Getting older

This past Saturday night, Kate’s upstairs neighbors hosted a party. They told Kate and her roommates about the party earlier in the day and invited them to join in the fun. Kate and I had plans to meet her friends for a drink before dinner and then we planned to see “Quantum of Solace” before returning later in the evening. While we were at dinner I got a call about a problem at work that I needed to fix, so we skipped the movie and went back to her apartment so I could use her computer to log in and handle the issue. When we got to her building at about 9:30 PM, three girls followed us inside and went upstairs to what sounded like a raging blowout already in progress. I took care of my work problem and we considered our options for the rest of the evening. The noise coming from the apartment upstairs was unbelieveable. They played their music at high volume and sang and danced for hours. It sounded like they were playing basketball up there, from the way the thumping moved from one end of the room to the other.

At midnight, unable to sleep, we decided to watch a movie. We had to turn our volume up to hear the movie over the noise coming from upstairs. One of Kate’s neighbors in the next building came out of his apartment, stood in the courtyard in the back, and shouted at the 3rd floor party to keep it down. I don’t think they heard him. Kate said she’d give them until 2 AM, then she’d go ask them to turn down the music. By 1:45 AM we thought they might have given up for the night since the dancing had subsided, but then the music picked up again. At 2 AM Kate went upstairs. I offered to go with her but she declined, saying she could handle it. She came back a few minutes later and the volume went down. She told me that when she asked the girls to turn the music down, they said “we told your roommates we were having a party,” as if that was an excuse. Kate’s response was “it’s still 2 in the morning, so please turn it down.” By 3 AM we were finished with our movie, they were finished with their party, and everyone passed out.

My problem with Saturday night’s events is that I’m not used to being “that guy” who tells the neighbors to keep the noise down. I used to be a party guy. A few years ago, if my neighbors had told me they were having a party, I would have stopped by for a drink or two. I know I’m older and more mature, but I didn’t realize I’d also outgrown the loud and crazy parties of my youth. One of the reasons I didn’t mind moving to Park Slope was that I was tired of living above a noisy bar on the Upper East Side. For the first few years I lived there, the bar was a reminder that people were out having fun on a weekend night while I was at home watching TV. Then I found myself hanging out at that bar on weekend evenings and I realized that it wasn’t so much fun if I didn’t know anyone there. As I grew tired of the bar scene, I also became more comfortable staying home alone, and I didn’t want to hear the music or the loud conversations of the smokers outside at 2 AM. My apartment in Park Slope is on the first floor next to the building’s entrance, so I get a fair amount of noise from the hallway, but I don’t get the crowd noise from a constant weekend party. And if I decided to throw a massive housewarming blowout in my new apartment, I’d get shut down by my neighbors (many of whom have small children) in about 10 minutes. Now, a party is a few friends, a good meal, a bottle of wine, and we're all home by midnight. And I don't mind. Maybe there's an upside to growing older.

PC Magazine is no longer (in print)

Ziff Davis announced yesterday that they will end the print version of PC Magazine and make the title online-only. I have been a subscriber to PC Magazine off and on since college, at home or at work. My father, or one of his co-workers, used to get the magazine at his office when I was in high school and college, so I would read his copy and get the reviews of new hardware, software, and gadgets. For example, I remember first reading about Windows NT in a copy of PC Magazine when I was still in high school. Back then, of course, print was the only way to get this kind of technology news.

As I've become an avid online reader of all thing technological, I saw less need for a print version of the same information, especially when the printed news was several weeks old by the time I got it. But I would still read PC Magazine when I found it on a colleague's desk at work. I hadn't planned to become a subscriber again, but then I went to a trade show at the Javits Center and an attractive saleswoman from Ziff Davis talked me into a four-year subscription. What can I say? She was hot, and I couldn't resist. As Krusty the Klown said, "I'm not made of stone!" Also, at $10 a year for four years, it wasn't a bad deal.

But as I read each issue of the magazine, I thought about how much easier it would be for me to read the same information online, updated, with search capability and windowing. So when my subscription lapsed a few years ago, I ignored the renewal letters begging me to stay with them. I suppose you could blame me for the failure of the print edition, or lump me in with the rest of the subscriber base that abandoned the dying medium for the online version. But digital media is the present and future, so this was an inevitable step for Ziff Davis. Dropping the print edition is the right decision.

Now if only they'd streamline their web site. There's a lot of things going on there.

Something that will blow your mind (and your ears)

Apparently, they were serious about this.

The new Guitar Hero game

A few weeks ago I picked up the latest edition of Guitar Hero, complete with new guitar controller. For the record, this makes three guitar controllers in my collection, and I live alone and can only use one at at time. Guitar Hero: World Tour has a few of my favorite songs in it, like "Livin' On A Prayer," "Ramblin' Man," "Stranglehold" and "Pull Me Under." However, the majority of the songs are ones that I've never heard before. Some are new songs by unfamiliar bands like Airbourne, The Enemy, Kent, and Radio Futura. Others are songs I should know by bands like The Cult and 311. (The entire song list is here.) Previous games would mix in new music with classic guitar hits in the same set. Most of the sets in World Tour consist of only new songs, with familiar hits appearing every six or seven songs. For example, I played the game for about 90 minutes on Tuesday night, and of the approximately ten songs I played, the only one I knew right away was "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger. The rest of the songs were completely new to me. I got through all of them without much trouble, which was refreshing. My biggest problem with the previous game in the series was that some of the song were too difficult for me even on the "Hard" setting. In Guitar Hero II I was able to play most of the songs on "Expert" and get through them. World Tour has made all the song easier overall, so that when I finish the game on Hard I shouldn't have much trouble replaying it on Expert and boosting my confidence.

I like the new guitar controller that came with this game. In addition to the usual fret buttons and strum bar, they've added a touchpad further down the neck that can be used as a tap zone or for sliding on certain notes. It adds variety and makes it easier to play some faster solos. I'm still learning how best to use it. And they've added a button near the strum bar that you can press with your hand to activate "Star Power" if that's easier than tilting the entire guitar.

I didn't buy the version of World Tour that includes the drum kit. I thought that would be overly ridiculous for my apartment. But I am considering buying the microphone controller that comes with the full band kit. Should my friends ever want to sing along, then we'd have the microphone and, with the extra guitars I already own, we'd have a little band ready to go. If that ever happens, expect photos.

seen on the subway this morning

This morning's commute included the first Christmas carol of the season, courtesy of a man playing the guitar and singing in Spanish. He played one unfamiliar non-holiday song from Pacific Street to DeKalb Avenue, then he played "Feliz Navidad" from DeKalb to Lawrence Street. I hate "Feliz Navidad." It's repetitive, simplistic, and worst of all, it gets stuck in my head for hours. When he started playing it I nearly pulled a muscle reaching for the volume on my iPod to drown him out. Even now there's still a hint of it floating around in my head.

This second item has been bothering me for a few days. Bank of America has a new subway ad campaign touting a reward program in which they give you $10 back for every $100 you spend on transit on their credit card. All the ads show "typical" New Yorkers with quotes like "Ten bucks back for every hundred spent on transit? Great. What about a solution for gridlock?" Or "Fantastic. What can you do about my neighbor's tap dancing?" The photos accompanying the quotes show people who are not smiling and happy about the reward. Their lips are pursed, making them look impatient and annoyed. The ads come across as arrogant. Instead of seeing the program as a benefit, the ads show a false sense of entitlement. They say New Yorkers are smug jerks who, when presented with a good deal, say (with a highly sarcastic tone) "Thanks. Now double it, get me another latte, and I'll think about it. And shut up."

I am excited

I was excited in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, but even that victory doesn't feel like this one. Back then, it didn't feel like the country was on as bad a path as it is now. Barack Obama's victory feels like a much bigger win for the Democratic Party and for the nation than Clinton/Gore. I'm looking forward to the transition and the first 100 days. I know that Obama will have a tough time getting anything done with the mess that Bush and Cheney have left him, but I'm thrilled at the prospect that we finally have a competent leader at the helm. Even if it's a difficult road, I'm elated at what the future holds. This has been an incredible night.

Time to sober up and go to bed. I still have to work in the morning.

Voting this morning

I sprang out of bed at 6 AM and was out the door ten minutes later. The line at PS 282 in Park Slope at 6:15 was out the school door, down the block, and ended around the corner. I waited about 20 minutes outside, then once I got inside someone told me I could skip the long line and go into the gym if I knew my election district. I had my voter registration confirmation with me so I went inside and got in line for my district. Just like four years ago on the Upper East Side, the gym was packed with people in a maze of lines for different districts. I waited about 45 minutes in line for my district. People were joking about the old machines and the lack of lines for some districts. One woman said "there's no line for 57" and I said "yeah, but you don't want to live there." (I have no idea where district 57 is in Brooklyn.) The best thing about the experience was that everyone seemed to be in a good mood. I heard only a handful of complaints. Everyone I talked to was happy to be there and not at all surprised to see the turnout. I voted at 7:15 and was on my way to the gym a few minutes later. The line outside the school was still down the block. On the way home I passed another school on 5th Avenue with a long line of its own.

Now we wait.

Why I shouldn't be nervous

All I can do tomorrow is go to the polls and vote. It's too late for me to have any other effect on the outcome of the election, and worrying about the results will do me no good. I have to get through the day. I'm getting up at 6 AM and going to the polls first thing, so I hope the lines will be short. Even in blue Park Slope, I expect long lines early in the morning.

