8:30 AM: I get to the Shore Parkway bike path, which has been recently paved and rehabbed. I kick the bike into high gear and start dropping riders behind me. I love moments like this one. I also notice my quads are already starting to ache, and I've just ridden 30 miles so far. It's going to be a long day.

9:30 AM: I arrive at Canarsie Pier, the second rest stop. I take a little more time to rest and eat, but I'm still on a good pace for the day. I leave the rest stop just before 10.

10:15 AM: I stop to help another rider with a flat. I get the inner tube changed, but I can't get any air into the tire with her pump. Her friend rides back to meet us and he doesn't get too far with the pump either. I tell them to look for a gas station and see if they can use a compressor to inflate the tire. It turns out there are two or three gas stations less than half a mile from where we were.

11 AM: I see another rider on a red and gold Trek 7500FX (the same bike as mine), so I slow down to chat with her. She bought hers used about 18 months back, and added a rear rack and bag. She and her husband are making their own route, starting from Prospect Park and cutting out the Bronx. That's fine with me; they paid for the ride, so they can go where they want. I leave them behind in Corona Park, but they catch up to me after I make a few wrong turns. I see them again after I take my lap around the Kissena Park velodrome, and I wonder if she's going to take her bike for a lap. It doesn't look like she will.

12 PM: I get to the rest stop in Kissena Park. I don't like the food selection here (no PB & J sandwiches) so I get out some of the food I packed. I've been carrying it long enough, I might as well eat some of it. I take another 20 minutes or so to rest up, then I hit the road again.

12:45 PM: I miss a badly-marked turn a few miles later and ride about a mile out of my way before I see another group of riders who look as confused as I do. I can't figure out where we're supposed to go on the map, so we all decide to backtrack and see if we can find our way. About a mile later, we see the missed turn and get back on the route. It would be the worst road marking I'd see all day, which is a good sign.

1:40 PM: I'm in the middle of a conversation with another rider about his musical tastes (he had his iPod strapped to his handlebars along with some speakers) when I hear someone calling for a marshal. It's another rider with a flat. Again, I manage to get the tube changed, using one of my spare tubes, but again we can't get the tire inflated with my pump or his. Another marshal stops and tries a CO2 cartridge, but we end up wasting most of it. Another pair of riders stop with a decent bike pump, but the rider whose bike we're working on doesn't seem happy with the amount of air we're able to put in the tire. After 15 minutes, I make the same suggestion to him about finding a gas station, and I leave the three of them there.

2:40 PM: I arrive at the Astoria Park rest stop, about 65 miles into the ride. With all my delays, and 35 miles remaining, I'm now wondering if I can get to the finish at Central Park by 6 PM, when they close it down. I know the marshal check-in table will be open late, but I want to get there by 6 if I can manage it. I try to cram 30 minutes of rest into 20 minutes of actual time and I leave Astoria Park around 3 PM.

3:20 PM: I finally get off the Triboro Bridge, on Ward's Island. If riding across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise is the yearly high point of the Century, riding across the Triboro Bridge in its crappy, tiny bike lane is the annual nadir. It's a necessary evil, and I appreciate that the path is there, but it just sucks. We all have to walk our bikes up the stairs, and most of us are confused by the bike ramps (little narrow-channeled metal rails that let you roll the bike up the stairs) mounted to the stairs. They're mounted on the left side of the stairs, but most people walk with their bikes on the right so they don't get chain grease on their legs. Putting the bike ramps on the left side means bikers have to walk with the bike on the wrong side. Most of the riders today carry their bikes instead.

4 PM-4:30 PM: The Bronx. I am repeatedly asked how many miles are left, and I give a different, incorrect answer each time. The truth is that my bike computer has one mileage count and the cue sheet has another, so I'm left guessing how many actual miles remain. I try to make them happy by telling them that it's only a few miles to the next rest stop.

4:53 PM: Van Cortlandt Park rest stop. 90 miles complete, and the cue sheet says it's 104 total miles this year from start to finish. I'm now in serious danger of getting back after 6. I grab some food, stretch, say hi to a rider I met on one of my training rides, and I get out of there about 5:10 PM.

5:30 PM: I'm in a group of 10-20 riders. There are no Riverdale hills this year, so we're cruising on level streets through the South Bronx to the Broadway Bridge and Manhattan. A few people in the group have never been in this part of Manhattan before, but I assure them that I've been here many times and I know the way we're going. We weave through traffic on Dyckman and get onto the Harlem River Greenway. I put the bike back into high gear, finding reserves of energy I didn't know I had, and I get the bike up to 20 MPH. A trio of riders speeds past me on my left, and I wonder what combination of lightweight bikes, age, and physical shape allows them to pass me at will that late in the ride. One of them has knobby tires on his bike, which makes me feel even worse.

5:45 PM: It's nearly the home stretch. There are about half a dozen riders ahead of me, including the ones that passed me before, and they all miss a turn. I shout "RIGHT TURN!!" at them and slow down to make the turn. They fall in well behind me. I would have slowed down for them, but since they'd all passed me on the Greenway, I'm not doing them any favors now.

5:55 PM: I ride into Central Park and find the reception committee is still hard at work. I check back in at the marshal table, collect my t-shirt and water bottle. My day is officially over. Total mileage for the century: my computer says roughly 103 miles. I was ahead of the cue sheet for most of the ride, so I'm not sure how I caught up.

6:15 PM: I decide to stick around for a while and help clean up. There is word that a truck will soon arrive onto which we can load all of the leftover shirts, bottles, and office supplies. I give the truck until 7 PM to show up, then I'm leaving. In the meantime, I help break down tables, move some boxes around, and chat with various people also hanging around the finish area.

6:45 PM: No sign of the truck. I keep stretching and walking around, trying to keep my circulation up. I know that if I sit down, I'm not getting up for a while.

6:59 PM: The truck arrives. There are about 15 people helping to load the truck.

7:10 PM: A trio of homeless women come over and get into an argument with the TA staff about getting free water bottles and the large pile of leftover fruit and bread near the park entrance. Many profanities are uttered, as far as I could tell all coming from the homeless women.

7:20 PM: The truck is moved near the pile of materials near the park entrance. Another homeless man walks over and keeps pestering us for a piece of bread. The food is all going on another truck that will take it to the Bowery Mission, so we're not supposed to give it out. Eventually, the homeless man wanders off. I feel bad, but policy is policy.

7:30 PM: The truck is now almost full. Earlier, the TA staff had asked if any of us remaining marshals wanted to come down to the TA office on 27th St. to unload the truck, offering free beer as an incentive. If I lived downtown, I might have considered it, but I'm really tired and hungry now, and the prospect of riding 60 blocks home in the dark (or taking the subway) isn't a welcome one. And I have things to do at home tonight. I say goodbye to the staff, thank them again for organizing another great ride, and head out. On the way out, I see a woman that I met on one of my training rides. She and a friend just finished the Century a few minutes ago, which reminds me of my "Century from Hell" in 2002, when I bonked in the Bronx and needed serious encouragement from James just to finish. I talk with them for a few minutes, but my stomach is rumbling and my muscles are screaming for relief, so it's time for me to go home.

7:45 PM: I wait in line at Luigi's for my reward, a stromboli filled with pepperoni, sausage, ham and cheese. I'm still wearing my bike clothes. I probably smell terrible, but I don't care.

8 PM: I've showered, I'm eating my dinner, watching TV, and resting my sore ass on the couch. I foresee an early bedtime tonight.

Thursday was quite a night

Tonight was my first orchestra rehearsal in this century. The last time I played in an orchestra, I was in college and I was the principal violist and unofficial assistant conductor. Now, I'm a regular guy in the back of the section, just happy to be there. I thought I played fairly well for having taken so much time off. It helped that I was sight-reading the music along with the rest of the orchestra. Next week is a strings-only rehearsal, and I've got some work to do on the music before then.

When I got home, I put on the Steelers-Dolphins game, and I started screaming at the TV like it was the Super Bowl all over again. I need to tone it down just a bit for the regular season, or else I'll have a heart attack for certain. But Pittsburgh pulled out the win, so everything turned out OK. From what I saw, it doesn't look like this team has lost anything from last season. After the game, I watched the pre-game show, and seeing the ceremony where they unveiled the banners for each championship team made me all kinds of happy. By the way, the John Williams theme for NBC's football coverage makes it sound like the Imperial stormtroopers are marching into the Rebel base. I keep expecting to see Darth Vader on the field. I'll have to wait for a Raiders game to see that.

And I rode 20 miles in Central Park early this morning in my final tune-up for Sunday's NYC Century. I'm at 775 miles for the year, and after this weekend I'll be close to 900. I think my goal of 1000 miles is within reach, even with me taking half the summer off from the bike. Next summer I'll have to set the bar even higher.

orchestra update

At my audition last Tuesday, I played better than I expected I would, considering I hadn't played for anything significant like that in about 15 years. Yes, the last time I auditioned for something of importance I was in high school. Anyway, I didn't hear from the orchestra after the audition so I took that to mean that I didn't get in. I'm OK with that, because I played to the best of my ability and if it wasn't what they were looking for, so be it.

I contacted two other Manhattan-based community orchestras and I've got tryouts with them in the coming weeks. So I will be playing somewhere, at least for a few weeks. In the meantime I'm still practicing almost every night, probably driving my neighbors crazy with the Telemann concerto and the viola parts to various symphonies. I think I'm rounding back into the form I had when I was in high school, which, to be honest, was when I was at the peak of my talents. I hardly ever had time to practice in college, so I learned the orchestral music in rehearsals instead of on my own. I'm trying things differently this time around. We'll see how long I can keep up the regular practicing.

yes, I am ready for some football

My fantasy football draft is tomorrow evening, and I've done no research. I have several recent issues of Sports Illustrated and whatever information I find online tonight or tomorrow. This year my brother is in the league with me, along with my old college friends and some other people we've picked up. Also, I'm in a "suicide" pool at work, where you pick the winner of one game each week, and you're eliminated when you get your pick wrong. And I'm in another pick'em league with a friend I saw at my college reunion last June. So it will be a busy football season for me online.

