Justin's Blog

A few days with my Nexus One

2010-05-10T08:31:00.007-04:00

It's been about 4 years since I've gotten a new phone. I've gone from a tiny Samsung T-509 to several used blackberries. I got tired of the slow performance of old blackberries running the newest software loaded with hundreds of contacts. I have been contemplating a new model blackberry for some time now. Then several of my friends got Android based phones and I made the switch.

I've only had it a few days. I'd have to say initial impressions are mostly good, but there are certainly some issues. Below I've outlined notes of specific features.

Stability Issues

In the few short days I've had my phone, I've have my phone reboot on me once, and I've had to reboot my phone another time because no one could hear me when I talk. These stability issues bother me, but I am hopeful that software updates will help with that.

Screen

The screen is 800x480, but each pixel has only two subpixels (red and green, or blue and green alternately). All the technical specs aside, the screen is bright and clear. I've seen a few older YouTube videos taken with low resolution camera that looked a little grainy, but I see that as a "good problem."

Storage

The phone came with 4 gig SD card, which was preloaded with some music. At some point I will swap that out for a 32gig or larger card. Unfortunately you need to remove the battery to remove the SD card. I'm waiting for the day when phone manufactures include one internal and one external memory card slot on their phones.

Browser

The browser looks and performs well. My only complaint is that it has a hard maximum number of windows you can open. This in and of itself is not a problem. The problem is when you click on a link that opens a new window after reaching that maximum, the dialog does not have a button that takes you to the window list.

Exchange 2008 Outlook Web Access renders as tolerably as one would expect it to on a non IE browser. I have not tried faking my mime type to see what happens.

Car Dock

The car doc has tiny, but decent, speakers. The speaker phone functionality works great. I can do all sorts of things I shouldn't do in a moving car when it is locked, like watch youtube videos. This is good because the fiancée can tilt the phone towards her and watch videos.

GPS Navigation

The short version: its a tolerable standalone GPS, but not as good as my nuvi 250.

The longer version:

Unlike my Nuvi 250, it announces street names. I find this especially amusing in New Jersey. It announces every designation for a road, so when I am at the part of 1&9 that is also the Northern end of 440, I feel as if it is announcing to me a member of the European Royalty.

When I miss a turn it chimes instead of uttering "recalculating" in a judgemental voice. I actually like it when I am yelled at by my GPS for making a mistake. I might have made the mistake because I could not get over to the exit in time, or I might not have been paying attention.

The NUVI is a far superior HUD. The Nexus One has no speedometer, and I don't like the map display. Of course unlike the NUVI, this things will probably improve in time via free software upgrades on the Nexus One.

So despite having an adequate GPS with free map updates, I might actually pay to update the maps on my NUVI.

App support

The marketplace has plenty of apps. A few I've made use of are Twitter, Urban Spoon, Yammer and Opera. Yammer is a twitter like application for internal use at companies, that my employer uses. More important than all these is of course the lightsaber app.

One application I was not able to find is something that can view Visio diagrams. However, it seems that no such app exists for any mobile device.

Google Applications

Gmail support is Great. I can place shortcut to labels on the desktop. Some google applications don't have actual apps such as buzz and reader. However, google did a very good job with customizing the browser experience for these on the android browser, that it is unnecessary.

Camera

The phone has a 5 megapixel camera. It can take video. The YouTube apps has a record button that lets you record and upload right to YouTube. The pictures seem ok to me, but I have no concept of good photography. Judge for yourself:

Self Portrait

French Bread

Caffine Free Diet Coke

Drinking Vessels

Is our house of representatives too big?

2010-03-21T23:39:00.005-04:00

I'm a small government guy. If that comes as a surprise to you, then I need to write about politics more on this blog. However, a though has occurred to me regarding the size of our house of the lower house. Perhaps it is too big.

I say it is too big because of a concept called Dunbar's number. Basically humans can only have social connections with about 148 people. When the first congress met there were 59 members. When the current sitting one hundred and eleventh congress first met, there were 434 members.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem. Perhaps we can draw up congressional districts without regards for state lines, and have the state legislatures appoint senators. The lower house can be reduced to about 125 members, which will account for the local office, and non elected people in the capitol building the congressmen will have to interact with regularly.

I don't pretend to have a clear answer to this problem, I just know that 400+ is to many people.

Cops and Doughnut Shops

2010-02-15T09:52:00.003-05:00

I was coming out of the PATH train at the WTC this fine President's Day morning (2010-02-15), book and dunkin doughnuts coffee in tow, when I passed by a women in a NYPD winter uniform jacket standing outside a patrol car. I verified that there was no "traffic patch" above her shoulder patch and noted that another female uniformed officer was sitting in the passenger seat of the patrol car. I uncharacteristically forgot to make note of the precient or other divisional market of the car. I'm not sure why I do this, I chalk it up to being aware of my surroundings.