I'm excited about watching the returns come in tomorrow evening. I haven't decided for certain what I'm doing, but I suspect I'll end up at home by myself with my laptop and the HDTV and full control of my election night environment. For some reason, I keep thinking about the 1992 election and how I watched the returns come in that night. I was a freshman at Georgetown, living in Darnall Hall, and it was my first presidential election as a voter. I watched the returns in the dorm lounge with the rest of my floormates, with the occasional stop by my friend Jeremy's room, where he had his computer dialed into Prodigy and was getting state-by-state results online. He and a few friends broke out a bottle of champagne early when Prodigy called the election for Clinton, about 20 minutes before the networks did. I smile when I think of how it was so high-tech at the time to monitor election results online.

Tomorrow night I'll have more than a few tabs open to different news sites, and maybe a bottle of something to drink to celebrate, or to drown my sorrows if things go the other way.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer douchebag

Yesterday, Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty on corruption charges. In an election year when Republicans can't do anything right, this clown pushed for an expedited trial in the hopes of clearing his name before Election Day, only to berate prosecutors from the stand and turn the case against himself. The Washington Post's Colbert King explains in his blog post yesterday:

Stevens, despite his years of service to the nation, failed to realize that he wasn't up on a Senate dais looking down at browbeaten witnesses or back home surrounded by Alaskan cronies and sycophants; that, instead, he was in a city that has long experience with politicians who become high and mighty, who start to think they're above the law, and who begin to regard gifts and tangible expressions of affection as entitlements.

It also didn't help that he claimed that gifts of home furnishings from contributors (such as a $2700 massage chair) weren't gifts but loans. I suppose people in Alaska regularly loan out expensive furniture for years at a time. Last night I spoke to Liz, who was a Senate page for a semester in high school, and she confirmed that Stevens had a reputation as a jerk. (Although she did say that Stevens' secretary had a steady supply of delicious salmon jerky and elk jerky that she would pass out to pages.) I hope the voters in Alaska will realize that they've got a corrupt politician working for them, and throw this guy out on his ass. Let him go to prison and explain to his fellow felons how the Internet is a "series of tubes."

Mahler makes me giddy

Last night was the first rehearsal for NYRO's December concert, where we're playing Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1. Regular readers of this space will recall that I am a huge Mahler fan, so I am understandably excited to be performing one of my favorite works. We played Mahler's 3rd Symphony two years ago, and that concert is on a short list of my all-time greatest performances. I have high hopes that this year's gala concert will be an even greater success. For my part, I was grinning like an idiot throughout most of the sight-reading last night, despite missing notes and entrances. I'll have to channel that enthusiasm into my practicing, of which I have a great deal to do. Mahler's music isn't easy to play.

For those in the New York area who may be interested in attending the concert, it will be on Saturday, December 13. Watch this space for more information as the concert date approaches.

Zima is no more

MillerCoors (I didn't know that was the corporate name) has ended production of Zima, the Sprite of malt beverages. When it first came out nationwide in the summer of 1993, my high school friends who went to Pitt introduced me to it. I wasn't a hard-core beer drinker at the time, and here was this vaguely fruity-tasting thing that was just as cool as beer to drink at a party. Cooler, even. So I became something of a Zima fan. I would seek it out at parties, ask my friends to get it for me, and told everyone I knew to try it. It was a wild ride.

Soon, the wheels came off my Zima party bus. I had a small party for my friends in the Georgetown orchestra in the spring of 1994 and got a six-pack of Zima along with beer and hard liquor. Liz drank a couple of bottles of Zima, then switched to the crappy vodka I had on hand. Her evening ended with her getting sick all over my apartment, then looking like death for a few hours before she pulled back from the abyss. A few months later we had a party to celebrate the end of the semester, and I had five beers and one Zima. But that one Zima got me drunker than anything else I had that night, and I think I made a fool of myself that evening but I can't remember the details. I'm sure there were other instances like these; Zima was a fixture at most parties that year.

It wasn't long before we realized that a) we got too drunk too fast on Zima and b) it tasted like lime juice spiked with urine. Also, everyone we knew thought Zima was for girls. We moved on to beer and bourbon, Zima tried to re-brand itself as a drink for men, and then Smirnoff Ice came along and put Zima out of its misery.

I salute you, Zima. By being so awful, you taught me what good alcohol should taste like.

Wow.

I didn't think it could get worse than the previous clip of the racist asshole in Johnstown, but I was wrong. Check out the video in this Gawker post from a line outside a rally in Bethlehem, PA.

I'm never moving out of New York.

Why am I not surprised?

I don't keep a close eye on western Pennsylvania politics anymore, which is why I read about Sarah Palin's campaign stop in Johnstown on gawker.com this afternoon. According to my hometown paper, the rally was a big success for the McCain campaign in front of a "raucous crowd." A crowd which also included this racist moron. This older gentleman brought a stuffed Curious George doll to the rally, put a Obama sticker on its head, and called it "little Hussein." People like that guy, and the rest of the adoring crowd that showed up to shower Sarah Palin with its affection, are among the reasons I don't live in Johnstown any longer, and truth be told, why I don't go home that often. When I grew up there, I encountered too many closed-minded racists and anti-Semites for me to feel completely comfortable in that environment. It doesn't help that the area is still economically depressed, with people out of work, a combination that fosters negative attitudes like the one displayed here. I'm really disappointed by what this video shows of my hometown, and fearful that recent polls that show the Obama ticket leading substantially are overinflated by people who don't want to be perceived as racist by the pollsters. If McCain and Palin win this election by encouraging idiots with outdated values, our nation will have taken a huge step backwards.

I refuse to freak out

Many of my friends at work are asking the question "Have you looked at your 401K lately?" It's become an issue of sarcastic pride. Who's lost more? Who's most worried? Who has done something rash with their investments?

I've looked at my retirement account, and I'm down since the beginning of the year. But I refuse to do anything irrational with my money. While I am worried about the economy, I'm not going to retire for at least 30 years. Over the long term, the stock market is an excellent place to keep your money. I'm confident that the market will eventually recover and that my portfolio will grow again. Until then, I will continue to buy shares in my mutual fund at a premium, and take advantage of my employer's generous matching benefit. If you're my age (34) or younger, I don't see any reason to worry about the short-term stock market gyrations. Those of us in the early to middle stages of our careers should ride it out and see what happens.

I am more concerned about bank failures and returns on my savings accounts. I keep my money with some of the larger banks, so I don't think I'll see a failure, but I do think I need to watch my interest rates with caution. I have the recent windfall from my lease buyout to keep safe until such a time as I want to use it as a down payment for buying a house or apartment. I can't afford to take a loss on that money. And I'm worried long-term about the nation's unimaginable debt.

Which brings me to the topic of the election. The Republicans have gotten plenty of campaign fodder from the old saw about Democrats being "tax and spend liberals." But the past eight years of the Bush administration's fiscal policies have grown this country's debt to an inconceivable $10 trillion dollars. When you cut taxes, then fund two wars without end, you need to find the money to pay for it somewhere. Apparently we found it in China. My generation and future generations are going to pay for the sheer irresponsibility and mismanagement of the current administration. If I didn't have enough reasons to vote for Obama/Biden before this past month, I certainly have enough now. If nothing else, I believe that Obama affords us the best chance to repair our image overseas, extricate ourselves from Iraq, and get our financial crisis under control.

That turned into an unintentional rant, but I'm going to leave it there.

Brooklyn's free-for-all

There are few things in New York that are free for the taking. The New York Philharmonic provides free concerts in the parks, but only in the summer and you have to contend with large crowds and people chatting while the music plays. The Staten Island Ferry is always free, but who wants to go to Staten Island? The Tour de Bronx is a free bike ride around the city's only borough on the US mainland, but you have to ride around the Bronx.

When I lived on the Upper East Side, used furniture could be found for free on the sidewalk any day of the week. The beginning and end of the month were the best times to find a slightly-used bookcase or weathered-but-still-useful futon. A discriminating scavenger might be able to furnish an entire apartment with cast-offs if there was a run of good weather. (Rain tends to devalue items left on the street.) I took full advantage of this arrangement while I lived in the neighborhood. I still have a DVD shelf that I picked up from the trash room of my old apartment building, and I left my old love seat and several discarded pieces of office furniture on the street when I moved out. They were gone within hours.

In Park Slope in Brooklyn, it's possible to find a good deal on street furniture, but it's more likely that you'll find used books, CDs, and DVDs or videotapes on apartment stoops on any given day. Park Slope has an unofficial swap meet mentality. If you have a box full of old books that you don't want to keep but can't bear to give away, you leave them on the street outside your building. Other residents know that these books are free for the taking. I've seen lots of weekend stoop sales as well, but I don't know why anyone would bother with that when you can find the same junk a block away in someone else's castoffs.

The free stuff phenomenon isn't limited to the sidewalks. Residents in my apartment building leave old books and CDs on the mail-drop table just inside the main doors. Just this weekend someone left behind two or three boxes of books and stacks of CDs. The problem is that these are usually books or CDs that no one wants. Kate was excited to find what appeared to be a Peter Gabriel box set a few weeks ago, only to be disappointed when I read the box and discovered that it was actually an old PC game (for Windows 95!) with music by Peter Gabriel. She did pick up several CDs by The Rembrandts, none of which had the theme to "Friends." Most of the time the CDs are old, crappy albums by established stars or recordings by artists I've never heard of. Since I live in a building with families with small children, there are plenty of baby books and childrens' videos left behind. I've seen multiple copies of "What To Expect When You're Expecting" (possibly the same one getting passed around) and this weekend's offering included "The Baby Whisperer." I will admit to taking advantage of the book selection: I picked up "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis a few weeks back and I passed up a copy of William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" only because I already own it and lent it to a friend. Leaving stuff out for free is only putting off the inevitable trashing of said items. The superintendent takes whatever doesn't get picked up by fellow residents to the trash after a day or two.

However, this weekend in addition to the books and CDs someone left the armchair seen above. (Note the "free!" sign, just in case the placement wasn't clear.) Who could resist such a find? Alas, I was running out the door and didn't have time to think about how much I would want this chair, and when I got home it was gone. I'll have to get a faux-Victorian paisley-covered armchair somewhere else.

