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New York, Day 1, Part 1

So here’s the plan. We’re spending two days in New York City, so I’m breaking this up for the site. This post is about today, the first day. Tomorrow’s will, obviously, be about tomorrow.

While we’re spending Tuesday and Wednesday in New York City, I’m rationing out the rest of the pictures and details to get the site to the weekend. Everybody got that? Can someone explain it to me?

The sign at the train station. The Yankee’s dad dropped us off. We were running behind, but not so much as other people, apparently.

We made it into the city with no trouble. Got off at Grand Central, showed Wendy around the station, remember, she’s never been to New York. We walk outside and … these are the first four pictures I took of her and sent home to her mother. The top picture is the first thing she saw in Manhattan. Go figure.

If you’re curious, I created that little image with a handy little free app called Diptic. I enjoy it very much.

Anyway, one of the things Wendy had on her list was to see the Statue of Liberty, of course. So we hopped a bus and walked up to the Circle Line to take the tour.

This was my fourth trip in front of the statue, now, and each time I (still) have this little feeling of surprise at the thought of being there. There are a lot of places and things in the world that I admire from afar without having ever seriously considered the opportunity to see, but here’s one, and here we are.

The Yankee takes a picture. I bought those rings from Wendy’s father. Small world, gemologically speaking.

Some nice stranger took this picture for us. We gave them great shots in return. Do you ever wonder if those people wonder about you? How is that guy that took my photo just after the first of the year? But I digress.

From the East River, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in one picture. Also, a lot of other buildings thrown in for scale.

Still looks a little odd at the World Trade Center, but there’s a distinct change taking place here. The new construction is slated to be open in time for the 10th anniversary later this year — 10 years, difficult to believe. The first time I took the Circle Line (five years ago!) the guide spoke at great length, and with poignant eloquence, about September 11th and the loss and the first responders and about St. Peter’s, a local church with pews now scarred where those rescuers took breaks from their horrible task. Today the guide talks about what is coming to the site, and what has been gained in that part of the city and that was nice to hear.

She’s breaking the law.

And there was a lot more to the day. You’ll see more pictures of it on Thursday. (Tomorrow will be about tomorrow, naturally.) We caught one of the new trains out and headed back to Connecticut for the evening. The new trains are nice. They’ll feel out-dated before the end of the year, but still better than the brown on brown aesthetic of the old trains.

Here’s a brief interview I conducted with Wendy on the small town girl’s first day in the big city.

errands / Monday / Samford / site — Comments Off
2
May 11

Living right

Busy day as the semester begins to wrap itself up with a tidy bow.

Made the commute to campus to pop in and pick up a newspaper plate. We give one of these to the editor of the paper every year. It should have been in the office early last week, but the storms got in the way, as they passed over our printer’s facilities, ruining their town, killing the power and making travel impossible for a while.

So now comes the task of trying to get this thing prepared in a few minutes for its presentation tonight. I stopped by the Framin’ Shoppe where the nice lady that makes all of our beautiful projects said “You must be living right. How’s 3:30?”

And that was perfect. So I left for other errands, swinging by AAA for a currency exchange and then to the old homestead for a termite inspection. It passed. The guy that gave it the close examination may have been younger than me. (That is starting to happen more and more.) And he was the teach you how to build a watch type of fellow. I’d simply asked him about this new Sentricon product I’d heard about — figuring I might get his professional opinion since he wasn’t selling anything to me — and received an education and a demonstration.

We went to the back of his truck, the appearance of which he apologized for. Seems it wasn’t clean enough to be the backdrop of his demonstration. But he pressed on, pulling out bait traps and discussing the finer points of this evolving treatment system. Seems this particular company is going to be moving to this technique later in the year.

I like this company. They do it all the right way. They answer the phone by saying “How may I make your day better?” When they come visit you have to remind the technician what to check out. In one of those clerical errors that never gets resolved the out-building isn’t on his manifest, but he just accepts that the out-building is part of the job and he does what you ask of him. They show up on time. They don’t stick around longer than necessary and still manage to come off as very personable people.