Speaking of pro football, the Steelers went 0-4 in the preseason, and while I'm not worried, I am trying to temper my expectations for this year. I'll be happy if they make the playoffs -- in their conference, anything more than that is gravy.

I watched Mississippi State get crushed by South Carolina last night. The score may have been just 15-0, but MSU looked awful. It should have been 35-0 given how they played. It's going to be a long season in Starkville. Penn State plays Akron tomorrow, and that should be an easy win for them. Like with Pittsburgh, I'll be happy if Penn State has a winning record and goes to a New Year's Day bowl game. They lost a lot of good players from last year's team, so I doubt they'll match last year's record, but a winning season isn't too much to ask. Otherwise, fans will be calling for Joe Paterno's head once again.

explaining the recent photos

As I mentioned in this space on Wednesday, I spent most of last week in the DC area visiting family and friends. Here are some highlights:

Thursday: I had lunch with two of my old college friends/former roommates at The Quarterdeck in Arlington. The three of us attacked a pile of two dozen crabs and made them disappear over the course of two hours. I would have taken pictures of the feast, but I would have gotten Old Bay seasoning on my camera. Back at home that afternoon, I took a number of photos of flowers in my father's garden. I played with the macro and color filter settings on the camera just to see what would happen. Later that night, my brother and his friend came over for dinner, and then we had a little family concert. I forgot about the weird facial expressions I make while I'm playing the viola.

Friday: my father and I took my cousin to the Air & Space Museum. I hadn't been there in about ten years, but I immediately noticed the addition of the SpaceShipOne and the glider that went around the world in the museum's main hall. My cousin went off to see the space exploration wing, so my dad and I went to see the WWI and WWII planes at the opposite end of the museum. We're aviation geeks, so we noticed changes like that they'd moved the Messerschmidt 262 from the WWII hall to the jet plane exhibit. Also, the Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise now sits in the basement gift shop, instead of in an exhibit hall. I thought it looked better hanging from the ceiling, but in its new glass case I got better close-ups. That night we watched The Blue Max, a movie about German fighter pilots in WWI, starring George Peppard and James Mason. The flying sequences were fantastic, but the accents were not. Since it was an American production, the actors spoke in clipped accents meant to signify them as foreign. However, about 20 minutes in, George Peppard, also playing a German, gave up all pretense of an accent and became Hannibal from The A-Team.

Saturday: I drove out to the Dulles Airport area of Virginia to visit a good friend who recently moved there from New York. I didn't take any photos while I was there, so that explains why there aren't any. I'm still a little disturbed by the "town center" concept of suburban planning, but I'm getting used to the idea, as it's clearly here to stay. Though if I'd moved out to the far western suburbs of DC about ten years ago to get away from civilization, I think I'd be upset that civilization has now expanded out that far. Where my friend lives now was farmland just a few years ago. Now it's townhouses, apartments, and a brand new shopping center. I wonder what kind of character these new neighborhoods will have ten years from now. Right now they're not all that inviting: there's too much space between the large houses, and not enough space between the townhouses. And the town center doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment (though there is a multiplex under construction and presumably more restaurants on the way). I guess if you're moving out that far, you're not looking for different dining options each night. In any case, my friend is ecstatic to be there and out of New York, and I was glad to see the change.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to say this...

Now that we've demoted their homeworld to a dwarf planet, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves when the Plutonians invade out of spite.

If it's my vacation, that must mean I'm in DC

I took this week off work because I had the time and hadn't taken a vacation all summer. (My trip to Boston didn't count, as it was for work.) I started my summer with a trip to DC for my Georgetown class reunion, so in addition to the chance to see my family, coming back here seemed like a good way to bookend the season.

This is as good a time as any to reveal my latest project. I am a violist, but I haven't played actively for years. I've picked up the viola about once a year and messed around with it just to make sure my fingers still knew where the notes were, but my calluses disappeared long ago and I haven't played in any sort of organized group since college. Lately I've had a strong urge to get back into performing with an ensemble, so about a month ago I started making an effort to practice regularly. I've been practicing some of my old favorite pieces, and they're beginning to sound like I think they should. I'll put it this way: I haven't actually PRACTICED since high school (by which I mean playing passages or even single measures over and over again), but I found myself doing that the other night, probably annoying my neighbors in the process. A few weeks ago I decided I was ready to take a chance at getting into a community orchestra, so I set up an audition with a local group I'd heard about during my last real performing gig (a community theater production of Company in May 2003). I won't say which orchestra it is yet; I'll wait and see if I pass the audition first. I'm surprised at how much I want to do this. I haven't had this kind of desire for a life goal in a long, long time. My audition is next Tuesday night. I'm not nervous yet, but I'm starting to think I will be by then. If I don't get into this group, there are others in NYC, so I will play somewhere with someone else this fall.

I bring all of this up because while I'm down here, my brother, my cousin who's visiting from England, and probably a few other friends and relatives are helping me with my practice sessions. My brother has been playing the violin for almost as many years as I've been playing the viola, but the difference is that he's currently taking lessons, while I'm just working on my own. On Wednesday night he brought his violin to my dad's house and we went over my audition pieces for about two hours. He gave me some much-needed feedback and insight, and I just hope I can remember all of the things he's told me and incorporate them into my performance.

I think he broke rap forever

I'm not a big fan of rap, but someone has to step in and save it from Kevin Federline. Maybe he needs a beatdown from Vanilla Ice.

late Monday review of the previous weekend

Friday night: drinks, followed by 7:35 PM showing of Snakes on a Plane. It was badly written, edited, and acted, and enormously entertaining in a theater full of semi-drunk fans hissing and throwing snakes at the screen. It's the communal moviegoing experience of the summer, but I don't think it's going to have legs like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Saturday: a cookout on Staten Island where there was much grilling of beef and drinking of beer. I think I ate and drank for about eight straight hours. The trip out there on the express bus was good, but the return trip via Queens and the F train wasn't so much fun. I did get some good photos, especially the one of my friend's new dog and his post-shave "Johnnycakes" look.

Sunday: riding in Central Park, followed by laziness.

I'm off work this week, and going to visit family in a few days, but before Wednesday I'm hanging out at home and taking care of errands I've been putting off for months, like renewing my passport and moving around some of my investments. And I should probably clean my apartment so I don't come home to a filthy mess or be embarrassed at the nastiness my cat sitter will have to endure in my absence.

Reason #4,327 why I love New York

Every city has a basic odor to it, but only New York smells like New York. When I've been traveling and I come home, I know I'm back in New York when I get out of the cab or enter the subway system. You know it's summer in the city when you can smell the garbage piles on your block AFTER they've been hauled away. In today's Washington Post, David Segal and two experts on scents (a perfume maker and a retired sanitation worker) take a tour of some of New York's most odiferous locations: the Meatpacking District, Central Park, and Chinatown among them. I laughed out loud at some of the descriptions of the noxious smells they encountered. I've been through Chinatown on a humid summer morning, and it's home to some of the foulest stenches I've ever encountered. But I love the fact that no matter how much the government cleans up the city, it's always going to have that dirty, gritty feeling, especially in the summer. It's almost endearing, until I can't stand the stink and have to find some air-conditioning.

another training ride, another long day on the bike

I spent all day Saturday on another training ride for the NYC Century next month.  Today's ride was scheduled for 58 miles, from Williamsburg to the Far Rockaways and back.  I volunteered to be a marshal for this ride, so when I arrived at the bike shop in Williamsburg I got an orange vest, a first aid kit, and the responsibility of helping shepherd 20 riders through Brooklyn and Queens.  There were a few other marshals leading the ride, so I occasionally took point, rode in the middle and pointed out turns, and swept at the back near the end of the ride.  As with the last training ride, we left late and stopped frequently to let the slower riders catch up.  Unlike the last ride, we never really split into slower and faster groups, so we ended up setting a slower overall pace than I would have preferred.  One of the other marshals told us about a pizza place he knew out in the Rockaways, so most of us stopped there before we went to the beach for a rest stop.  A few people went swimming, but mostly we sat on a stone wall, ate, and relaxed for a while. 

We left the Rockaways around 1 PM and for a while the whole group hung together.  But somewhere near the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens we lost about half the group, so we were down to nine riders.  I didn't want to abandon the lost riders; I saw that as a failure in my job as a marshal.  We made a few phone calls and tracked down some of them -- they'd made a wrong turn at the racetrack and ended up by JFK before they turned around.  A few others had already told us they were going to find their own ways back to Manhattan.  We met the "lost ones" about an hour later at Kissena Park.  By now it was 4 PM and we had 15 miles to go to return to the bike shop in Williamsburg.  Somehow we managed to keep the remaining riders together all the way back, with me riding "sweep" at the back to make sure we didn't lose anyone.  We pulled up at the bike shop at 5:40.  I dropped off my vest and rode back to Manhattan via the Williamsburg Bridge.  I turned on Allen St. and rode north onto 1st Avenue, and I got home about 6:15, only 11 hours after I'd left.  So it was a long day in the saddle for not as many miles as I feel like I rode.  However, the weather was excellent, I met some interesting people, and I had some great pizza out in the Rockaways.  And I know that I'm in good enough shape to handle a century next month. 