It's about time

When I heard that Matt Millen is out as the Detroit Lions president/GM, my first thought was this Simpsons quote (originally posed to Krusty the Klown):

"Why now? Why not five years ago?"

I think I said the same thing when the Knicks finally fired Isiah Thomas.

A close call this morning

I ride my bike in Prospect Park in the mornings a few days a week. A few weeks ago, another cyclist was killed at 8th Avenue and President Street when he tried to ride through a red light and a school bus speeding down 8th Avenue struck him. That intersection is on my way home from the park. I think about that accident on all my rides, but especially the morning ones when I might be slightly less alert from just having woken up. 8th Avenue is one-way and drivers tend to treat it like a highway. I've ridden home along 8th Avenue a few times and drivers have honked and shouted at me to get out of the way as they speed by. It's frightening.

However, this morning's near-miss was not at 8th Avenue, but at 5th Avenue, and it didn't involve a speeding car but a slow-moving one. I stopped at the light on the north side of 5th Avenue, waiting to cross and ride the last half-block to my building. There was another cyclist behind me listening to music on her iPod and singing along, and a car beside me. The light turned green and I started forward. That's when I saw a white car out of the corner of my left eye. I slammed on the brakes as a police cruiser eased past me through the intersection in what was a parking lane. The squad car hadn't been there a second before the light changed, which is why I hadn't noticed it. If I'd kept going the car would have hit me, albeit at about 5 MPH, but they still would have hit me. The cop car kept going down 5th Avenue, staying in the parking lane to get around another car in the traffic lane. As I rode down President Street, slightly shaken up, a minivan pulled up next to me and the driver said "I guess your life wasn't worth anything to them." I replied "They could have turned their lights on, at least." Someone behind us honked, and that was the end of our conversation.

I've had my share of close calls since I started riding in New York, but this was the first one with the police. I hope it's the last.

quick thoughts on the 2008 NYC Century

I had planned to write my usual long post about the Century, from waking up at 4:30 AM to riding across the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn, to finishing at 6:30 PM and getting home at 7:45 PM. But that's about the entire thing in a nutshell, and if you want a more detailed breakdown, you can read the write-up I did for last year's century or the year before.

One major difference in 2008 was that with my move to Brooklyn, I was no longer a few minutes from the start in Central Park. Instead of getting up at 5 AM and practically rolling out of bed to the start, I woke up a half-hour earlier in Park Slope, took my breakfast of granola and yogurt with me, and rode up 4th Avenue to the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street subway station. I got onto a 2 train with about half a dozen other cyclists in a similar situation and rode to the start that way. At 14th Street, a group of five late-night revelers got on the train, headed home after a night of drinking and clubbing. One of them said "you know, Entourage is on tomorrow night" and I smiled because for them it was still Saturday night, but for me it was Sunday. Hey, I'd had about four hours sleep and everything was funny to me in that state. These kids asked me about the ride and my bike and I did my best to explain it to them. One of them even said he'd do the ride next year. Although he was from Boston, so he said he'd ride down first.

The other big difference from previous Centuries was that this year it was hotter than I'd ever remembered. I'm used to the Century being on a hot day, but somehow it was worse than ever. I think the problem might have been the deceptively cool winds that blew for most of the morning and early afternoon. The wind gave me a misguided sense that the temperature was cooler than it actually was, and that I was cooler as a result. For the first 50 miles I didn't drink enough water. I started to bonk around mile 40 and continued to have weird heart palpitations for the next 20-30 miles. It wasn't until I started drinking faster and took a long break at Astoria Park that I began to feel better.

For the last 25 miles, the only problems were my legs, neck, and ass all aching, and the poorly marked turns in the Bronx. I don't want to point fingers, but it seemed that whoever was in charge of the road markings in the Bronx decided that since the route hadn't changed much, the markings didn't need to be repainted. At an intersection of two greenways (the Hutchinson River Parkway and Pelham Parkway) I had to make an executive decision as to which way to go. The turn wasn't marked on the ground, and the cue sheet wasn't clear. I was the de facto leader of a small group of riders (since I was a marshal) and some of them wanted to go straight ahead, arguing that if the turn wasn't clear the ride organizers must have meant for us to keep going. But the questionable left turn looked more inviting to me. Another marshal rode ahead to scout, but before he could get out of sight five riders came back towards him. They said they'd gone about two miles that way and decided it was the wrong way. So I announced that we were going left and hoped that we'd see another marking on the road. Luckily for me and my brave band, there was another arrow on the ground about 50 feet ahead, proving that we were on the correct path. There were a few more turns like that but those all looked familiar and had faded markings, so we made it to the last rest stop just before it closed at 5:30 PM.

After I'd finished the ride at 6:30 PM and claimed my free water bottle and t-shirt, it was time to go home. I could have taken the subway home and no one would have questioned my dedication to riding. I'd already put 100 miles on the bike that day. But I had decided that I was riding back to Brooklyn, so I rode through traffic on 5th Avenue and Broadway all the way back to the Manhattan Bridge. It was a harrowing experience given my weariness and the cars and buses, but I got home in one piece before it was too dark to see and be seen. Next year I'll get a few bike lights for the ride home, just to be safe.

Scenes from a Mystic wedding, part 2: Sunday and Monday

The wedding wasn't until late Sunday afternoon, but the day started early with a hair appointment for Kate. I slept in until 9:30 AM, then jumped out of bed when I remembered I might have been needed for sound equipment setup at the wedding site. When I hadn't received any phone calls about that job, I relaxed, got some breakfast, and enjoyed the morning. I made a sandwich run for the bridal party, then I helped Kate get ready and had some time to sit outside and read my book before I got dressed for the ceremony.

The wedding was a few miles away in Groton, CT, on the local branch campus of the University of Connecticut. The ceremony took place on a hillside overlooking the water, with a hupa made of sticks and fabric, and a long processional from the reception hall further up the hill. I had the job of running the sound board and trying to keep the wind from affecting the microphones worn by the groom and the rabbi. The reception was a great deal of fun: lots of drinking, dancing, eating, and opportunities for entertaining photographs. Part of the dessert spread was a fondue "trough," and I took full advantage and loaded my plate with cookies and cake covered with chocolate. It took all of my willpower not to stick my face directly into that trough and Hoover it clean. When the reception ended at 11 PM we returned to the hotel, took over the hospitality room, and continued the party into the wee hours. Or so I heard. I packed it in around 1 AM, but I understand that some people stayed up much later, tried to get into the adjacent pool area, and were sent away by hotel management.

We got up late on Monday morning for a farewell brunch. Kate had asked me on Saturday morning if I was OK with the idea of stopping at Abbott's Lobsters in the Rough on the way back on Monday, and of course I agreed. Fresh lobster? Are you kidding me? Put me down for two. We said our goodbyes, collected our baggage and another couple who needed a ride back to New York, and drove a few miles down the road to Abbott's in Noank. Abbott's has fresh steamed lobster, lobster rolls, steamed clams, mussels, clam chowder, and a few other things on the menu, all at reasonable prices. I had a lobster roll, some chowder, and split a plate of steamed clams with Kate. She had a 1 1/4 lb lobster dinner, and finished her meal by picking up the lobster head and telling it "You were so good!" And it was. Fully sated on seafood, we got on the road back to the city, leaving behind the land of cheap drinks, delicious saltwater cuisine, and unhappy service workers.

scenes from a Mystic wedding, part 1: Saturday

Kate and I traveled up to Mystic, CT, for a wedding over the Labor Day weekend. The groom was one of Kate's closest friends growing up, and she was a "groomsperson" in the wedding party. We drove up to Mystic on Saturday morning, leaving before 8 AM to try to get there in time for a schooner cruise around Mystic and the surrounding waterways. Along the way, I noted that my vaunted GPS had decided not to cooperate fully with our attempts to use it to navigate. It would only occasionally "acquire satellites," sometimes deigning not to see any in the sky just a few minutes after being locked on. At one point mid-morning it decided the current time was actually 8:45 PM, and it took several reboots to get the thing to switch back. Kate put up with my cursing my dysfunctional gadget, and my gadget addiction in general, and for that she is a trouper. Also, she knew the area around Mystic, so even without a fully functioning guidance system, we found the boat dock in time for the cruise.

The boat ride itself was fun once we got out onto the water and the rain stopped. But for most of the cruise a steady misting rain kept us all a little damp and chilled. Since it was August neither of us had thought to bring a jacket with us for the trip. Although the boat ride was the only time we would have needed the extra layer; the weather had improved dramatically by that evening. After the cruise we needed lunch and to do some last-minute shopping. We looked in vain for a decent dining option and when we found nothing promising, we went to The Ground Round. I don't think I'd been in a Ground Round since high school. I remembered this chain as the place where they showed old movies and gave you peanuts in the shell, and you could toss the empty peanut shells on the floor. This Ground Round had neither movies nor peanuts, but it did have the world's unhappiest bartender. The host seated us in the bar area, saying that they were busy and we'd get quicker service there. Even so, it took us almost a half-hour to get a sandwich and a salad. During our wait, the bartender complained every time the host put someone else in the bar, and, while trying to enter something in the register and talk to a poor soul applying for a job there, she told this man "could you stop talking for a minute? I can't get this drink order right with you talking to me."