One time a guy beat me home and he sat in the drive and waited for a few minutes, doing his paperwork. I pulled into the drive and then he cranked his truck and left. He somehow managed to miss me standing there. So I called the office and we all had a good laugh. Except for that guy. He was very concerned about the mix-up.

“Accidents happen, my friend. Make sure there are no bugs.”

So all is well there, and another errand off the list. Back to the framing place, where the newspaper plate was ready to go and I promised I’d brag on them. Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe.

And that got me back on campus in time for a meeting with next year’s staff of the Crimson. There are a lot of holdovers from this year’s staff. Some of the new faces have been in my classes. They’re all seem pretty sharp. And really didn’t want to hear me blather on today. There’s the picnic, finals for which to prepare and tonight’s intramural softball championship.

Priorities.

So we all made our way over to the picnic, which is indoors, because we often have rain about this time. The meal is catered by Johnny Ray’s, a local barbecue place that is apparently in some decline. The website is gone and, I was told tonight, most of the locations are closed, including the original store on Valley. Shame, too, because the food is good.

We gave out awards to journalism and mass communication majors at the picnic. I got to call out the names of several hardworking students.

And when it came time to present the now handsomely framed newspaper plate to this year’s editor-in-chief I mentioned the dedication to this task displayed by the printer in getting the thing here despite the storm and the huge save today. (Framin’ Shoppe!) I said the things I’d prepared — noting Jennifer’s can-do attitude, her always-present smile, how hard she and her team had worked this year and so on — I discovered … she had disappeared.

Can’t win ’em all.

So I thought up a new joke. When in doubt, laugh at yourself.

The picnic is great fun. The students and professors are a bit more at ease — there is nothing due in an evening to brag on the best students — and there is much laughter. This is the moment when the end of the spring semester becomes a reality, and you can allow yourself to think of the summer without it feeling like far off daydreaming.

This is the beginning of the final week of classes. Things are winding down as they ramp up to finals.

One update on the LOMO blog.

photo / Samford / site / Thursday — Comments Off
31
Mar 11

“The hedge fund you’re looking for isn’t here anymore”

The newest slender section of the site is going to look that that. I’m tinkering with the design now, so I thought I’d throw the picture up here. Of course I’ll tell you all about it when the page is ready to go.

Class today, reading today. Also, the sun came out. I’d have to check the meteorological records for three or four cities, but I believe this was the first time I’d seen that big ball of fusion in more than a week.

Those were the highlights of the day.

And I also re-discovered Golden Smog:

You know your supergroup is on an extended hiatus when the record label links to the official site which has been taken over by a hedge fund:

The (economic) crisis also demonstrated flaws in large financial firms. These start with the too-big-to-fail problem. Large banks cannot be allowed to go down; knowing that, their creditors lend without monitoring their risks; as a result, their risk-taking is undisciplined. At the same time, each trading desk within a large banking supermarket has strong reason to load up on risk. If its bets come good, huge bonuses will ensue. If they go bad, the losses will be spread across the whole institution.

[…]

The question for policy-makers is what kind of financial institution will absorb risk most efficiently—and do so without a backstop from taxpayers. The answer awaits discovery in the story of A.W. Jones and his descendants. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.

The page on starting a hedge fund redirects to a 404.

Whoops.

adventures / LOMO / Monday / Samford / site — Comments Off
28
Mar 11

It is blurry

Yesterday … yesterday was a day. It. Would. Not. End.

Which sounds negative, but let me tell you why it was not. I woke up in the 501 area code. I had a late breakfast with my lovely bride. I took her to The Old Mill:

(A little more on this place soon.)

And then we drove. After a few hours we made Memphis. Then we started trekking through Mississippi, taking the scenic route. Pine trees. We saw pine trees. We raced the rain the whole way.