As I passed by she inquired where I got the Dunkin Joughnuts coffee from. I replied, "Jersey." She thanked me as I walked away. I then remembered there was a Dunkin Doughnuts on Church Street going in the directions of Chambers. She thanked me again, and I continued on the A train.

Some of you might be asking what I find so weird about this encounter? Well, quite frankly, cops tend to know food places in their precincts pretty well. Putting aside stereotypes about cops and doughnuts, due to the nature of their work, they tend not to get a regular lunch break. They eat when and where they can while on duty.

Of course I don't know the full story. Perhaps she was just transferred to this precinct. Maybe she was working a special tour. She could have even been making conversation because she though I was cute. I will never know the reason.

Getting my fiancées' Blackberry to sync: Error Code - 0x80040fb3 Check Documentation

2010-01-01T17:17:00.006-05:00

This is the post I alluded to "really wanting to write" in the obligatory holiday acknowledgment post immediately preceding this. This falls under the category of "more google juice to posts solving a problem I had" category. I post on this blog, and not in any of the blackberry forums because I am not a member of any of the blackberry forums, and I hate most blackberry sites as well as forums in general.

Long story short, my fiancées blackberry has not successfully synced with her desktop for quite some time now. Attempts to do so have produced a dialog box with the error in the title. Google turned up some links to the problem, but she was not able to resolve the problem. Today I finally had the time to sit down and fix it for her while she took a nap.

One of the better forum threads on the matter exists here. It doesn't describe the exact problem she had, but it has enough useful information to lead you in the right direction. The link to the blackberry knowledgebase article on how to turn on logging was broken, but it provided the KB number ( KB01451) so google found it for me.

The exact problem in her case was that two outlook contacts had corrupt pictures. It was a hard to identify this because when an outlook contact has a bad picture in outlook 2003, the image basically becomes invisible. I will use two screenshots to illustrate the issue. One has a contact with no image, and the other has a contact with a corrupt image:

Contact without Image

Contact with corrupt image

As you can see, in the case of a corrupt image, there is no indication that the contact has an image.

So after all that research, and the realization that the images were corrupt, the final steps to resolve the matter were as follows:

Turn on logging.
Attept to sync
When you get the error message, before dismissing it open C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Research In Motion\BlackBerry\Intellisync\tif.log
Identify contact with the corrupt picture.
Open Microsoft Outlook
Select the contact in question.
Right click on the grey area that should be a picture and select "Remove Picture"
Dismiss the sync error and attempt to resync.
Repeat until the syncing suceeds.
Comment on this blog, a blackberry forum, or elsewhere of your experience.

Obligatory new years day post

2010-01-01T16:41:00.003-05:00

First an explanation on why I find this post obligatory. I want to write another post, and it happens to be new years day. I feel I should acknowledge the new year to my vast lack of readership.

First of all, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Boxing day, or whatever quazi winter solstice related holiday it is you celebrate. I also hope you enjoyed your new years eve/day celebrations and have a prosperous new year.

Second, its time to bore you all with a bit of self reflection. Some notable events and achievements for 2009:

I began work at a new company, achieving my long time goal of getting a job in Manhattan. For some reason it has always been easier for me to find jobs in Suffolk County than Manhattan.
Related to the previous, commuting by subway has allowed me to read so many books I got a Library Card from the NYPL. The achievement of note is more that I have read a lot, than getting a library card.
I took over the Long Island PHP User Group moving our meeting location to InVision.
I became a Zend Certified Engineer in PHP5.
Most important, I proposed to my girlfriend, and she said yes.

My online habits have altered. For the first time I began doing the following online:

Using Twitter
Listening to podcasts.
Participating in the stack overflow trilogy.
Using github.

My self imposed election day embargo

2009-11-05T07:10:00.003-05:00

I've begun to develop many beliefs related to democracy. Some examples, I am a firm believers of term limits, one factor in me not voting for Bloomberg. Secondly, I am for a starship troopers-esque form of earned suffrage/citizenship, although the Michael Z Williamson book Freehold turned me on to the idea.

However, one of my stranger beliefs is that one should not talk about elections on election day. On the first Tuesday after the First monday in November, I do not encourage or discourage the act of voting in particular, and I don't mention the particulars of the election. Despite these strong beliefs, I have to this date managed to not injure or kill the those that stand right outside the polling place with pamphlets.

A (hopefully) short-winded post on my long-windedness

2009-11-04T23:06:00.002-05:00

I tend to be long winded in my written and spoken works. I just published a post on another blog. What will probably never get posted is the article I stopped writing before starting that one. The unpublished article amounts to a preface to the article I published. The only reason it is not deleted is I am an unapologetic packrat.