Saturday night was the rehearsal dinner, followed by drinks at several bars in downtown Mystic. Mystic is a quaint resort-like town so the bar options were few and far-between: restaurants or an Irish pub. So we started with the Irish pub. It was obvious from the start that we were invading the locals' Saturday night hangout. Although I appreciated the cheap drinks and the bartender's heavy hand with the liquor, we were getting dirty looks from our fellow patrons. Things didn't improve when four of us decided to play pool on the 25-cent table in the back. We were almost done with our game when two gentlemen came over and made it clear they wanted the next game. They sat at the bar and glared at us for the next 20 minutes while we ineptly tried to finish our game. When Kate and I eventually won (on an 8-ball scratch by our opponents) these guys made a move for the table. That's when a group of girls approached them and pointed out that they had put their names on the whiteboard behind the pool table, which apparently gave them the rights to the next game. Their names had been on the board before we had started playing, so we assumed these girls were upset with us for cutting in line. But they hadn't appeared when we were playing, so we got away with a game. And it wasn't at all clear that the whiteboard was the pool table waiting list. The two guys who had been waiting went back to their seats at the bar and continued to glare at us. That's when our group decided to find another bar.

We moved the party down the street to a Mexican restaurant with strong margaritas, a sombrero we appropriated for the groom, and best of all, no unhappy patrons. About two hours later and many drinks later, six of us decided to go to Foxwoods. Our crowd was down to three girls and three guys, including the groom and one of his best friends. Kate had already retired for the evening so I was with a group of people that I didn't know that well. But when you're drinking, everyone's your friend. When we got to Foxwoods around 1:30 AM, the groom, his buddy, and his other girl friend who'd driven us there found a place at a craps table. The other two girls and I watched them play for a few minutes, then decided to walk around. After getting some food, they were ready to go home, and so was I. I'm not a casino fan. I don't gamble, I can see shows in New York, and I can't think of any other reasons I'd want to go to a casino. I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen by going there. I wasn't having a bad time, but I recognized that I was getting tired (I'd woken up at 7 AM and it was now 2:30 AM) and that if I stuck around until the groom and his friends were ready to leave, it might be a while and I'd get cranky. So we said goodnight to our friends (and our ride) and asked a security guard where we could get a cab. He pointed us toward the Grand Pequot side of the casino (visible only by signage from our location) and told us to find the valet at that entrance. What he neglected to say was that the Grand Pequot entrance was on the far side of the casino, so we walked for about 15 minutes to get there. The valet called us a cab, which blessedly appeared about 15 minutes earlier than she told me it would arrive. As soon as we were in the cab, the driver started complaining about the valet parking attendant who was taking his time moving the car in front of our cab. She said something nasty about his nationality. A few minutes later we saw a New York cab in front of us and she said something unpleasant about that cabdriver's presumed nation of origin. In other words, she was a flaming racist. We asked her about the types of people she picked up at the casino, and she told us about a drunk couple she'd taken home earlier that night. She said the husband was a fine fellow and she hadn't minded dropping him off, but the wife "talked about me like I wasn't even in the car" and she was offended. She told us she'd pulled over and ordered the wife out of the car, and that Connecticut law allowed her to do that. We were in the back woods at this point, and the three of us sitting in the back seat agreed with her so that she wouldn't find a reason to force us out of the car as well. I got back to my hotel at 3 AM. I found out the next morning that the groom and his friends got back at 4:30 AM, up $14 for the night after big gains and big losses when they started falling asleep at the table. Also, they hadn't seen any free alcoholic drinks while gambling, and one of them had a hot chocolate when he got cold. Had I known that, I might have stuck around. Who doesn't like free hot chocolate?

Computer problems on my vacation

On Monday morning I went to check my Windows desktop PC which I'd left on overnight. I found that it appeared to be dead. Moving the mouse didn't wake up the monitor from sleep mode and when I power-cycled the computer the monitor insisted that it had no signal. I opened the case and poked around. Everything looked OK inside. The PC was getting power because the optical drives' lights flickered when I turned it on, the fans came on, and the hard drive light worked. But I never got any POST messages or beeps indicating that the PC was trying to boot up. So it looked like the motherboard had died overnight. It's a three-year-old Dell PC that's out of warranty, and I bought my MacBook Pro to replace it, so it's no great loss. But it is now trash.

I wasted little time in dismembering the PC. I took out the hard drive, installed it in a USB enclosure, and used SuperDuper to clone my MacBook Pro to it. Now I have a spare, bootable copy of my Mac that I can run on any other Mac, or use to restore my system in a hurry if I have a hardware failure. This backup is in addition to the Time Machine backup drive that I keep at work. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm a zealot when it comes to data backup.) I might cannibalize the DVD drives as well, though I don't really need them.

I have another backup drive that I used to keep for the Windows PC. It now holds the last good backup of the PC, from just before my move to Brooklyn in July. I can access it from my Mac, but because it's in NTFS format, I can't write data to it from the Mac, I can only read it. I tried writing data from my Windows Vista VM on the Mac, but that didn't work either. If I want to edit that data or reformat the disk, I'll need another Windows PC. I could always bring home my work laptop and use that. Or I could take this as a sign that it's finally time to give Boot Camp a try and install Vista on the "bare metal" of my MacBook Pro. While I'd be able to access Windows resources natively with the Mac hardware, I'd lose 20-30 GB of hard drive space to my Windows installation. I've resisted that temptation until now, but without a reliable PC at home, I think my hand has been forced. But that will be a task for after my vacation. In order to use Boot Camp, I need to print out the software manual. However, my home printer has been out of order for a few weeks with ink cartridge issues. I need to replace the ink cartridges to get the printer working. So I'll have to wait to install Boot Camp until I go back to work after Labor Day, print out the instructions, then have a free day at home to play around. I love tinkering with my computers, so that sounds like a fine way to kill an afternoon.

the quest for pizza 2: cycling boogaloo

Sunday was the marshal training ride for the 2008 NYC Century. I've gone on the training ride three of the past four years, so I know what to expect:

don't make any other plans for ride day, or at least no plans before 8 PM
no matter what the mileage on the cue sheet says, expect to ride about 10%-20% further than that
expect the unexpected in terms of unanticipated delays

We met under the Brooklyn Bridge at 8 AM. There were about 20 cyclists, a few who looked familiar to me from rides past but most of them strangers. We got cue sheets from the organizer and at 8:45 we set off on the bulk of the 75-mile route. Pizza would be waiting for us at the end of the ride in Astoria Park, and we expected to get there by 3 PM.

By now I could do about half of the TA's route on auto-pilot -- they tend to use the same bike paths each year -- so I was trying to think of what the route would look like to a cyclist unfamiliar with Brooklyn and Queens streets. It wasn't easy. I've become such a graybeard cyclist that I hardly remember what it was like when I first started riding in the city. One of the biggest problems with the Century is always the road markings. TA volunteers do an outstanding job marking the route, to the point where some years I haven't had to use the cue sheet at all. But when you ride the route two weeks early, and not all the markings are there yet, you're going to run into problems. And that's what happened to us.

We were OK for roughly the first 25 miles, which took us to Canarsie Pier. Somewhere on the Shore Parkway bike path between Canarsie Pier and the turnoff to head north to Queens, the bike path was covered with sharp-edged broken sea shells. My tires had been fully inflated that morning but sometime in the afternoon when we were in Queens I noticed I'd developed a slow leak. I stopped a few times to pump up the tube but based on the holes in the tire I didn't think the air was helping much. The back tire continued to be a problem, and it was really impacting my ride.

Then we got lost in Alley Pond Park. We missed a turn somewhere and wound up near some ballfields asking passersby for directions. No one out there knew how to get back to numbered streets. My GPS wasn't any help either. It didn't work most of the time, and the few seconds when it did work it couldn't tell me anything more than that I was in Alley Pond Park. Thanks, Garmin! While one of our company patched a hole in his tube, the rest of the crew rode ahead to find the exit. They came back, minus one member, so we waited for him. He appeared about 15 minutes later, wondering where we were. He'd found the next turn out of the park and had been waiting there for us to arrive. Back on course, we were filled with confidence that we would soon be at Astoria Park and that our afternoon and evening plans were still safe. Alas, we were wrong.

We'd already had a two scheduled and two or three unscheduled rest stops. We had one more when my back tire gave out completely as we were crossing the Northern Boulevard Bridge. We pulled off onto "Unnamed Service Road" (that's what the cue sheet always calls it) and another rider and I took 15 minutes to change the tube in my tire. I'd seen this guy patch a tube already, and I guess I could have patched mine, but I just wanted to get back on the road so I opted to swap the tube and try patching the old one later on my own. I felt bad because I'd already thought about changing the tube, and I could have done it at one of the previous rest stops, but I'd decided to try to get home on the leaky tire and fix it on Monday. I won't make that mistake again.

By now it was late afternoon and we had about 10 miles to go to Astoria. To our credit, we only had to stop once more to help another of our company with his own tire issues. We arrived at Astoria Park about 5:30 PM. We did get some pizza, and even though it was cold, it was delicious. We shared our harrowing tales of woe and were comforted with the knowledge that our suggestions and corrections to the route would be taken into consideration over the next two weeks.

Then a few of us rode home through Long Island City, Williamsburg, and Fort Greene. I got back to Park Slope and my apartment at 7:15, almost 12 hours after I left. I rode 82 miles for the day, and my aching muscles feel it. But I also feel better prepared for the full 100 miles in two weeks. With a few more weekday laps in Prospect Park, I'll be in great shape.

Getting in the mood for football season, musically

If you're a football fan, then you've seen the NFL Films archives from the 1970s and 1980s narrated by John Facenda (of the "frozen tundra of Lambeau Field" fame). So you'd probably recognize the soundtrack to those films if you heard it. When I bought Madden '08 for the XBox last summer I loved how the old NFL films music played while you watched instant replays. I was browsing on eMusic the other day and came across this collection of music from the NFL Films series. All the classics are there: "Round Up," "Up She Rises," "Ramblin' Man from Gramblin'," and my personal favorite, "The Lineman." Listening to this music, I can picture slow-motion shots of the Raiders, Cowboys, and Steelers moving the football, catching passes and crushing their opponents. Last night for our fantasy football draft, my newfound friend Sam Spence provided the soundtrack as we made our picks and poked fun at everyone else's blunders.