My stats for the day:

Total miles: 74
Average speed: 11.3 MPH (that's really slow for me)
Total miles so far in 2006: 559

RIP, Cat Detective Fred

Fred, the one-year-old tabby who assisted the Brooklyn DA's office in a sting operation on an unlicensed vet earlier this year, was killed by a car yesterday after he got out of the house. It's a terrible end for a cat who had many years of living large on his police-cat's pension ahead of him. My heart broke a little when I read this news story today.

It's also an argument for why no city cats (or any cats, for that matter) should be allowed outside. My cats stay inside all the time, and they don't seem to mind at all. Starlite in particular has been on the outside, as he was once a stray, and I don't think he's got any interest in going back outside. I used to think I might put him on a leash and try to walk him in Carl Schurz Park near my apartment, but I don't think he'd like that. Just getting the harness on him would be dangerous enough. No, he and Vladi will continue to eat well and enjoy life inside their luxurious Upper East Side digs.

a fire on my street this evening

On my way home from the subway, I heard and saw a bunch of fire trucks and ambulances fly past me on 86th Street. That's a usual occurrence in New York. However, what's not usual is when they stop on 1st Avenue a few blocks south of my building. One of the apartments at 86th and 1st had a major fire, and as you can see from the photos I've just uploaded to Flickr, the fire department had to go in via the roof, the windows, and ground level. There's a pet store/groomer in that building, and the proprietors brought out about half a dozen dogs on leashes and a cat in a crate. The fire department also rescued a cat from the building, and I saw a guy, maybe the owner, tending to it as it was laying on the bumper of one of the fire trucks. (I hope the cat is OK -- it was hard to tell but I could see it was breathing. And of course I hope no one was hurt; it didn't look like there were any human casualties.) Once the fire was out, the firemen began removing burned and damaged items from the apartment via the windows. I didn't know this, but they just drop the damaged stuff onto the sidewalk rather than carry it out. It was actually sad to see kids' toys and blankets being tossed out as trash.

I didn't mean to become a sidewalk gawker, but I wasn't alone so I didn't feel guilty about it. Besides, whenever I see fire trucks in my neighborhood, I usually miss all the excitement and see the firemen cleaning up hoses and packing the trucks. At least this time I got to see them in action.

Water Taxi Beach

I went to Queens on Saturday afternoon to hang out with some friends at Water Taxi Beach. It's an outdoor bar and restaurant that imported several tons of New Jersey sand to Queens to create an artificial sandy beach. It was damn hot, even at 4 PM when I got there, but we had a good time sitting out in the sun (and under the cool water mist) and people-watching. My only complaint would be that the proprietors need to rake the sand more often. Once I saw the amount of cigarette butts in the sand I decided to keep my shoes on. I took some excellent photos of the Manhattan skyline from the beach. Sometimes I'm amazed at what my little camera can do.

By 7:30 PM we'd had enough of the beach and a few of us left in search of dinner. We had all passed Smokey's BBQ on the way to the beach, so we gave it a try. It turned out to be one of the better BBQ joints in the city. I had the Texas brisket sandwich, and it was some of the best melt-in-your-mouth brisket I'd ever had. The chef came out to our table and introduced himself, always a classy touch, and the wait staff was attentive, friendly, and quick. I'm looking forward to making another trip over there.

On an unrelated note, I've started a new project at home: digitally archiving my old print photos. Over the past few months I've dug out several drawers and boxes and found about 20 envelopes full of photos taken from 1995 to 2001, when I bought my first digital camera. Some of the earlier photos are blurry due to the crappy Olympus 35mm camera I had that lacked an auto-focus lens. But the photos from 1999 to 2001 are much better, as I'd moved up to an APS film camera by then. I bought a new scanner/printer on Saturday and I've already scanned in a bunch of photos from a wedding in 2001. If I can scan an envelope a night, I should be done with this project in a few weeks. There's a finite number of photos involved; it's not like I'm amassing any more prints to scan. I'm not expecting any kind of disaster to wipe out my old photos, but since I have all my music on my computer I might as well have all of my photos there as well.

damn book meme tag thing *grumble*

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog/Live Journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.

From TCP/IP Blueprints (Burke, Bligh, Lee, et al.) (c) 1997:

If an interface still needs the IP address, it must renegotiate the lease before it expires. The automatic address allocation policy can be implemented by using dynamic allocation, but setting the lease time to be infinite.

Figure 6.1 illustrates the sequence of DHCP messages that are exchanged in order to negotiate the lease. Note that all messages from the client are broadcast because the client doesn't yet have an IP address.

Tag:

Matt
Carol
Josh
David Pogue
Craig

a confession and a revelation

I've been watching Project Runway for the past few weeks. Normally I avoid reality TV shows like bird flu, but I'm watching this one because after over 14 years of reality programming (counting endless installments of The Real World), at long last I know one of the contestants. I went to high school with Angela Keslar, the designer everyone loves to hate this season. She was a year ahead of me: I was in the class of '92 at Westmont Hilltop High School in good old Johnstown, PA, and she was in the class of '91. I don't really remember much about her from school, and I didn't know her well enough to say if she was as bitchy then as the show makes her out to be now. I think she was involved in the theater, but I could be confusing her with someone else in her class. She may have been in the chorus with me, but lots of students were in the chorus. But I did go to school with her. So I've got that little connection to someone who is only marginally famous in her own right.

one year later, and it's another hot ride in the summertime

The NYC Century is about six weeks away, and I'm not quite in prime riding shape. This year, TA is offering training rides for marshals and regular riders, so James and I went on yesterday's 50-mile ride from Williamsburg to Orchard Beach in the Bronx. The ride was supposed to start at 8 AM in Brooklyn and if all went well, we would be done before the hottest part of the day. Of course, I should know better by now, and as you'll see below, it felt like a ride from Hell.

The ride started at a bike shop in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, so I had 7 miles on the odometer when I got to the start. There were about 25 cyclists there, including three or four marshals, and after a quick orientation and marshal introduction, we left around 8:30 AM. It was already hot and humid, but the breeze while we were riding kept us cooled off. We rode north through Brooklyn to the Pulaski Bridge to Queens, then across the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan. We stopped in Central Park so that some of the slower riders could catch up, and that's where we had our first flat tire. After waiting for about 15 minutes, the marshals directed us to ride to the Central Park boathouse to use the bathroom. We waited there another 10-15 minutes, then they had us ride to the northern entrance to the park. At the top of the park, one of the marshals finally decided that she would take some of us up ahead and that we'd all meet up at Orchard Beach for the return trip. So there were about eight of us when we left the park and took the Macombs Dam Bridge into the Bronx. Up to this point the cue sheet had been accurate, but it got a little harder to follow once we were in the city’s only mainland borough. We kept breaking out the city’s cycling map to figure out where the cue sheet’s writer wanted us to go. We rode around a reservoir and ended up on the Pelham Parkway bike path that led out to City Island. We all missed the turn for Orchard Beach and instead stopped just across the bridge on City Island. At this point it was noon. We were about a half-hour ahead of the rest of the group, as they’d had to stop several times for flats. We decided to stay right there, have lunch, and then ride over to the beach. James wanted to get a lobster roll at one of the local seafood restaurants, but they were all upscale establishments with valet parking and didn’t look like they wanted to seat two sweaty guys in spandex. We got sandwiches from Subway instead. Our group had its own mechanical problems, too: no flats, but one of our riders had a bike seat problem (as in the seat came off the seatpost) and she had to get a car service ride back to the subway. The rest of us went to Orchard Beach and found the rest of our little peloton.

Around 1 PM, with the return trip ahead of us, our smaller breakaway took off for home. We made a few wrong turns and the slower group caught up to us at White Plains Avenue. It was now the hottest part of the day, and every time we stopped at a traffic light, the heat from the roadway was even worse than the heat from the sun. I was dumping hot water from my bottle onto my head and back and drinking hot blue Gatorade from the other bottle. I was feeling all right, but it was just too damn hot to be out there. Our faster group stayed with the rest of the ride for a few miles but eventually we broke away again. We stopped for more water near Yankee Stadium, but since I only had a few miles to go to get back to my apartment, I only took enough ice-cold water to dump on my head. Back in Manhattan, I rode with the group to the Queensboro Bridge and pointed out the bike ramp entrance, said goodbye, and rode home up 1^st Avenue. I got in just after 3 PM, having left around 7:15 AM. I rode 55 miles total, but it felt like 70 with the heat. It wasn’t as bad as last year’s bike ride to nowhere, though it was close. I’m not too sore today, but my face and arms are sunburned. Also, one of my bike pedals has a broken toe clip, so I’ve got to get that fixed today if I want to ride this week.