This over-prefacing is quite typical of me. I need to address it. Knowing to stop writing a post just as I am getting to the point, so I can start a new article that "gets to the point," is a good strategy. Maybe one day I will publish something on a blog, and later publish my "overprefacing" as the back story.

Batteries, the tires of laptops

2009-10-04T11:40:00.004-04:00

As mentioned before, I drive a 2005 Toyota Corolla. In addition to being the car I learned to drive a manual on, it is also my first new car. Before that had a 92 shadow and a 94 Sable. Both were given to me.

I dumped a lot of money into the Shadow and the Sable. I've dumped less in the Corolla, if you don't count oil changes.

One conclusion I've come to is that you can't count tire maintenance as part of maintenance. Well you can certainly factor in tire wear, and the costs of special tires, if your tires are not of a standard size and mounted on steel wheels. I'm talking about the cost of repairing flats and dented rims and steel wheels.

Flats can happen to anyone, as can dented rims. The frequency of such a happening depending more on what roads (or lack of) roads you drive on than anything else. There also pretty self contained damage. Sure there can be some strain put on the axle, but unless you ride for miles on a flat, this is hardly noticeable.

The conclusion of this observation is I will rarely consider getting a new car as opposed to replacing its tires. The car would have to be truly on its last legs. A busted hose that I would fix myself would put me into the "maybe its time for a new car" train of though before 4 new tires and a steel wheel.

The same is true of laptop batteries. I was recently given a G4 by someone. I spent $119 for a new battery for it. I did not think twice about the cost of getting a new laptop. Sure part of the appeal of it was "full size laptop with netbook battery life," and the cost comparisons to low end laptops go out the window if you only compare Macs to it. But laptop batteries are strange things. They die at irregular intervals. They are expensive to replace, but third parties often make slightly better performing batteries for the same price. This is especially true of older laptops simply because the third party will put newer more efficient power cells in battery cases designed for older laptops.

So my conclusion is always buy a new battery for your laptop. If you don't think you need a battery, buy yourself a desktop. They make small energy efficient ones that use effecient 2.5" hard drives and laptop CPUs.

Back in the New York Groove

2009-08-22T14:54:00.003-04:00

Time for a personal announcement. August 19 2009 at around 18:00 I handed in my laptop for my last day of work with the company I had been with for 2 years 4 months and three days. The next day, a Thursday I started at my new company, walking distance from Penn station.

It was a good run with the company. My main reason for leaving is a job in Bohemia. NY is not practical for a man who lives in queens and has a girlfriend who lives in Jersey City, NJ. The new company is definitely larger, and my role is more front end based than my old job.

The new company is larger than my old company. The people I have met so far are intelligent, and passionate about what they do. I look forward to growing with the new company.

NeatUpload is Neat

2009-07-29T20:18:00.002-04:00

NeatUpload is an ASP.NET component that performs http post uploads while displaying a progress bar. This seemingly simply task is actually hard to get right.

I used this once for a site that never launched. The entire site was written in PHP, but I made the upload page in ASP.NET simply because NeatUpload was the only tool I could find at the time to do the job. I exposed my PHP business layer via a web service, and let this one ASP.NET app handle the uploading of large files. The ASP.NET page actually ran on mono, which was not a problem since NeatUpload was originally a mono app.

If I had to upload files again in a PHP app I would probable give swfupload a try. However, NeatUpload is definitely my tool of choice for uploading

I want to be a Programmer Aristocrat

2009-07-25T19:11:00.004-04:00

This past Friday night I was reading a story in the Wall Street Journal about the late Brooke Astor and the legal drama of her estate. It mentioned that if her son's wife gains control of her fortune, many charities will stop receiving her regular donations. That when it occurred to me that I want to be an old money programmer.

I don't say this because of my penchant for single malt Scotch Whisky nor any other eccentricity I possess that some might consider snobbish. I say that because I begin to understand why the rich give to charities.

The rich don't give to charities to avoid taxes, compensate for inner demons, or feel altruistic. The rich, such as Astor Brooke, give to charities to achieve control and change in ways that profitable enterprise cannot. Of course I am speaking in absolutes. However, for many people whom giving money away and raising money is how they spend their time, they are doing so to affect change.

This is what I ultimately want to do. I don't think I will ever be Bill Gates rich. However, I think I can have my own small empire. I can gain a small degree of prominence as an open source programmer. I can write a web app that supplements my income. I might not ever be of the stature of Linus Torvalds or Larry Wall, but I could certainly write a popular open source product, or become a major contributor to one.