I am now ready for some football.

Checking the calendar

The weather over the past weekend was so beautiful that I wondered if I'd slept through the rest of August and woken up sometime in late September. I'm used to the late summer months being filled with swelteringly hot days so the recent spate of low-80s temperatures, clear skies and cool breezes had me confused. I'm not complaining, and looking at the upcoming forecast it looks like warmer days are ahead, but I'm enjoying the weather while we have it.

I went for a long bike ride on Saturday afternoon to Floyd Bennett Field in southwest Brooklyn. Floyd Bennett Field was New York's first municipal airport, built in 1930 and used until the 1950s for commercial aviation and air freight. I'd been there several times before on NYC Century rides, but I'd only ridden through the parking lot and along one of the taxiways before heading out to the Rockaways on the ride route. This time FBF was my destination, and I took the time to explore the abandoned runways and see what I'd missed. Both main runways are intact, and cyclists (and motorists and motorcyclists) can ride the lengths and get the sense of what it would be like to ride along a busy runway at JFK. There's a section reserved for model airplane enthusiasts, and some windsurfers were taking advantage of another section of unused pavement to cruise in the breezes. I'd forgotten that one of the few remaining Concordes was parked out there, and I took a few photos with my cell phone camera. (A quick note about the phone's camera: I've had my Samsung SYNC for 18 months, so you'd think I'd know how to hold the camera to get wide shots. You'd be wrong. The camera takes photos lengthwise when it's held upright, and takes tall, narrow shots when you hold it sideways. In other words, what you're framing on the screen is not what you'll get when you take the shot. That's why all the photos from my FBF ride are "sideways.") I spent about 90 minutes exploring the old airfield, and I look forward to going back. Maybe I'll bring a kite next time, attach it to my bike, and see if it will pull me down the runway.

Requiem for a coffee mug

I've been at my job for a little more than eight years. During orientation on my first day in July 2000 I received a white coffee mug with a torch and the words "One Liberty" on it (I work at One Liberty Plaza downtown). Everyone got one. I don't remember who else started that day, but I'm sure they don't have their mugs anymore. I've drunk more cups of bad Filterfresh coffee from that mug than I care to remember. I've had my mug through two or three office moves. It survived 9/11. But it didn't survive a fall onto the kitchenette floor a few minutes ago. I was cleaning out the gunky residue from yesterday's Filterfresh brew when the mug slipped from my hands, bounced off the recycling bin and shattered on the floor. The handle broke into a few pieces, some more bits chipped off the rim, and there were shards of ceramic all over the floor. I didn't even look at the mug that closely before I threw it in the trash. I suppose I could have tried to glue it back together, but it's dead to me now.

So this is weird. It's not the loss of a mug: I've got several other coffee mugs both at work and at home, so it's easily replaced. Right now I'm drinking coffee from a mug that commemorates the firm's 60th anniversary two years ago. (For the anniversary, everyone on the admin staff received a mug and we had a reception in a conference room with wine and beer, while the attorneys had a lavish prom-like party at the AMNH.) But it feels like I've lost something that represented me when I started here as a cheerful 26-year-old who was still new to the city. I wasn't the experienced network administrator that I am now. I also wasn't the jaded graybeard that I seem to have become over the years. My boss at my last job used to say of the people who'd worked at that firm for years that they "knew where all the bodies are buried." I've started to feel like I'm that guy here. I haven't figured out yet whether that's good or bad or a mix. I might be ready for a job change soon, but since I don't know what that change might entail, I'm staying put.

Cooking in the new apartment

I ate most of my meals last week in restaurants, so when I had Friday night free I decided to stay home and cook. I had my heart set on a steak seared in my cast-iron skillet with tater tots on the side. (Hey, they're sort of like hash browns.) I turned up the oven and got the skillet ready, and turned on the air conditioners in both the living room and the bedroom. When I got the steak in the pan, it wasn't more than a minute before my entire living room filled with smoke and grease from the oil. I flipped the steak after a few minutes and threw the skillet in the oven, but that just made the smoke pour out of the oven instead. I cracked my apartment door to vent with the outside air, which helped a little. That's when the smoke detector in the hallway went off. I ran back into my apartment and grabbed a magazine to fan it. It stopped shrieking after about 30 seconds but not before my neighbor poked her head out her door to see wha was going on. She complimented me on the smell coming from my apartment. The dog in the next apartment over from hers kept barking so I'm not sure if he liked the steak aroma too or didn't like the noise. By now the steak was done and the tater tots were close, so I turned the oven down and put the steak on a plate to cool. My apartment was still filled with smoke. I had the brilliant idea that if I opened the doors to the outside and opened my door with the windows open I would circulate the air. Opening my door set off the hallway smoke detector again. After another attempt to silence it with the magazine, I gave up on clearing the air that way and went inside to eat. The steak was perfectly medium and delicious.

When I finished eating I cleaned up the stove, sprayed some air freshener and spritzed my couch with Febreeze. The smell wasn't so bad after the cleanup but it was still there. Also, I'd realized that my own smoke detector hadn't gone off while I was cooking, so I got up on my stepladder to check it. As I suspected, it didn't have a battery. Luckily for me, I had a spare 9V battery that I installed so next time I cook I'll hear all about it. Just before I fell asleep I remembered that my mother lights scented candles to clear the smell of potato latkes from the house. I should have tried that long before bedtime. I could still smell cooked meat when I went to bed.

The apartment still smelled this morning but it wasn't as strong as I'd feared. I tink it will fade in a day or two. The lesson I learned was that I shouldn't plan to do much frying in oil in that kitchen, unless I want to smell it for a week. Maybe I should take up baking instead.

There's no crying over this move

I made my last visit to my old apartment on Monday night. I've gone to the old place a few times in the past week getting my last few possessions out of there. It's only been three weeks since I moved out and somehow I already forgot how unpleasant the 4/5 trains are at rush hour. I had an empty gym bag with me to carry some small things back, and I got dirty looks from a few people that I accidentally bumped with the bag. When I rode those trains every day, I always wanted to sneer at someone who gave me a look like that and say "can't you see we're on a crowded train? I can't help bumping into you." Instead I said nothing and turned up the volume on my iPod.

Over the weekend I'd moved my old loveseat to the curb and the rest of my furniture was already removed so all that was left last night was my bike rack and some trash. I swept the floors and gave each room a quick look to make sure everything was gone. Then without any sentimentality I locked the door and got in my friend's car for the trip back to Brooklyn. I didn't have the time to linger, nor did I have the desire. One way that I can tell I've made the right choice in moving to my new apartment is that I haven't missed anything about the old one. The old apartment doesn't have any emotional pull for me, even though I spent five years living there and going through some significant life changes. After Liz moved out, I made it into more of a space that was my own, but the apartment never felt like it was entirely mine. My new apartment has been mine from the beginning of the process, and every decorating or furnishing choice has been mine (with some helpful hints from friends). My one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn may be smaller but it feels larger and infinitely more comfortable than the old apartment ever did. Maybe these feelings are just new-apartment newness, but I already feel like I belong in my new building. That kind of comfort hasn't ever happened this quickly after a move. I've always had a bit of longing for the old place and the old commute. But not this time.

I'm going to miss some things about my old neighborhood, like the proximity to the parks, the restaurants, and the convenience of having drugstores and big chains nearby. But I'm not going to miss that old apartment. After I moved out, I saw how run down the old building really is. It's falling apart. The floors in my old apartment already sloped down from the walls to the center of each room, but without any furniture the slope feels more pronounced. When I looked out of the bedroom window I could see cracks that weren't there five years ago when I moved in. My building is settling and pulling away from the building next door. And one of the windows across from my bedroom has been shored up with pieces of wood. I'm glad to get out of there now, before anything bad happens.

Back at the new apartment, I've moved some of my non-essential belongings into my basement storage room. I'm trying to be less of a pack rat, so I'm not keeping anything that I don't absolutely need. The things in the storage room aren't essential, but they're not junk either. I've put my bike in there on the bike rack I've had since I moved to New York, so that gives me more floor space as well as room for another bike if I have a guest who rides over (or if I buy another bike someday). And I have started the process of hanging up my pictures. Within a week the place will look like I've lived there for years.

Living in a fishbowl

I'm still getting adjusted to living on the first floor with windows that look right onto the street. My windows are on the north side of the building so I get light all day long but never direct sunlight, so the apartment stays relatively cool without the air conditioners running. (I run my A/C all the time when I'm home anyway.) But with no gap between my windows and the sidewalk, I get a front-row seat for everyone who walks by. I can see them, and if it's after dark and I have the shades up, they can see me too. Two weeks ago I had the day off to get my cable modem replaced, and I had the shades up all afternoon. If I hadn't had a clock, I could have told the time by the amount of foot traffic outside. I'm half a block from the Union Street stop on the M/R lines and starting in the late afternoon there's a constant flow of people walking up President Street from the subway. I don't mind the people walking by, even when they stop outside my window and talk. If it's late at night and I'm trying to sleep, I just turn up the fan on the air conditioner and drown them out. And that's only happened once. There's nothing that interesting on the sidewalk outside for people to stop and chat for long.

What I'm not so happy about are the people who don't realize someone lives here. On that afternoon I was home, one of my neighbors stepped outside for a cigarette and stood right in front of my window. At least she had the decency to look toward the street instead of right in my window. Then on Sunday night I had the shades open while I was making dinner. A food delivery guy rode up and chained his bike to the metal bars guarding my air conditioner. That wasn't cool. There have been a few other times when people unloading their cars or waiting outside the building door have stood in front of my window.