There are two more TA-sponsored training rides before the Century itself on September 10. I hope that TA can figure out a way to accommodate the faster riders, because it’s not much fun to ride in the August heat, and especially when you have to keep a slower pace for the group. Still, I’m glad they’re staging these rides, as I need all the mileage I can get.

apparently, it WAS a true story

In today's column, Gene Weingarten covers the bad date story I wrote about last week. Gene actually found Darren, who decided that his failed attempts to reach Joanne meant that she was not interested in seeing him again and asked her to pay him back for her half of the meal. Unfortunately, Gene also found that Darren wouldn't comment on the story, and that he has apparently gone into hiding, like Steve Bartman. I suspect that Darren will have to look overseas for a woman to share his life with him. I'd suggest that he try to find someone who speaks little English, so she won't understand the voice-mail messages embedded in the e-mail when she inevitably receives it as a forward from one of her friends.

this might be my first drunk blog post ever

OK, I'm not THAT drunk, but I did go out for a pint or two after work, which turned into a few pints and several shots of unknown alcoholic substances (one had Jagermeister, OJ, and an as-yet-unidentified liquor, but was damn tasty -- we [the group] had two of those). Anyway, on my way to visit a friend and help her with her cats, I remembered that I'd been wanting to try Stolichnaya's new Blueberi Vodka. Kim O'Donnel at The Washington Post reviewed it quite favorably last week, and ever since I'd been reminding myself to pick up a bottle. After my cat medical duties were fulfilled (I held the cats while she applied some sort of skin treatment to them), I went home and put the vodka in the freezer, because we all know ice-cold is the best way to drink the stuff. I broke out the bottle around 11 PM and tried a tiny sample in a shot glass. Oh, wow, that's tasty. I'm currently enjoying a bit of Stoli Blueberi with orange juice, making a sort of blueberry-orange screwdriver. O'Donnel wasn't kidding. This stuff is the best Stoli flavor I've had in years, and I've enjoyed all the varieties they've produced. I may have to pick up a few more bottles just in case they take it off the shelves in the fall.

And now please pardon me while I pass out at the keyboard.

Queens boro power problems

This story hasn't been on the national news, so most of the country doesn't know that some neighborhoods in one of NYC's five boroughs have been suffering without power for the past week. Con Edison has been going manhole by manhole to fix the problems, which have to do with underground feeder cables. Apparently it's not a capacity problem, but a delivery one. The trouble is that even when Con Ed has restored power to some customers, it goes out again when it rains or when the manholes catch on fire. Gawker pointed out this story from a frustrated Queens resident who saw a manhole fire early Sunday morning. All I can say is that if I were living in one of the affected neighborhoods, I'd have turned into a marauding Visigoth by now. As a geek whose many entertainment options rely on electricity, I don't enjoy power outages. And a week without power during a heat wave would be enough to drive me over the edge. Some of my readers know how nasty I can be when I'm aggravated at work. Just imagine me like that all the time, except I'd be wielding my dead Blackberry like a club as I fought my way onto an air-conditioned subway car.

more bad dating experiences for other people

It's merely a coincidence that I've had a few dating-related posts lately. I don't control the news, I just report it.

This story, about a man and a woman who met on Jdate and went out to dinner, is beginning to look like an urban legend. However, there are voice-mail messages that make it sound like it could be true. Either way, it's not a good idea to demand that your date pay you back for her half of the meal several days AFTER the date and then threaten legal action when she refuses to pay. And before I get more comments from online dating fanatics about how their services are better, I don't care. Jdate isn't the problem here. People who think that dating consists of financial transactions instead of social ones are the problem.

Good news for Brian Shackelford

He's not going to be charged with sexual assault after a date with a woman he met on match.com. I appreciate the comments I've received on my earlier post on Shackelford. Somehow it got linked on some other online dating sites, which explains all the unusual traffic on that particular post. I didn't think I was that popular on my own.

Darth Vader: baseball fan, pimp, African king

Screenhead linked to this Youtube video of scenes from Star Wars with James Earl Jones' lines from other movies dubbed in. I don't know why it ends with a Billy Joel song, but some of the scenes are hysterical. I can't believe it took almost 30 years for someone to come up with this idea.

watch out for the private room at DT/UT

DT/UT is my favorite Upper East Side coffeehouse/bar: great coffee, tasty desserts, WiFi by donation, and, when you can find a seat, comfy couches. There's a little semi-private area that's curtained off from the rest of the room. I've never sat in there, mostly because I never bring enough people in with me to feel like I've got the appropriate numbers to stake it out as my territory. And now I might avoid that room completely from now on, after reading this post over at The Daily Dump (love that name, BTW). I don't think I've ever done more than kiss someone in a public place, let alone put on a make-out show complete with pelvic grinding. And at my age (32) I'm way too old to engage in such behavior in public. That's why I live alone. I think once you get to your 30s you should be old enough to know better, and you should be responsible enough that when someone suggests you "get a room" that you have an actual private room in your home to which you can go. Once you get home, if you want to pretend you're 15 again and play "Seven Minutes in Heaven" in your bedroom closet, that's your business. I just don't want to see it.

It's not like I need another computer game in my house

Whenever I read something like this column, the urge to run out and buy a PS2 and a copy of Guitar Hero is almost uncontrollable. I tried four or five times to play "Bark At The Moon" on the intermediate setting at my friend's house back in April, and I nearly sprained my hand. Maybe when the PS3 comes out this fall I'll look for a PS2 on eBay at a bargain price.

Yesterday's big boom on the UES

Since it's not on my normal daily commute, I was nowhere near the building explosion at Madison Ave. and 62nd St. In fact, I didn't even hear about it until I got to work. See, I can't stand much of the "Today" show or in fact any morning TV, so I watch ESPN's "Mike & Mike In The Morning" instead. And they don't cover big stories like this one, especially when they're in Pittsburgh for the MLB All-Star Game. I found out about the explosion when I saw a post on Gawker and another on Gothamist. One of my co-workers actually knows the guy who blew up the building, and he wanted to see it on the way home, so we stopped up there about 7 PM last night. I was able to snap a few pictures before the police told us to move along. Even at that hour there was still a significant amount of activity up there, and the backhoe that you can sort of see in this photo was busy clearing debris out of the street.

In a sign that people in NYC just take things like this in stride, most businesses on Madison Ave. and restaurants on the side streets were open as if nothing at all had happened. I love this city.

another reason to avoid online dating

Brian Shackelford, now a former Cincinnati Reds pitcher (he was sent to the minors yesterday), was arrested for third-degree sexual assault after a date with a woman he met on match.com.

I have to agree with the commenters at Deadspin: since when does a major league baseball player need to use match.com to meet women?

Watching the World Cup at work

Image(075)
Originally uploaded by catelinp.

This afternoon was the last World Cup game that would be played during the workday, so I went to the cafeteria to watch the France-Portugal match on the big screen. The TV appeared in the cafeteria three weeks ago at the start of the tournament and I watched several matches there, though I saw most of the games from my desk on ESPN360. However, with the World Cup nearing its end, I thought I'd watch one last game with the die-hard fans in the office. I took this photo with my cell phone camera when the guy who handles the A/V setups asked me to document his handiwork. As you can see, there weren't too many fans there today, either because of vacations or lack of interest in the teams. Last week's Argentina-Germany quarterfinal drew a much larger crowd. Still, it was a fun way to spend a few mid-summer hours at work the day after a holiday. I asked if they could keep the TV there for the Tour de France, but I think it's going back into storage tonight.

how I spent my holiday weekend

As good as it sometimes is to leave New York for a long weekend, it's even better to stay in the city. Since so many people travel, the streets and restaurants are empty, so it's easy to get a table or take a walk without getting crushed in the usual mob. And while everyone else fights traffic trying to get back into the city before the work week starts, I get to stay home and relax. I was on call for Saturday and Sunday, so I couldn't do anything too far from home but I managed to have fun anyway. I was cat-sitting for a friend, and I managed to get some cool shots of her cats. They didn't mind posing for me; I'll have to figure out how to get mine to behave for my camera.

I enjoyed several great meals over the weekend:

• Trader Joe's filet mignon
• south Indian vegetarian cuisine at Pongal
• Mexican at Maz Mezcal (taking advantage of the holiday crowd to get a good table)
  
• the hottest Thai food I've ever eaten at Sripaphai in Queens
• Chinese on the Fourth of July where the wait staff were all mesmerized by the Germany-Italy World Cup semifinal.

I went to the Mets-Pirates game at Shea on Monday night, where the Pirates took advantage of the Mets pitching staff and won 11-1. By the end of the game I was just embarrassed for the Mets, though I was cheering quietly for the Pirates the whole time. I even stood up for Nate McLouth's solo home run in the eighth inning, and I would have jumped up for Ronny Paulino's home run that preceded it if I hadn't been so surprised that the ball left the park in the first place. Despite the loss, Shea was nearly packed until the end of the game, as it was fireworks night. For a ballpark fireworks display, the show was surprisingly good. The soundtrack was a little odd, though: it included "I Go To Extremes" by Billy Joel and a Kelly Clarkson song as well as some more patriotic music.

I watched Tuesday night's excellent Macy's Fireworks show from an apartment on the 43rd floor of a building near 42nd St. on the east side. I'm moving up, literally: last year I watched the fireworks from a 20-story rooftop near Union Square, and this year it was the 43rd floor. Next year it's the Empire State Building or bust. Since my camera has a special fireworks setting, I tried to take pictures. However, it seems that even with fancy digital technology you still need a tripod to get great photos of fireworks. But some of my pictures turned out OK, so you can get a sense of what the show looked like. As we were inside, we got to listen to the soundtrack for the fireworks this year, and it was better than the one the Mets put together the night before. You can't go wrong with Sousa marches and "God Bless America." I could have done without the pop-patriotic songs, though. The best part after the show was watching the crowd file off the FDR and being able to wait until the streets were less busy before walking home.

In case you hadn't figured it out already, photos from the weekend are up on my Flickr site.

First Aaron Spelling, now "Eddie," who's next?

This afternoon, Defamer alerted readers that Moose, the Jack Russell terrier who starred in the TV show "Frasier" as "Eddie," had passed on. Moose was 16 and had lived a full, star-crossed life, and he will be remembered fondly. However, that's not why I'm posting this. It was the following quote from Defamer that had me nearly crying with laughter:

As always, we are required to remind you that these celebrity death come in threes: We shall sleep less soundly until we receive word that the Hollywood Grim Reaper's bony knuckle has rapped at the final door, doggie or otherwise.