And then back into Alabama, where we saw pine trees — these growing taller and straighter. We hit Birmingham just in time for dinner and made a literal mid-intersection choice to visit Dreamland. And then we drove home. This took the whole day. The trip got so long that she found herself dancing along to Miley Cyrus song. I did not dance, I merely nodded my head like “Yeah.”

When I lived in Little Rock years ago (this is the last time I’ll mention it) I made the trip from central Arkansas to Birmingham quite frequently. The trip feels a lot longer now. I’m older. Also I drive a little slower.

So we made it home, petted the cat and I loaded up the laundry. Sat down on the sofa and almost fell asleep there before the spin cycle ended.

Today it was back at it. The library, back on campus, back in class and having a grand time.

One of my colleagues asked me to guest lecture for her. Knowing that she has a very high-energy style I resolved to be very enthusiastic myself for the day. Did anyone ever mention it is hard to be an informative comedian while talking about building web pages?

Most of my off-the-cuff jokes worked just fine. I had to wing part of the presentation because my printer jammed and the server knew it was Monday, but things went fairly well.

And then there was reading to do, and that’s been the rest of this day, which has just drifted into haphazardly drifted into yesterday and promises to lazily stretch into mid-afternoon tomorrow.

Several updates to the LOMO blog today. Twitter always, and other stuff later this week when I can get to it.

Is it the weekend yet? How about now?

adventures / Alabama / Auburn / baseball / Friday / links / site / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
18
Mar 11

Remember what the train conductor said

My four tokens to the general usefulness of things today:

I graded a lot of things.
I prepared a bit for my comps defense.
I read a lot about Libya, the slow-motion thing that can’t be stopped, with fascination.
And I built a mobile version of my website.

The world really needed that last one. Someone poked fun that I didn’t have a mobile version to the blog yet. But late this evening I added a plugin for that too. So you can easily see this drivel anytime.

I tinkered with this one for a while, but couldn’t make it go. So I found another one to build from. I’m on the fence about it, but what do you think? The mobile site is here. The mobile version of the blog is … well, found on your phone.

It is a curious thing, but I like that particular mobile theme on a friend’s site, but I’m not sure it works here. When these are the problems in your life you’re doing OK, though, so I won’t be too upset about it.

My comps defense is rumored to be next week. So I’ve been consolidating a few ideas I’d like to incorporate into that conversation.

On Libya, these types of stories are always good reading, and the reporting here is fine:

“This is the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values,” a senior administration official said at the meeting, telling the experts this sentence came from Obama himself. The president was referring to the broader change going on in the Middle East and the need to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.

It will be interesting to see how long this shiny spin on things remains in place.

“In the case of Libya, they just threw out their playbook,” said Steve Clemons, the foreign policy chief at the New America Foundation. “The fact that Obama pivoted on a dime shows that the White House is flying without a strategy and that we have a reactive presidency right now and not a strategic one.”

So the next few weeks should be interesting.

Baseball this evening, Auburn hosts Arkansas this weekend, but dropped the opener 6-5 in 11 innnings. The bullpen is still working itself out and Auburn stranded eight runners on base and seven of those were in scoring position.

We had pizza after the game at Mellow Mushroom. We noticed that Moe’s Original Barbecue is now open downtown. Finally, our style of ‘cue. Now we just have to become regulars.

YouTube Cover Theater is a little feature intending to point out the art of people making music in their homes to their video camera. There’s a lot of talent out there, some of it is more than worth sharing. I hurriedly picked REM as this week’s featured cover act. It didn’t seem the best pick at the time, but now I’m glad of it. Their music seems to have a lot of room in it for others to play. Unfortunately none of these particular three covers have been seen by more than 2,000 people.

Doug McKenna is an independent artist, but unfortunately his site has been neglected. Nevertheless, Sweetness Follows is a good tune and he does a nice job here:

My favorite REM song, and it is a shame this has only 59 views. Unfortunately there’s not much biographical information about the guy here, but his treatment of Driver 8 is good fun:

In a different career on those rare times when I had to play music at radio stations I’d always end my shift with this song, so we’ll end this post the same way.