The point is that I don't care if you're walking by, but if you can help it at all, please don't stop, stand, peer in, or otherwise pause in front of my windows. I'm thinking about putting a sign in the window that says "Please move along. I live here." However, I know I live in New York, and it wouldn't make any difference. In fact, it would probably make things worse and invite people to do stupid things. I'll just keep the shades down at night.

I am so there

West Side Story is coming back to Broadway!

Gadget lust (and it's not for what you think)

I'm not getting an iPhone. Not yet, anyway.

I want a GPS receiver. Last weekend we went to a wedding on the north shore of Long Island, and since we had access to a car we drove there and back. We had directions from Google as well as the wedding location's own directions, so I thought we would be OK. For the most part, we were. But we made a wrong turn on the way there and had to call the place to get back onto the correct route. And the trip home was nearly a disaster. The combination of the lateness of the hour (after midnight) and the dark back roads had us all screwed up and wondering if we'd ever get back to civilization. One thing I noticed early on was that streets and even major highways out on Long Island are marked with the smallest possible street signs, and always on the opposite corner from where we were. We missed several turns because I couldn't read the street signs until we were nearly on top of them. I had my Blackberry and my cell phone with me, and both of them have Google Maps installed, but I couldn't get a signal on either one until we'd figured out our wrong turns and found the correct route. I kept thinking that if I'd had a GPS receiver I would have been able to program the directions and we wouldn't have been driving around in the dark for the better part of two hours. I've used GPS receivers before and while I've had fair to good results with them, I had no doubts at the time that one would have at least shown us that we were on the wrong road. Also, I've wanted one for cycling for a few years. I do most of my riding on city streets and seldom get lost, but it would be great to have a GPS receiver to confirm the mileage on my bike computer, as well as find my way around when I'm in unfamiliar neighborhoods. And I can always use another gadget.

I'm looking at a Garmin nuvi receiver on Amazon.com that would fit my needs. It's small enough to fit in a pocket or in my Camelbak but comes with the same turn-based directions and maps that I'm familiar with. I don't need MP3 or photo storage, but those are throw-ins that I don't think I can avoid. I've got another wedding on Long Island in a few weeks, so if I'm going to buy it I should order it soon. As with most gadget purchases, I'll think about it for another few days and see how desperate I get. But I think I'm going to do this. I think that there's always a technical solution to a problem, and I like to be prepared for any eventuality. I don't see how I won't end up buying one.

Not quite home yet

For the past few days, I've noticed a weird feeling I get whenever I'm at home in my new apartment. It was a familiar sensation of being in an unfamiliar place, but a place that was entirely my own. At first I thought I was just lonely after having a procession of movers, cable TV installers, and Kate here for company over the weekend. But when the feeling persisted into the week, and when it was strongest when I first came in the door, I remembered where and when I'd had this feeling before.

In August 1996 I moved into the one-bedroom apartment near Dupont Circle that Liz and I shared for three years. For the first two weeks, I lived there by myself, surrounded by boxes and only the furniture that came with the apartment. I didn't even have a TV yet. I certainly didn't have the Internet (though I did have a phone line, and a computer with a modem). For those first few weeks, the only light in the living room came from the fluorescent light in the kitchen, which gave the rest of the living room an odd glow. I didn't spend much time there by myself. Liz was in Los Angeles for business when I moved our things into the apartment, and she came back to DC after those two weeks and we furnished and decorated it together.

My new apartment has a fluorescent light in the kitchen that gives the rest of the living room that same odd glow when it's the primary light source. But I also have a floor lamp that compensates and adds a more natural light to the room. I'm surrounded by boxes, but the furniture in here is all mine. It's all the same furniture I had in the Manhattan apartment so it's familiar and comforting. I don't have any Internet service right now except for my cell phone as a modem, so I feel cut off while I'm at home. (I SHOULD have cable Internet right now, but that's a different rant.)

All of these things combined to give me that same sense of being out of place in a place that should feel like home. Once I realized what I was feeling, I took control of it and reminded myself that eventually this apartment will feel like home. It just takes time. Gradually the boxes will disappear and I'll come home, sit on my couch, and watch TV without even thinking that I'm in a new place. Because it won't be new anymore.

I'm moved in, and I'm worn out

Moving day started early on Saturday morning. I woke up just before my alarm at 7 AM and got a few last-minute things unplugged and ready for the movers. I was out getting donuts and coffee when the movers showed up right on the dot at 8 AM. I gave them a few directions (pack this, don't pack that) and tried to stay out of the way while the four of them each took a room and packed it. Kate was there for cat-wrangling and moral support, but she didn't like sitting around and not doing anything while the movers were working, so she retreated to Starbucks for an hour. I think the foreman woke up my neighbors at 8:30 when he found my shofar and tried a few tekiahs and teruahs. By 10:30 AM the truck was loaded and ready to go, and we got the cats into their carriers for the cab ride to Brooklyn and the new apartment. The movers showed up about 10 minutes after we got the cats settled in, and by noon the moving part was over. I got the kitchen set up while Time Warner hooked up my cable TV and Internet, then unpacked the bedroom in the evening. Then we watched "Deadliest Catch" and I promised to think about those guys when I'm complaining about my cushy desk job.

On Sunday I went back to Manhattan to clean up the old apartment and retrieve a few things the movers had missed (like my silverware and the food in my old refrigerator). I nearly wore out my shoulders hauling two bags of food and other odds and ends on the subway. I could have taken a cab, but that would have cost $30, and I don't think I had $30 of food in my bags. So I carried it. At this point the entertainment center is all set up, as is the computer in my bedroom/office. The one casualty so far is my old set of computer speakers. One of the cables got bent out of shape when it got packed, and now the lights flicker and I don't get any audio. The speakers are 10 years old and have been giving me trouble for years, so it's time to replace them anyway. Everything else seems to have made the trip without trouble. Now I can take my time unpacking my books and CDs and getting settled. I love my new apartment and my new neighborhood, and I can't wait to see what else is around here.

Countdown to moving day: 3 days to go

I picked up the keys to the new apartment this morning.  It's about a 20 minute walk from Kate's apartment, and about 15 minutes from the YMCA on 9th Street.  With the astoundingly fantastic neighborhood, the location just keeps getting better and better.  I met my new super, who seems like a good guy.  He grew up in the neighborhood and takes pride in the security of his buildings, which put me at ease.  Everything in the apartment itself was working, including both air conditioners, the refrigerator, and the oven.  I checked out the cabinets and the closets, and I still think I'll be able to get all of my things into the space without too much difficulty.  It will be crowded for a few weeks while I unpack but I'll manage. 

There is one not-so-small problem, and that is the lack of a storage room.  Both the broker and the landlord assured me that the apartment came with a 5'x5' storage room in the basement.  The extra storage became a big factor in my decision to take that apartment rather than continue looking for something else.  But this morning when I asked the super where the storage rooms were, he said my apartment was one of two that didn't come with a storage room.  He showed me a few places in the basement where I could keep my bike, and assured me that both of them were secure and that I didn't need to worry about my bike being stolen.  However, neither location is a substitute for a storage room where I could put things like my folding dining chairs, my cat carriers, or anything else I don't need every day.  I called my new landlord but he's on vacation until Monday.  Now the missing storage room isn't a show-stopper.  I have too much stuff as it is. But I'd been counting on having some extra space, so I'm disappointed.  I hope I can fit everything I'm keeping into the space I have.  I managed to fit too much stuff into my old apartment in Greenwich Village, so I'm sure I can manage.  I just don't want to feel cramped.

Something different on a Saturday night

"So when are we meeting up to go to the Roller Derby?"

Those are words I never expected to utter, but that's what I said on the phone with Kate on Saturday afternoon as we were planning our night. Two of her roommates are on the Queens of Pain team in the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league, and on Saturday evening we went to the gym at Hunter College to see them play the Brooklyn Bombshells. I had never seen roller derby before, so I had no idea what I was going to see. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had.

The entertainment started early. Since it takes a while to get through the metal detectors and security at Hunter College, and because the league likes to raise money, they played bingo to pass the 90 minutes or so between opening the doors and starting the bout. They also sold tickets to a 50-50 raffle and talked about the halftime entertainment. The bout started at 8:30 PM and I was lost for the first few minutes. Actually, I was lost for most of the night, but gradually I figured out how the game worked. The bout has two 30-minute halves. The players rotate in and out of the game during stoppages, sort of like a hockey lineup. Each "jam" is about two minutes and features a "jammer" from each team wearing a star on their helmet. Everyone skates counterclockwise (turning left as in NASCAR) and the jammers have to work their way through the pack (the blockers) and pass everyone from the other team in order to score points. There are penalties, injuries, and strategies, some of which I understood but most were lost on me. Queens jumped out to an early lead and at halftime was up by 30 points. But they had a few injured players so the team had to double-shift, which wore them down as the game went on. After a halftime show of bicycle polo and a cheerleader performance, Brooklyn chipped away at the lead and got it under 30 before Queens managed to hold on for the win. They did so in front of a packed gym full of Brooklyn supporters, who cheered lustily for their team. I was shocked to see a full gym on a summer Saturday night, filled with people who were as into the game as this crowd was. Kate cheered for her friends and yelled at the referees on questionable penalty calls the same way she yells at the TV during Yankee games, which I thought was funny. I guess sports are sports.

At the end of the night we congratulated Kate's roommates and then went in search of food and drink, which we found at a nearby pub. We all had such a good time that we're definitely going back. Next time I'll even know where to sit and what kind of photos to take.

Goin' home

Well, that was fun. But all good things must come to an end, and I'm on my way back to New York. I had a good time in Florida. I learned a few things about the product we use, I learned a few things about myself (mostly, that I'm 34 going on 74), I saw more fake breasts than I've ever seen before, and I got to relax on the beach and eat some great meals.