Quake is 10, and once more I feel old

Slashdot points out that ten years ago yesterday the original version of Quake appeared on download servers at cdrom.com. I was already familiar with the FPS genre in the form of Castle Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Duke Nukem, but Quake was the game that began my habit of playing online late at night. I used to deathmatch against my friends at work and in the computer lab, and I remember downloading Quake at the office at Georgetown and playing it in the "War Room" (the closet-like workspace I shared with my boss and our student assistant) during lunch. When I bought my first home PC six months later I loaded Quake onto it and would play online into the wee hours against whoever was out there. I had to play at night so I wouldn't tie up the phone line during the day. And when I got my first 3D-capable video card, well, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I still play FPS games online occasionally, but I don't have much of a tolerance for other gamers anymore, so now when I play games it's mostly offline. Still, I can hardly believe it's been ten years. I keep a copy of the original Quake handy for the occasional road trip when I get really bored. It will actually play on the laptops I get from work, and it's still fun to frag computer-controlled monsters once in a while.

Isiah Thomas, coach of the New York Knicks

I used to be a serious Knicks fan, when I was in college and the Knicks had Patrick Ewing and John Starks and were perennial title contenders. But since 2000 the team has become the longest-running joke in the NBA, even more laughable than the Los Angeles Clippers (who actually won a playoff series this year!). Last year the Knicks hired Larry Brown to resurrect the franchise, but instead of a turnaround he helped drive the team further into the ground. While Brown didn't do himself many favors by alienating his players, he wasn't the right coach for this mess. This morning brought the news that we all knew was coming: Brown is out after one season and Isiah Thomas is the new head coach as well as GM and team president. Let's see what Isiah has done for the Knicks: he's brought in a bunch of me-first players, hired and fired several coaches, including a guaranteed Hall of Famer in Brown, and traded away valuable draft picks, including the 2007 first-round pick to the Chicago Bulls. It's an overpaid, underperforming team with terrible chemistry, and now the guy who singlehandedly destroyed a popular minor league in the CBA is now the only guy steering the ship. Deadspin had a post on this story, but instead of commenting themselves they just turned it over to their legion of commenters. My two favorites are here and here.

Google Alert pays off again

For those of you who can't get enough information about my grandfather and his performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Tuba Concerto, last weekend Google Alerts pointed me to an article from Time Magazine about the premiere of the work. The article mentions the meeting between my grandfather and the composer at the latter's apartment, where the photo in the first link was taken.

What's next, Google Alerts? I'd love to get a link to a recording of the conversation and rehearsal session between these two men. However, I think if such a thing existed, it would be in my family's possession. Maybe when I finally get that time machine built I can go back and hear what went on when these two met, half a century ago.

Fenway Park, but not baseball

Before I get into last night's conference party at Fenway Park, I have to talk about the shuttle bus situation here. Since the convention center is not close to any of the hotels, Microsoft has been running shuttle buses to and from the hotels. However, the traffic here is terrible, so the route that works one day may not work the next. The bus drivers don't know the city, so sometimes passengers on the bus have to tell the drivers where to go. Several times now I've had a shuttle bus from my hotel go the complete opposite direction from the convention center, taking a traffic-choked four-lane highway and then making a U-turn instead of the quicker route through the city. And to top things off, there's a labor dispute between the Teamsters and the shuttle bus companies, so management has been driving the buses for the past few days. At best, it's a SNAFU, and at worst a total disaster.

The way the bus problems tie into the conference party is as follows. Microsoft recommended that we not bring our bags to Fenway Park for the party, which meant that you could either check your bag overnight at the convention center or leave it at your hotel. However, they weren't running shuttles from the hotels to Fenway, just from the convention center. So if I wanted to use the "official" transportation system, I'd have to take a shuttle from the conference to the hotel, another shuttle back to the conference, then ANOTHER shuttle to Fenway. Instead, I took one shuttle to the hotel and relaxed for a while, then checked out the Public Library (across the street from my hotel) and then took the T to Fenway with a few Boston natives.

The party was more fun than I thought it would be. They gave us the run of the ballpark: access to all the concessions (and everything was free!), all the seating areas, and even the warning track from the visitors' dugout to the outfield. So while I haven't seen the Red Sox in person at Fenway, I have stood on the warning track and sat in the dugout, right where the Yankees sit. You can't really tell from TV or photos, but Fenway is TINY. I already knew that, but you have to see it to understand. It's probably the smallest baseball stadium I've ever seen. And most of the seats look like they date from the construction of the stadium. Since they gave us so much access, I walked around the park and took pictures from just about every vantage point: the Green Monster, the right field rooftop, the outfield, behind home plate, etc. Train came on around 8:30 and were better than I thought, but still mostly bland. The only excitement of the show was around 9 PM, when the band invited some women to dance on top of the Red Sox dugout (the small stage was set up on the field directly in front of the dugout). I didn't see it, but a woman fell off the edge of the dugout and they stopped the show for about 10 minutes to take care of that problem. When Train came back on, they played a few Led Zeppelin covers ("Going to California" and "Ramble On") before getting back to their own material. About 9:30 the singer asked "I guess you want to hear 'Drops of Jupiter,' right? OK." as if he wanted to know if we wanted fries with that. It was like he didn't give a damn about playing their biggest hit and the only song most people knew. When they finished that song I headed for the shuttle bus. Their performance was decent, and the crowd liked it, but there was nothing interesting about the band. They're bland, lite FM musicians, and they played like they were just picking up a paycheck.

The ride back wasn't without a little adventure. The driver went past our hotel and had to drive around the block a few times before we (the passengers) told him where to turn. I've only been here a week, and I know my way around better than some of these drivers.

Wednesday night was better than Tuesday

Last night I went out to Cambridge with my uncle to sit in on my cousin's 8th grade graduation exam/presentation. Here in Boston the schools make you present some of your classwork and projects to a panel of teachers before they let you move on to high school. The weird part for me was that the family gets to sit in. I asked my uncle if my cousin knew I was going to be there, and he said yes, and it had made her a little more nervous. Just what I intended. :) So it was me, my aunt and uncle, their older daughter, and four teachers observing my cousin's exam. She was in fact a bit nervous, but she performed well and passed with honors. She was especially passionate about her work on justice and dissent, her study of Animal Farm, and a paper she wrote on my great aunt who recently passed away at 95. After the exam we went to a Mexican restaurant near their house and I enjoyed a plate of chile rellenos stuffed with cheese and pork (mmm, extra kosher!), then I had some time to see their house and visit with the family.

Today was another early morning at the conference center. I had some laptop problems last night, and because of the funky way my office has locked down the system, I had to wait until I got to the conference before I could fix things. But the PC is running smoothly now. I was supposed to go to two afternoon sessions, but I ended up skipping one to watch the England-Trinidad & Tobago World Cup match. I downloaded the slides, so I got most of the presentation anyway. I went to the show floor for the end-of-show prize drawings, but came up empty on all of them. I did get ANOTHER t-shirt, which has to put me into the double-digits for the show. I can throw out an entire drawer of old shirts now, and that's after I share some of the shirts with my co-workers.

Tonight's entertainment is the Train concert at Fenway Park, which I will attend for two reasons: free food and I don't have anything better to do. I may leave early to watch basketball if I can't stand the music. I need to pack tonight because I have to haul all my stuff with me to the conference center. Traffic in this town is terrible, and with everyone trying to get to the show with their luggage, it might take me an extra hour to get here. Also, the bathrooms at this center are plentiful, but they're all too small so there's always a line. I can't wait to go home. I wouldn't mind coming back to Boston for a vacation, but if they have another show like this here, I think I'll skip it.

We're jammin', and I hope you like jammin' too

On Tuesday, faced with another night hanging out in my hotel room, I decided to see what the "Jam Session" social event was all about. I took the shuttle bus over to Avalon, a nightclub next to Fenway Park. What I found was a performance space similar to The Bayou in Georgetown, with a small dance floor and tables in front of a large stage, with bars around the sides. On the stage were an assortment of guitarists, drummers, keyboardists, and a few people who seemed to switch instruments at random. The event lived up to its name -- it was a jam session. Apparently no one up there was a professional, except for the guy who had lyric sheets and possibly sheet music for some of the songs. I'm not sure if musical talent was a requirement to get up on the stage and perform with the group. It was like a P-Funk show, if P-Funk were a bunch of dorky white guys and instead of "Flashlight" they played "Margaritaville." The show was heavy on blues and classic rock, with songs like "Breakdown," "No Way Out," and "All Along The Watchtower" played in the time I was there. I didn't get quite drunk enough to enjoy myself (the beers were $6 apiece), but I will say that it wasn't all bad. Some of the musicians were actually quite good, and a few of the singers were excellent. But I think I'll skip the Jam Sessions next time I come to Tech Ed. I would have had more fun watching the NBA game at a bar.

The Skating Citroen Transformer

Remember this guy? Well, he's back, this time on ice. Damn, that's cool.

Tuesday Tech Ed update

Ben Roethlisberger's condition has been listed as serious but stable and still a complete dumbass.

Today's swag haul: three more t-shirts (I'm up to seven or eight total) and my first useful item, a 512 MB USB key. At this point I think I have enough items that everyone I work with gets something that's cool, instead of just a pen or a toy.

I have one or two sessions to go, and then I have to find something to do to entertain myself this evening. Last night I watched the Stanley Cup finals and had dinner at Legal Sea Foods. Tonight I might check out the "jam sessions" at a local club, where Tech Ed attendees can get up on stage and perform. It sounds like karaoke, only worse, as this involves musical instruments too. Maybe I'll just watch the NBA Finals instead.

I'm NOT standing on a ledge right now

The bad thing about being on the road and away from my constant Internet connection at work is that I hear about Ben Roethlisberger's motorcycle accident via an e-mail from my mom. I got her message in the middle of a session, and probably annoyed all the people around me by breaking out my laptop to get the full story.

I cannot believe that this kid could be so goddamn stupid as to ride without a helmet. First Jay Williams wrecks his motorcycle (still out of the NBA and trying to get back in), then Kellen Winslow, Jr. (missed the entire 2005 season), and now Big Ben. I hope he's OK, I hope he can play football again, but I'm just angry about it. Training camp starts in late July or August, so it looks like he'll miss part of camp. I guess it's the fact that he's 24 years old, just won a Super Bowl four months ago, and he feels invincible. I bet he rides with a helmet after this accident, if he ever rides a motorcycle again.

The only reason I'm not considering taking my own life right now is that Roethlisberger is just one part of the team, and there are many, many other great players that won that Super Bowl. As much as I like him, he's not like Peyton Manning or Donovan McNabb, guys whose absence from the field would seriously jeopardize their team's hopes for playoff success. Although I just remembered how badly the team played when Big Ben missed a few games last season with a bad knee. Damn: this hotel is only six stories tall.

Tech Ed: Monday morning

Last night's keynote address wasn't a complete waste of time, but if I'd skipped it I wouldn't have missed much. The highlight for most of the attendees was the presence of Mary Lynn Rajskub, who plays Chloe, the tech girl, on "24." But I don't watch "24," so I wasn't too excited. She had some really bad scripted interactions with Microsoft VPs and with a few guys she pulled out of the audience, and I just felt bad for her. Whatever she was getting paid wasn't enough. It was like watching a mismatched pair of presenters at an award show reading cheesy jokes to each other, except it went on and on and on. Microsoft also showed a four-park parody of "24" called "4," featuring a guy named "Jack Power" and cameos from Microsoft bigwigs (no Bill Gates, unfortunately). By 9 PM I'd had enough and I left. I ended up meeting some friends at a restaurant and missing the premiere of "Entourage," but when I got back to the hotel I noticed that the hotel's TV lineup doesn't include HBO. I guess I'll catch Entourage when I get back to NYC.

This morning I had another roundabout ride to the convention center on the shuttle bus. This time, the bus circled the entire center before pulling up to the door. On Friday morning, when everyone coming here will have their luggage with them, I'll have to leave my hotel at 7 AM just so I can get here on time.

The crowd here looks just like the people who came to Brainshare: geeks, geeks, and more geeks, of all ages and sizes. That includes me, of course. I'm wearing one of my Novell shirts today, and it didn't take long for someone to make a joke about it. I don't care. I don't mind being "That Guy" for one day.

blogger in Boston

This week I'm in Boston for Microsoft's Tech Ed conference. My office is eliminating all of our Novell products in favor of Microsoft's, so I didn't get to go to Novell's BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City this year. Instead, the firm sent me here, to Microsoft's equivalent conference. I've only been in Boston a few hours, but already I've had a quick tour of the city, courtesy of a shuttle bus driver who apparently didn't know how to get from my hotel to the convention center. I've now seen the outside of Fenway Park twice. Anyway, the fun begins tonight with keynote addresses and then early tomorrow morning with training sessions. I'll post photos and blog entries as events and situations warrant. Or whenever I feel like it. You know, the usual routine.

What would Stephen Colbert say about this?

The photo says it all. Unfortunately, if a bear came into my apartment, Vladi would run away and Mr. Starlite would nuzzle him in an attempt to be friends.

my grandfather & Ralph Vaughan Williams

I have a Google Alert set up to e-mail me for new search results for "Philip Catelinet." Most of the time it returns links to ancient GroupWise listserv messages I posted in 1999. However, once in a while it pays off with something good. This morning I got an alert about this page where you can see a photo of my grandfather (who was also named Philip Catelinet) playing his tuba for the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1954. I have a portrait of both men from the same photo shoot hanging over my desk at home.

Most of my friends have heard this story before, but for my new readers or those who don't know, my grandfather played the tuba for several London orchestras in the 1950s. When Vaughan Williams wrote his Tuba Concerto, he asked my grandfather for some guidance on writing a solo part for the instrument. When the work was completed, my grandfather premiered it at one of the Proms concerts in June of 1954 (I hope I'm getting all these details right). Vaughan Williams put my grandfather's name in the score of the concerto, and since there are so few works for solo tuba, most tubists know the name Philip Catelinet from the tuba part for the Vaughan Williams piece. (My grandfather also taught at Carnegie Mellon University for twenty years and wrote and arranged music for band and orchestra, so the concerto wasn't his only claim to fame.) Occasionally, in certain musical settings (like picking up tickets at the New York Philharmonic box office), someone will recognize my name and ask me about my grandfather. He passed away in 1995, but his spirit lives on in the music he wrote and the lives he touched.

I almost wish I was in DC this weekend too...

The National Symphony Orchestra is performing Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony, colloquially known as the "Symphony of a Thousand." Calling this work "gargantuan" would be an understatement. It's been sold out for weeks, so if you don't have tickets yet, you'll be listening to it at home on your stereo instead. Or, if you're like me, on your MP3 player this afternoon. Here in New York, Lorin Maazel has been programming all of Mahler's symphonies throughout his tenure as music director. I don't think they've gotten to the Eighth yet, so I'll have to keep watching the schedule. I'd buy a subscription if that was the only way to guarantee I could get tickets for that spectacle. Hey, it worked last season when I wanted to see Mozart's "The Magic Flute" at the Metropolitan Opera.

BEST.REUNION.EVER.

I had written a really long wrapup of the entire reunion weekend, but it was so detailed that not even I would want to read it. So I'll just mention the highlights:

my first "Burger Madness" sandwich from Wisemiller's in almost a decade
watching the Spelling Bee with Jon and making fun of the contestants
seeing some of my best friends again after too long
reuniting three-fourths of the 37th & O Street Quartet (my old string quartet)
laughing with my freshman year roommate about all the times I wanted to kill him and he wanted to do the same to me
drinking at the Tombs at last call with guys from my freshman dorm
running into my junior year roommate at the Tombs
getting into a semi-private party at F. Scott's on Saturday night (only the second time in my life I've been to F. Scott's)
walking across the Key Bridge at 3 AM and leaving a voice-mail message for James in which Jon and I both yelled about all the fun we were having

Obviously I could write much more, but these are the things I'll remember most fondly. I just had more fun than I've had in a long, long time, and I was sad to see it come to an end at 3 AM Sunday morning (when F. Scott's closed and they kicked us out of the bar).

campus tour photos are up

I've uploaded the photos from my memory-filled tour of campus yesterday. Check them out.

welcome back to Georgetown

This weekend is my 10-year reunion at Georgetown. I sometimes find it hard to believe that it's been ten years since I graduated from college and had to get a real job. Inside, I still feel like I'm about 25, so it doesn't seem real to me that I've been out of school this long. But the calendar says it's been a decade, and so I'm back on campus this weekend for all the fun. So far today I've walked from one end of campus to the other, taking pictures of all the places I used to live and work, as well as a few of my old hangouts. I even found my old senior-year apartment in Village A open for year-end cleanup, so I snuck in and snapped a few pictures before anyone from maintenance could catch me. I can't be certain, but I think the furniture is the same as when I lived there. I also peeked into the bowels of New North, where I used to work as a student and later a full-time employee, and I gave myself a tour of the new theater building. Later tonight or tomorrow, after I have a chance to post the pictures, I'll post some kind of mini-travelogue for my few readers who didn't go to school with me and don't know any of these places. And also just because I feel like writing it and reminiscing.

I also had lunch with two friends from the orchestra, neither of whom I'd seen in about eight years. It's kind of sad that none of us have kept in touch with too many people from the orchestra. There used to be an alumni society for the orchestra and choir, but since I moved to New York I haven't been in contact with anyone who was trying to keep that group afloat. As far as I know, it's defunct. But it was great to see my friends again and catch up with them.

It's a three-day weekend...

After work on Friday night, I went to a little hole-in-the-wall theater on the Lower East Side to see my friend Matt's latest show, a sketch comedy show called "Happy Hour." $25 got me a seat and all the PBR and watered-down margaritas I could drink. The show was all about love and sex, and Matt's big scene was when he played "Orgasm Man" and four women stripped off his shirt while he raved about his "special powers." It was more of Matt than I ever expected to see, but his performance was funny. Then we went out for a few beers with most of the cast and some of the audience, and I got to watch the Navy's finest trying to pick up girls (it is Fleet Week in NYC).

On Saturday night I went to the New York Philharmonic with Jess to hear Berlioz' Harold in Italy and Mahler's Symphony No. 1. The soloist for the Berlioz was Cynthia Phelps, the orchestra's principal violist, and she put in a solid performance. Lorin Maazel was conducting, and while I liked their performance of the work, I didn't think it was the absolute best they could have done. There were a few places where Phelps and the orchestra weren't completely together, and I thought she could have played louder throughout the piece. But it came together in the last movement (although I didn't realize that the solo viola doesn't play for most of the final movement). The Mahler symphony was just outstanding. Maazel conducted the entire work without a score (I don't even conduct that piece in front of my stereo without the score) and the orchestra sounded like they were all born to play that one symphony. They had everything the score calls for: five trumpets, seven horns, two sets of timpani, a full arsenal of percussion, and all the winds and strings you could possibly want. In the last movement, I got a little chill at my favorite part, when the horns stand up for the final fanfare. It was definitely the best live performance I've ever heard of Mahler's First Symphony. Note to self: look for a recording of Maazel conducting Symphony No. 2.