The conference ended last night around 8 PM, after a largely disappointing closing reception (not enough food, badly lit room). One of my former co-workers lives in the Miami area, and he met us at the hotel for dinner. We wanted to stay close by, but a consensus soon developed around the idea of going to the Hard Rock Casino on a nearby Seminole reservation. We had a bit of trouble finding the place, but once we saw the lights from the highway we couldn't miss it. I'd only ever been to casinos in Las Vegas, so I was curious if the typical Florida casino patron is of the same species as the Nevada variety. The casino is next to an outdoor shopping mall with a few restaurants, so we chose TATU, an Asian restaurant, for dinner. (No relation to the Russian pop duo, apparently.) I don't know if the place was a chain or a one-off, but the food was excellent. It was some of the best pad thai I've ever had. After dinner we went to the casino itself to see if we could find some of our friends. I was not surprised or disappointed to find that my anthropological theory was correct. There were plenty of old ladies (and old guys) in Members Only jackets chain-smoking in front of slot machines. There were also plenty of beautiful and surgically-enhanced women wandering around, but that didn't help with the depressing impression I had. I didn't like the casinos in Las Vegas, at least not the gambling parts of them, so I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything better from the Hard Rock. In any case we hadn't intended to gamble, and we couldn't find our friends, and it was after midnight and everyone else hadn't slept the night before, so we went back to our hotel.

Back in my room, I found that I'd somehow screwed up my Mac earlier in the day. I had no afternoon sessions to attend so I'd hoped to get down to the beach one more time before I left. But the afternoon thunderstorms that had held off most of the week appeared on schedule at 3 PM, and that put the damper on my beach plans. I went back to my room and read some blogs and tinkered with the Mac. I discovered via the system logs that the Mac was trying to load some software that I thought I'd uninstalled, and that some components of the software were still running. I found a tech support site that told me how to unload everything, and I rebooted and the Mac was fine. Then I went out for the night. When I got back to the room and plugged in my camera, the Mac was sluggish and unresponsive, so I rebooted it again. That's when things really got weird. The Dock crashed and Finder wouldn't load. I took a few deep breaths and didn't panic. What was the worst thing that would happen? I'd have a sad Mac to take home and fix back in my apartment, and I'd have to run to the office over the weekend to pick up my backup drive to restore my data. I rebooted in Safe Mode and OS X came up properly, and after a few minutes of checking some things I rebooted normally. So far (fingers crossed) the Mac has been fine since 2 AM last night. If I have any problems after this I have the Mac OS X DVD at home to help me through my troubles. Besides, I have TV on the plane so it's not like I NEED to use the Mac on the flight. I think I'll be OK.

I should have brought my thongs

I got out of my afternoon sessions a bit early so I decided not to wait and hit the pool and the beach this afternoon. And it was glorious. The pool was refreshing, but the ocean was warm and surprisingly not that deep. I walked a long way out and the water never got above my waist. I played around in the water until I got prune hands and the sun went behind some ominous-looking clouds, but I had a fantastic time. I wish I'd thought to bring my flip-flops, though, as I think I'll end up with sand in my sneakers if I keep wearing them to the beach. But that's a small price to pay to play in the ocean and hang out by the pool.

My first business trip in two years

This week I'm in Hollywood, FL, near Fort Lauderdale and Miami, for an accounting systems user conference. For the past year or so I've been the backup IT administrator for our Unix-based accounting system at work, and one of the privileges (or drawbacks) to that role is that I get to go to the annual conference for this particular system. Last year it was in Vegas, this year it's in Florida. So far it's been a relatively uneventful trip. My flight landed at the Ft. Lauderdale airport just before a major thunderstorm stalled over the field, so we sat on the tarmac for 90 minutes while the airport shut down to wait out the storm. Once I got to the gate, I had another hour-long wait for my luggage. But by late afternoon I was sitting in my room enjoying the ocean view from my balcony and watching another thunderstorm roll by. Tomorrow morning my plan is to get up and work out, then go to the beach and/or the pool before going to a some tutorials in the afternoon. This trip is as close as I'm getting to a beach vacation for a while, so I'm going to try to make the most of it while I'm here.

Moving sucks

I'm in the process of sorting my possessions into "keep," "trash," and "sell/donate" piles. So far it's been slow going. I'm moving on July 5, but I have the old apartment until July 31, so I can afford to leave some of my things there while I wait for them to sell on eBay or Craigslist, or for HousingWorks or The Salvation Army to pick them up. But I need to remember that after I've moved to Brooklyn, I won't want to shlep to the Upper East Side to take care of business. When I moved to the UES from the Village I still had my old apartment for three weeks, and I had to stop there occasionally to pick things up or meet with a broker in my unsuccessful attempt to find a new tenant for my lease. Those evenings were not fun, especially during a heat wave. So the more things I can get rid of in the next two weeks, the less I will have to stop by after July 5.

Tim Russert

I was so shocked and saddened to hear about the death of Tim Russert on Friday afternoon. I've watched Meet the Press for years, mostly because of the wonderful job Russert did as moderator. I've had it programmed into my DVR almost since the day I got it. I found Russert entertaining, engaging, and above all the most well-informed and passionate analyst of the political landscape. I also enjoyed seeing him at 7 AM on the Today show in his role as Washington bureau chief whenever there was a breaking story in the capital. You could tell that he really loved doing what he did, and that there was no other place he'd rather be than at the center of the storm. Watching him with that whiteboard during election night coverage always made me smile. No matter what other technology the network deployed, Russert relied on that whiteboard, and often he had more accurate information to pass along than the computers did. I don't know what's going to happen to Meet the Press now. It's going to continue, of course, but no one can fill his shoes.

And, it's over

I saw another apartment on Friday evening that I really liked right away, and the next thing I knew, I was filling out the paperwork and texting my friends to let them know I was using them as references. One credit check later, I had an agreement to sign a lease on Sunday afternoon. This afternoon at 2 I was back in the broker's office signing the lease with the landlord and although I am now somewhat poorer than I was on Friday, I have a new apartment for the next two years. I'll be living on President Street in Park Slope in Brooklyn, between 4th and 5th Avenues. The apartment is considerably smaller than my two-bedroom on 1st Avenue in Manhattan, but I think I can shrink the amount of stuff I have to fit into the new space. I have a lot of junk I've been storing in my spare room that needs to go on Craigslist or eBay or be given away. My new apartment includes two air conditioners so I'll be getting rid of the ones I have. It also has laundry machines in the basement, as well as a private storage room for each apartment. When I heard about the storage, I was sold. Keeping my bike in my apartment has been an issue since I moved to New York. It's out of the way in the office but it still takes up valuable space. In the new apartment I'll be able to put it in the basement storage room and free up some space in the apartment proper. I even get a dishwasher! I haven't had one of those since I left DC. The only drawback to the apartment is that it's on the ground floor, with the sidewalk right outside. I'll have to be careful about what I leave out in my living room and when I leave my windows open. The landlord and broker assured me that the building is secure and that nothing short of stupidity (like leaving the windows open and my laptop out) would lead to theft. I hope they're right. I signed a two-year lease, because I knew I wouldn't want to move again next July.

After I signed the lease I spent some time walking around my new neighborhood and checking out the stores and restaurants. I already loved the area, having explored some of it with Kate over the past few months (she lives about 15 blocks away on the other side of Park Slope). I'm close to the subway to get to work, and getting home from rehearsals on Thursday nights shouldn't be an issue. Although with the longer commute I will probably not stay out for drinks as often as I do now. But I'm really excited about the move. I don't look forward to all the work I have to do here to clean out my unnecessary things but when I'm done I will have a much smaller version of myself to move, as an old roommate once said of himself.

It begins...

...and hopefully ends quickly. My Brooklyn apartment search starts this evening. It's the first time I've done this completely on my own, so I'm a little nervous. But I know what I'm looking for and so I hope I'll find something that suits my needs and my budget, and that I can have the whole process wrapped up before I go on a business trip the last week of June. Then I can move at my convenience sometime in July.

However, these things rarely go according to plan.

Game 5

I should have gone to bed by midnight last night. I'd gone to bed late on Sunday night and suffered for it all day Monday. By the time I left work, I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to eat a quick dinner, watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final between Detroit and Pittsburgh, and go to bed. However, the hockey gods had something else in mind last night.

After the 1st period, I was cautiously optimistic that the Penguins could hold on to their lead. They haven't looked as good in the Finals as they did cruising through the Eastern Conference playoffs, but last night they owned the 1st period. The Red Wings cut the lead to 2-1 in the 2nd period, but I still had hope that I'd see a game 6 on Wednesday. In the 3rd period, two quick goals by the Wings put them minutes away from winning the Cup on home ice and ending the season for Pittsburgh. I started thinking about the groveling messages I'd have to leave for James and my Deadspin friends from Detroit. Then, with time running out, Max Talbot put a rebound past Chris Osgood and tied the game at 3-3. We're going to OT.

I spent the next two hours trying to stay calm and not panic every time the puck was in the Penguins' zone, or on every shot that Marc-Andre Fleury faced. On each one I saw for a brief second the end of the game. Likewise, when the Penguins managed to get the puck into the Wings' zone, I saw them extending the series on each shot. Also, the combination of being tired and excited had me all kinds of punchy. When the announcers said that Petr Sykora said he'd score the game-winner I thought he played for the Wings. It took me a few minutes to remember he was on my team. And at 12:45 AM, Sykora got a centering pass from Evgeni Malkin and shot the puck past Osgood to win the game. I may have woken up my neighbors with my screaming. It was one of the most exciting hockey games I've ever seen.

Now the series goes back to Pittsburgh for Game 6 on Wednesday night. I know the Red Wings are still favored to win the whole thing, but I'm just glad I get to see at least one more hockey game this season. I think the Penguins are more confident now and will give them another game to remember. And I'm really excited about the future of the Penguins. These young players have grown up tremendously during this playoff run. They have a bright future ahead of them.