I went for a bike ride on Sunday, then hung out at home to watch the end of the Indy 500. After dinner I met up with some friends to see X-Men: The Last Stand, which wasn't quite as good as the 2nd movie but was chock full of action and all the subtle X-Men references you could ask for. I did notice one continuity error, and I wondered why at the end Wolverine loses his X-Man shirt in a kind of flesh-eating windstorm but not his X-Man uniform pants.

Today was my day to relax. I did get out to take care of one errand and I spent about a half-hour at PC Richard debating whether or not I should buy another air conditioner for my bedroom. I've got two AC units already, one in the living room and a smaller one in the office, and I don't know if I can justify to myself a need for a third unit just for the bedroom. But this will be my fourth year living in this apartment, and for the past three summers it's been difficult to sleep in the bedroom without air conditioning. I end up dozing for a few hours on top of the sheets, tossing and turning, instead of getting a solid night's sleep. I'm thinking about moving the office AC unit to the bedroom and just dealing with the heat in the office. Since I only use the office at night and on weekends, I might be able to get by without having AC in there. For now, I'm going to wait and see how hot it gets. And while I didn't get invited to any holiday cookouts, I didn't let that stop me from enjoying large quantities of grilled meat: I cooked a juicy, delicious steak on the stove, in my grillpan. It's not quite the same as cooking outdoors on a charcoal grill, but it was still damn tasty.

cycling update

I almost forgot about this new "feature."

Thursday, May 25: 3 early-morning laps in Central Park, 20 miles.

Sunday, May 28: 4 midday laps in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 37.5 miles including getting to and from Brooklyn.

Total miles for 2006 so far: 211.3.

another new laptop from work

We're rolling out new Windows XP laptops and desktops at work, and I've got one of the new IBM/Lenovo T60 ThinkPads that the cool kids have. Originally the hardware department gave me this laptop for testing the XP installation, but for the past week or so I've been using it as my regular work PC and bringing it home every night instead of my trusty but old T41. I might have to give the laptop back if they run short and need to give it to an attorney instead of a fork-and-spoon operator like me, but for the moment it's all mine.

Since it's a T series ThinkPad, it has the same basic look and feel as the T41, with just a few cosmetic changes. The touchpad is a little smaller, there's another USB port on the left side (which makes 3 total), and it doesn't have any serial or parallel ports at all. Inside, it's got a 2.6 GHz dual-core processor, a 60 GB hard disk, 1 GB of RAM, and a DVD/CD-RW optical drive. It also has a 20V power supply instead of the old 12V ones, so I have to bring the AC adapter home each night (which means I'll probably forget it when I travel -- I've had a spare IBM AC adapter at home for years but it won't work with the T60). So I can use it for all the usual work tasks, plus watching DVDs and surfing from home while watching TV, as I'm doing right now.

The annoying thing about the new laptop is that it's got the "official" office installation of Windows XP on it, so it's missing some software I use all the time (like Firefox and a CD burner). For years, I've set up my PCs myself, with my own installation of Windows XP and whatever software I choose. This laptop is also locked down, so I can't just install anything I want. Actually, I can, since I've got an administrative logon for the system, but I'm trying to keep the system as close to the office's configuration as I can. I did install Firefox because I just can't get through the day without it but I've held off on some other things for now. The real test of how the lockdown affects me will be in a few weeks when I take this laptop to Boston for Microsoft's Tech Ed conference. As long as I can use the convention center's wireless network, connect my media reader to upload photos, and watch movies, I should be OK. I'm really starting to like this laptop, so I'll be just a little upset if someone comes to take it from me. No lawyer is going to show it the kind of love and affection it deserves.

As for my old friend the T41, it's currently locked in a drawer at my desk, awaiting its well-earned retirement. However, I don't think that's a career of mating with R series ThinkPads to produce little baby X series ThinkPads. I'm fairly certain it will soon be on its way to a second career as a used laptop in another part of the world.

an emasculating moment this evening

As I walked up to my apartment building this evening, I noticed this girl standing outside the bar next to my building, talking on her cell phone. I went into my building and got my mail, and took a minute to sort out what was important vs. what was trash (since the trash room is a few feet from the mailboxes, I usually toss the junk without ever taking it upstairs) when this girl came into the building. I'd also noticed two Ikea boxes, one long and one short, sitting in the foyer, across from the mailboxes. She was sort of poking at the boxes when I asked her if she needed some help with them. She had moved into one of the fifth-floor apartments last week and just returned from Ikea. She said she was waiting for a friend to help her, but he was having trouble finding a parking space. I offered to help her carry the boxes upstairs. I was able to carry the smaller one by myself, and while it was heavy, it wasn't too much trouble to go up four flights with it. My arms already starting to ache, we went back downstairs to get the second box. I looked at the side panel and saw that it weighed 156 lbs. There's no way I could carry that much myself, so she and I managed to get it up to the third floor before we ran out of gas. I was impressed we got it that far. She surprised me with her strength: she was maybe 5'4" and didn't look outwardly muscular, but she was capably handling her end of the long box. With the box on the third floor landing, she said her friend could take it the rest of the way. I told her to let me know if they needed my help when her friend got there and I went back to my apartment.

Just as I got inside, I had an idea. Why not open the large box and take the contents upstairs in pieces? I was about to get my box cutter and go back into the hallway when I heard the girl and her friend. I looked out through my peep-hole and saw this guy, who was definitely no bigger than me and maybe smaller, pick up the 156-lb, six-foot-long box, tuck it under his arm and go up the stairs with it. I just had to laugh. I can't compete with that kind of brute strength. Granted, I made his job a little easier by getting the box up two floors, but I couldn't carry that much weight under one arm to go up even one floor.

And now I'll be lucky if I can even lift my arms tomorrow. Damn.

I'm in Gene Weingarten's chat today

Finally, after several attempts over two-plus years, one of my posts has been accepted into the weekly chat on the Washington Post web site. If you think you know which one is mine, post something in the comments. I will let you know if you got it right.

The Wiyos live at Barbes

My other big weekend activity was Saturday night's trip to Brooklyn to hear The Wiyos live at Barbes. I've written about The Wiyos a few times, most notably the last time I saw them live, at the same bar. The scene was essentially the same as the last time, and the back room of the bar was crowded and hot, but no one seemed to mind. Over two hours and two sets, the band played about a half-dozen songs from their last album, a few from their first album, and another five or six songs that I'd never heard before. They also made a few observations about their music, such as the fact that nearly all of their songs are either about getting together or breaking up, and that they obviously got into this kind of music for the money and the pop charts. I might have laughed loudest at the bassist's comment that they will play for weddings and divorce parties. My only complaint about the show was that it wasn't as much of a sing-along as the last one, so I was a little self-conscious when I sang along on the songs I knew (which was most of them). And they didn't play their version of George Gershwin's "Summertime," which is one of my favorites. They're playing at Joe's Pub in Manhattan on June 8, so I've got another chance to see them before they go on tour for the summer. Maybe it will be OK if I sing along at that show.

cycling report for May 20 and 21, 2006

This is the first in an ongoing series of posts of the miles I ride on my bike and where I go. Assuming, of course, that I remember to post this stuff here.

On Saturday, I rode the Manhattan loop, going north on the East Side and south along the West Side Greenway. There's a newly paved section on the West side, north of fairway near the waste treatment facility. This path runs parallel to the railroad tracks, instead of the old path, which was an access road leading to Riverbank State Park.
Total miles: 30.

Usually I just ride one day on a weekend. However, when I got up on Sunday morning, the weather looked fantastic, and I didn't think I should waste it by going to the gym or staying home. So I headed for Central Park, intending to ride three or four laps. However, when I got there, I remembered that there was an AIDS Walk in the park, which closed most of the paths on the west side. So I left the park, headed north and took St. Nicholas Ave. as far as I could go. St. Nicholas Ave. ended around 190th St., at the intersection of Ft. George Ave. and Audubon Ave. Audubon took me in a circle back to St. Nicholas, so I took Ft. George and found myself on Amsterdam Ave., headed south. I passed the Highbridge Tower Park and turned down Edgecombe Ave. to get back to the Harlem River Greenway. I hit 23 mph going north on the greenway, but could only manage 13 mph coming back, as I had a nasty headwind in my face. I rode back to Central Park and then around the park on Central Park West and 59th St. before heading north again on Third Ave. to get home.
Total miles: 21
Miles so far in 2006: 151.

The Pittsburgh Pirates still stink, for 14 years and counting

ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski writes about the sorry state of the Pittsburgh Pirates and how Pittsburgh is and always will be a Steelers town first. The saddest part of his column isn't in the text, it's the chart next to the column comparing the two teams' records since they each won a championship in 1979. The Pirates had a few good seasons and three division titles from 1990-1992, but since then they've had 13 losing seasons, and they're well on their way to a 14th. It's a damn shame. It doesn't help that the team made some terrible personnel decisions during that time (Pat Meares and Derek Bell come to mind immediately), wasting millions on has-beens and never-weres while trading away promising young players. There are constant rumors that Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, wants to buy the Pirates, but the current owners don't want to sell. I guess they'd rather have a losing team and a money-loser than increase the team's payroll and put together a winner. All Cuban has done with the Mavericks is make them into a perennial playoff team and title contender. I don't see why he couldn't do the same thing with the Pirates.

Tony Snow, master of the blues flute

I'm not sure who came up with the idea of playing the flute in a blues band. Maybe it was Ian Anderson, or perhaps James Galway tried it once. It's not important. New press secretary Tony Snow knows how to play the flute, as shown in this clip that Wonkette found earlier today. Why he's playing a solo for "Stormy Monday," or why he finishes the song on the saxophone, well, those are questions left for you to ponder. I think this version of the song is an insult not only to the blues, but to flutists everywhere as well.

Mother's Day weekend review

My mom and my brother came to New York for the weekend, so I got to play tourist along with them for a few days.

We went to see "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" on Friday night, and we all thought the show was hilarious. My brother and I decided not to try to get into the show as spelling bee contestants, although I'd like to think I'd have done well. My favorite part of the musical was the example sentences the organizers used for the spelling bee words. I didn't actually like the music that much, and a few of the songs went on too long, like the one for the little girl whose mother is in India and whose father doesn't make it to the bee. But I'd wanted to see this particular show for over a year, and I wasn't disappointed.

On Saturday my brother wanted to see Chelsea Market, so we went down there around lunchtime. We browsed through a few of the gourmet stores, and my only regret was that I didn't have a recipe with me for dinner on Saturday night. I was surrounded by all these delicious-looking ingredients but I didn't buy anything. We continued the food tour in Greenwich Village: falafel and shawarma sandwiches from Mamoun's, coffee from Grey Dog Coffee, and cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery. Then we went uptown to Zabar's, to which my brother had never been before, and I bought an electric kettle, a non-stick skillet, and a potato ricer. Michael just got a different ricer and a pound of coffee. We went back to my neighborhood for dinner at Penang. (In case it wasn't clear before, this weekend was mostly about doing things to fill in the time between excellent dining experiences.)

We took my mom to brunch at the Delta Grill on Sunday morning. I'd been to the Delta Grill many times, but never for brunch. I had an omelet wrapped in a potato cake, which reminded me of the SNL "Taco Town" commercial, and we all enjoyed some of their beignets (which were good but not even close to the ones at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans). After lunch we had a few hours to see the Guggenheim Museum and the David Smith sculpture exhibit that was closing that day. The sculptures were interesting but didn't do much for me. I liked his earlier works better than the later ones -- Smith spent his last years combining found steel objects into artworks, but it looked to me like he was just throwing together anything he could find and calling it art. Sunday night's Sopranos dinner was James' version of Carmela's baked ziti, and all I can say was that it was worth all the effort James put into the dish. That was one excellent meal.

I took a few pictures of Times Square and Washington Square while we were walking around this weekend. I was happy to see that while the Beasty Feast pet store on Bleecker Street near my old apartment now has a new name, the same cats still live there. Bonnie, the mean old mama cat, was in her usual spot on the sidewalk just outside the store. I knew well enough not to try to pet her, but she did let me take her picture.

a new look around here

I thought I'd update the template after about two years with the old one. This one includes my profile, so I threw in one of the few photos of me that I have in my collection. I think I've put back everything I had in the old template. If I'm missing something, I'm sure I'll notice it. I saved several copies of the old template just in case I need it. One thing I've learned as an IT professional is that you can't have too many backups.

Mr. Starlite in a compromising position

IMG_0120
Originally uploaded by catelinp.

OK, I'm just posting this photo to try out Flickr's blog feature. And also because I love this shot. I'm not sure if he's mad at me for taking the picture or just comfortable with his body.

I'm on Gothamist!

Gothamist used one of my Bike New York photos for Sunday's "Extra, Extra" daily wrap-up post. I love Flickr tags.

Five Boro Bike Tour 2006

This year was my sixth time riding in Bike New York/The Five Boro Bike Tour, and I think this year's ride may have been my favorite. I hope my several readers will forgive me for bragging a little in this post. I've been riding as an adult for about eight years now, and while I've had my ups and downs physically over that time, so far in 2006 I feel like I'm riding better than ever.

I left my apartment and got warmed up by flying down Second and Fifth Avenues to my usual starting place in Greenwich Village, near my old apartment. (I'm one of those bad people who doesn't start the ride at Battery Park -- I prefer to jump in a few blocks north.) The ride followed the same route as in previous years: Sixth Avenue to Central Park, then north out of the park to the Madison Avenue Bridge to the Bronx. Coming out of the Bronx, the course takes the FDR Drive to the Queensboro Bridge, through Astoria, then south to Brooklyn, along the waterfront to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, then the Shore Parkway, and finally the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. My favorite parts of the ride are the FDR and the BQE, as they are only open to bikes for this ride, once a year. So when I got onto those highways, I put my bike into high gear and took off. I rode safely but swiftly, passing rider after rider, my legs burning but the rest of me feeling fantastic. I was in the left lane on the BQE for most of the time. Riders in front of me either heard me coming or just sensed me behind them, because they kept moving to the right just as I was getting ready to pass them, leaving me plenty of room to blow by. At one point on the BQE, my bike computer said I was going 28 MPH, which might be a personal record. Including rest stops, I covered the entire 42-mile route in about four hours. At the end of the ride I felt like I could have gone another twenty miles. I actually had about eight miles left, which is the distance between the Staten Island ferry terminal and my apartment on the Upper East Side. So I ended up with 50 miles for the day, and 100 miles total so far in 2006. I'm a tenth of the way to my 1000-mile goal. I can tell that my legs are going to be aching tomorrow from all that hard work on the BQE, but the pain will be worth the effort. And the endorphins feel fantastic.

the ORIGINAL "original" Star Wars trilogy on DVD

This just in: On September 12, Lucasfilm will release the original, non-Special Edition versions of the classic Star Wars trilogy on DVD. My friend Chris points out that he predicted just such an occurrence, though he was off by a year.

While I appreciate George Lucas's change of heart about releasing the original SW trilogy on DVD, I'm not planning to be among the many fans who will eagerly buy this nostalgia-filled edition of the movies on DVD the minute the stores open. I rarely watch the SE DVDs that I already have, so I don't think I need to spend more money on the trilogy. I don't actually hate the SE versions. Aside from the "HAN SHOT FIRST!" butchering (which was somewhat better on the SE DVD), I think the SE trilogy is an improvement over the original. I like the updated special effects and the added footage with Jabba the Hutt at Mos Eisley. I'm not a Star Wars purist or a completist, so it's not that important to me to own these editions as well. Besides, they're selling the 2004 SE DVD and the original edition in the same package, so I'd be re-buying something I already own.

I think I'll pass.

However, I am excited about the release of LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy on the same day. I LOVED the first LEGO Star Wars video game, which let you play through the prequel trilogy as LEGO versions of the movie characters. In fact, I recently re-installed it on my computer so I could play it again. It's ostensibly a kid's game, but it's so much fun to play and re-play that I don't care. Check out the link above for the trailer for the sequel, and you'll see what I mean. I'm not kidding about how fantastic the original game was. If you're a Star Wars fan and you own a decent computer or a video game system, you should have LEGO Star Wars in your collection, if for no other reason than the chance to chop Jar-Jar Binks into little LEGO pieces.

I "SAW" it last night

I was already tired Tuesday night when I was flipping channels around 12:15 AM. That's when I found SAW on one of my Cinemax or Showtime networks. It was only about five minutes in, so I started watching it. I hadn't planned to watch the entire movie, but since I hadn't seen it before, I ended up staying up until 2 AM watching the whole thing. I already knew the ending, or at least the most gruesome part, so I watched most of the movie shouting "just cut off your damn foot already!" at Cary Elwes. The rest of the film was predictable, and while the final twist surprised me, it wasn't unexpected. I thought it was a decent horror film, but not the groundbreaking movie that horror fans thought it was two years ago. And seeing it didn't make me want to see the sequel.

Horror movies, even when viewed just before bedtime, don't really scare me. But after I was in bed, I did get up again to make sure I'd locked my apartment door. You never know when the jigsaw killer will sneak in and lock you in his basement. I think next time I'm looking for a late-night movie, I'll try a comedy instead just to be safe.

a semi-productive weekend

Because I was on call for work this past week, I couldn't make any big plans for the weekend. I spent most of Saturday afternoon sitting in my living room watching the NFL Draft and answering calls from the help desk. The draft can be fun to watch (it always reminds me of the student housing apartment lottery at Georgetown), but when the weather outside is beautiful the last place I want to be is sitting inside looking at it through my windows. Which is why I finally decided to clean my apartment windows after living there for three years. My windows look out on First Avenue, and since before I moved in they've been covered in a layer of some kind of sooty substance that looks like it runs off the roof when it rains. I'd hoped that my landlord would have a cleaning crew power-wash the windows a few times a year, like in my old apartment in DC, but apparently they don't do that for five-story walkups. So I took matters into my own hands and figured out how to get the windows open enough for me to get some Windex onto them and wipe them down. It took half a roll of paper towels and I ended up with plenty of soot on me, but my windows are much, much better looking now. I even climbed out onto my fire escape for the first time. Now I've got a clear view of First Avenue. I realize that this story is probably of interest only to me, but it makes such a difference to sit in my living room with the shades up and not have the sunlight filtered through a layer of dirt. So that was my productive activity for the weekend.

I got out on Sunday morning for a bike ride in Central Park. I'm preparing for next Sunday's Bike New York, so I needed to put some miles on the bike when I had the chance. I managed to ride 28 miles nonstop yesterday. Combined with my initial ride of 20 miles two weeks ago, I'm at 48 miles so far for 2006. My goal this year is to ride 1000 miles before I put the bike away in October or November. Last year I got to 975 before the weather and social activities cut short my rides. So 1000 miles shouldn't be too hard to reach. After my ride, I went back outside for one of my favorite spring/summer activities: reading in the park. I sat in Carl Schurz Park for about two hours, reading William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties until my brother called me and then the office started paging me again. I also took a few photos in the park with my new camera, since I haven't had too many chances to use it yet. Check out the Flickr link if you want to see them.