Another crane collapse?!

Let's get the important things out of the way first. I'm OK. My apartment is OK. My cats are fine.

Another Manhattan construction crane collapsed this morning around 8 AM. The last one was in east midtown back in March, but this time it was at 1st Ave and 91st Street, which is two blocks north of my apartment. I didn't hear anything so it must have happened while I was in the shower. But I heard the sirens and saw the traffic outside. My first thought was "this is why I need to move to Brooklyn: less traffic and fewer sirens in Park Slope." Then a friend texted me asking if I was OK after the crane collapse. I turned off last night's Colbert Report and turned on the Today show and watched a few minutes of Matt Lauer before they switched to the local news which showed the live footage from the helicopters I could hear hovering over the accident. I called my girlfriend and my parents to let them know I was OK, then I finished getting ready for work and went outside. 1st Avenue was a mess. There were emergency vehicles everywhere and people like me gawking at the disaster. I thought the city inspected all the cranes after the last crane fell down a few months ago. Maybe they didn't check them all, or maybe they didn't check the connections between the cab and the base (which looks like what broke in this case). Or maybe it's just an accident.

I can't help thinking that the demand for new high-rise apartment buildings for rich people who want to live in Manhattan is driving fast construction which leads to sloppy work and accidents like this. We have cranes falling on city streets killing people. I hope this collapse leads to a larger-scale reevaluation of the pace of construction in Manhattan but I doubt it will. It's a business. Who cares if a few construction workers or a couple of people on the street get killed? That's just the cost of doing business in the city. Besides, those people wouldn't have been able to afford to live in the new building anyway, so what do their lives matter?

The best thing I overheard this week

On Monday night Kate and I were on our way back from a weekend in the Washington, DC, area by way of Stamford. Since we were on a late train back to Grand Central I decided we should take a cab home instead of lugging our stuff on the subway. As we approached the exit to 42nd Street we heard the sound of a driver leaning on their car horn. We walked through the doors just as the horn stopped and we heard a pedestrian screaming something at a cab driver. The pedestrian was trying to light a cigarette and kept shouting "It's illegal in the city! It's illegal in the city!" Then he looked at the driver and said "You wanna get out and fight?" I should point out that the cigarette smoking guy was about 140 lbs and 5'8", though the driver didn't look any bigger. After another "it's fucking illegal in the city to honk your horn!" the smoker told the driver, and I quote, "Go back to your fucking country!"

Kate's response: "Welcome back to New York."

I love this town.

I don't know where my head is lately

I should preface this story by pointing out that except for last night, when I slept about 7 hours, I'd slept less than 6 hours each night for the past three or four nights, and I don't think I've been eating properly for a few days. So sleep deprivation and a change in diet might explain what's been going on with my brain lately.

I had a weird trip home from work tonight. I left the office about 6:30 and got on a 5 train, which was good because if there was a Yankee game tonight the 4 train would be crowded but the 5 would not. I got out my iPod and put on Bob Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home," which I haven't listened to in a long time. I was thinking about what I had to do tonight: buy groceries, call a friend who's going to cat-sit for me this weekend, watch some TV, get ready for work tomorrow, talk to Kate, and go to bed early. For some reason I decided to play solitaire on my iPod, something else I haven't done in a long time. I thought I was keeping track of the stops, but I must have been "in the zone" because when I looked up I saw that the next stop was 125th Street, one stop past mine. I still think I was in some sort of time warp, because I've been riding the 4/5 trains for five years and I've missed my stop only once or twice before. I was a little freaked out at my mistake, but I switched tracks at 125th Street and got on a downtown 4 train and got out at 86th Street.

I started walking home when I realized that I had forgotten my Macbook Pro's power supply on my desk at the office. (I realize that I could do without bringing the Mac to work every day, but I have been using it to test the Lotus Notes client for Mac, and it's fun to have at work anyway, so I bring it each day.) I've been making this trip with the Mac since I got it in February, and I hadn't forgotten the power supply before. I was cursing my absent-minded, hunger-addled and sleep-deprived brain when I remembered that I could just buy a spare power supply at Best Buy back at 86th and Lexington. So I turned around and walked back. I had been thinking that I should just get a spare power supply anyway so I wouldn't have to worry about carrying one to work each day, so I didn't really mind paying for another one. When I got to Best Buy I was still thinking about how dumb I was when I realized that I was halfway down the stairs into the subway station again. Now that was me operating on pure muscle memory. I go into that subway station at least once a day on my way to work and sometimes twice if it's a busy travel day, so that's why some part of my animal nervous system ignored my brain and assumed that was where I wanted to go. I turned around again and walked into Best Buy and got my spare power supply.

Three hours later, I feel much better after eating dinner and relaxing. I plan to get more sleep this week and eat right and try to exercise and hopefully that will put things right in my head. It's hard enough to get through my day when my brain is operating at peak efficiency. When I'm suffering from self-induced ADD, I'm not doing myself any favors.

UPDATE: The NYPD killed the raccoon

Gothamist updated yesterday's story about the raccoon in the tree to note that the raccoon had to be euthanized after NY's finest shot it with tranquilizer darts. As I expected, the officers thought the raccoon might be rabid, so they shot it. The darts penetrated the raccoon too deeply and couldn't be removed, so Animal Control euthanized it after it fell from the tree. It's too bad, because it sounds like Animal Control would have returned the raccoon to Central Park or Carl Schurz Park or somewhere else in the city where it's supposed to live. Also, according to the Post story, it's not clear if the NYPD called Animal Control to check the situation before they went after the raccoon with darts.

The NYPD has a bad animal rescue track record in the past few weeks. They fished a lost badger out of the East River, only to have the badger die later. They caught a coyote in Central Park a few months ago and it died before they could transport it upstate. I think the moral of the story is that if your cat gets stuck in a tree, don't call the NYPD unless you want a dead cat.

Seen this morning on the UES...

There was a small crowd of people and a few police cars at the east side of the intersection of 1st Avenue and 88th Street this morning when I left for work. I couldn't see what they were all looking at, and when I saw scaffolding on the side of one building on 88th Street, I assumed some poor soul had fallen off the building while working, or that there was a problem at the high school just down the block. There was a guy watching the proceedings from my side of the street, so I asked him what was going on. He said there was a raccoon stuck in a tree and the police were there to get it down. The NYPD had deployed the ultra-sophisticated water hose displacement system in order to persuade the raccoon to vacate its lofty perch. I crossed 1st Avenue to get a better look and took some photos, which Gothamist was kind enough to mention in a post earlier this afternoon. My reaction this morning was a Stephen Colbert-esque "ooh, he's so cute!" However, I don't feel as happy after reading one Gothamist commenter's observation that if the raccoon was out during the day it was probably sick and possibly rabid. So the little guy (or girl) most likely met with a sad end once the cops got it out of the tree. Godspeed, little raccoon buddy. You were too beautiful for this world.

updating last night's tech post

I had no problems installing the new RAM in my Macbook, but I had some trouble installing my slightly-used RAM in Kate's Macbook. Her laptop refused to boot at first, so I had to take it apart again, remove half the RAM, close it up, reboot (it worked), then open it up again, insert the other RAM chip, close it, reboot (it didn't work), then swap the two chips. This time it booted up and recognized all 2 GB of memory, and it booted about four times as fast as it had before. When I left the laptop it was happily running multiple applications and playing a video podcast. I was a little worried that it wouldn't boot up another time, but so far I haven't heard of any problems with it.

This afternoon I switched back to Google Reader for my RSS feeds. I didn't have any problems for most of the day, but around 4 PM Firefox refused to play any Youtube videos so I restarted the application. When I went back to Google Reader it had marked 90% of my unread blog items as read. That wasn't a total disaster, as I wasn't going to read those 600 Slashdot posts anyway. But it seemed like a bad omen. It didn't drive me back to NetNewsWire, though. I'm going to stick with Google Reader for now, but I'll keep NNW around in case I want to give it another try.

Editor's Note: I intend to write more in this forum starting now. I've slacked off recently, but writing is one of the things in life that makes me happy and I can always use more happiness. So look for more posts from me from now on. I may take things in a more technical direction, so please bear with me. Content is content, and I'll try to make things funny when appropriate.

A minor upgrade, some other tech thoughts

I splurged a bit the other day and bought extra RAM for my Macbook Pro. While I hadn't exhausted the 2 GB I started with, I realized that for about $100 I could double the RAM and have plenty of overhead for a virtual machine or three. And I can give the RAM that came with my Mac to Kate, who only has 512 MB in hers.

I'm trying out NetNewsWire, a RSS reader for the Mac. I've been a happy Google Reader user for three or four years, but I hear good things about standalone RSS reader apps now and then, so I thought I'd give one a try. It's OK, but I miss Google Reader. I think I'm too used to doing everything in the browser. I had the same problem when I tried using Apple's Mail app instead of Gmail in the browser. It's just not the same. The only thing I like is the Growl notification when my feeds update, but even then I feel like I need to switch to the reader and check them out immediately. I think I'll switch back to Google Reader in another day or so.

I installed one of those newfangled flourescent bulbs in my living room the other day. It's dimmer when the light first turns on, but after that it's as bright if not brighter than the previous incandescent bulb. And I think the power savings made my overhead ceiling fan run faster. When the weather gets warmer I'll have to check that out in greater detail.

Can't watch this

With Leather posted this video of Myron Cope performing a parody of MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This" about the Pittsburgh Pirates, presumably circa 1990-1992. I loved Myron Cope and everything he did, but wow, this one is hard to sit through. I especially enjoyed the part about halfway through where he devolves from "can't touch this" into unintelligible muttering. Also, a man in his mid-60s shouldn't wear a jacket with no shirt, not even for a parody video.