Surreal encounter in Bellmore, NY

2009-07-16T09:44:00.003-04:00

I was driving to work today and my gas light came on. I stopped at exit 25 of the Southern State Parkway. As I was pumping gas the man driving the SUV in front of me came up and asked me how to get to New Jersey. He had Jersey license plates. He was not a native speaker, and asked me if I spoke Spanish.

I in a response to his query I committed most horrible atrocity. I sent him through Staten Island. My concerns for Holland Tunnel traffic are no excuse.

Life imitates Dune, or Justin really likes mail merge

2009-07-12T20:36:00.007-04:00

So there I was, a few weeks back sitting in a friends back yard, reading Frank Herbert's Dune. I put down the book for a bit to be sociable and found out that at that very moment an unthinkable sin was being committed on the second floor of the house. A dear friend of my girlfriend was reading addresses from a spreadsheet printout, and retyping them into MS Word to print out envelopes/.

I started foaming about the mouth of the waste of labor, humanity's duty to subjugate computers, (being they lack person hood, self awareness, rights and the like), to do our work for us, so we can do other work. I calmed myself and ran up the stairs to educate her on how to use mail merge.

She would have none of it. I was persistent, but yielded eventually. My girlfriend kept saying, "sometimes the simplest way is the best," This statement was beyond wrong in this case, but I was not going to argue with illogical statements. I went and played with my godson for a bit, and continued to read my book.

Some may be surprised at how upset I got. Others think I exaggerate. A select sew that have witnessed or heard secondhand of my outbursts against ip printing and lack of domain (or novell, ldap, NIS etc) authentication in places that had the means of doing better. The inefficient use of computers really bothers me. My pointless emotional outbursts on the matter might be the folly of my youth, but I doubt such incidents will ever not cause my blood to boil.

Thoughts on Dune's banning of computers

2009-07-12T19:29:00.002-04:00

I just finished Frank Herbert's Dune. I've previously seen the Sci-Fi 2000 mini-series and their 2003 Sequel, Children of Dune. I recommend to any Dune newcomers, read the books first, then watch the movies. The novels paint a world in Tolkien level detail, and no movie can ever do it full justice.

The ecological undertones and melange as an allegory to oil are somewhat obvious. The feudalism/corporatism type government of the known universe seems like what would occur in a situation where you had a large expanse of people, and the transaction costs of government were high. I'm sure much was written about these things. I'm sure one day I will read some of them and even write something about such things. What interests me most is the lack of AI, and computers in general.

One could react several ways to the outlaw of computers in the Dune universe. One could simply state that Frank Herbert was entirely wrong about the computer thing, despite being so right about the oil thing. You could also say it will take a long time for AI to get to the point that our leaders must declare "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." One could also state that Frank Herbert's miscalculation was predicting how useful computers could be without any reasoning skills, and their role as communication devices.

I'm sure that Herbert was questioned on the AI questions. He published Dune in 1965 and died in 1986. So one would think I should have done a bit of research before publishing this article. However, I want to continue this line of thought without an "authoritative" answer a bit more. I'll try to write more about it though. after some research.

Steinbeck Reference in Transformers The Movie

2009-06-10T22:44:00.003-04:00

I'm not referring to the Michael Bay film, which I do like. I am referring to the 1986 feature length animated film starring Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Cullen and Orsen Welles, who died before the movie was finished.

In this movie the following dialog occurs between Grimlock, and Kup:

Grimlock: Tell Grimlock about petro-rabbits again.
Kup: I'll give you petro-rabbits.

This is obviously a reference to Lenny, the retarded brute from Of Mice and Men who often asked George to "Tell him about the rabbits." Grimlock, and the rest of the dinobots are, like Lenny, mentally lacking brutes.

I've seen this film over a dozen times, and I've both read Steinbeck's book and seen the movie adaptation that has made the line famous. I never noticed this until this past weekend.

Life without a Wallet

2009-05-11T08:03:00.002-04:00

I have a George Costanza wallet that my friend is currently in possession of. I went to a party a few weeks ago. He drove and I placed it in his glove compartment. I forgot about it and have yet to retrieve it.

I kept my debit card, New York State drivers license and cash in my pocket when I went to this party. Hence why I have not rushed back to get my wallet. I have no immediate need for the contents of the wallet. If I need to go to a doctor, I can have him fax my insurance card.

One day I will reclaim my wallet. For now I live without it.

And for the record, I keep it in my front left pocket. It balances out the weight from the three key chains in my right pocket. Some of the keys in my right pocket used to open doors of buildings that have been demolished.

Enterprise Class Menstruration Calculation

2009-04-19T22:07:00.003-04:00

Every once in a while, the Internet leaves me speechless. I'm not refereeing to disgusting pictures or videos. I'm talking about things that make you stop and ask "why?"

Today I found one of those things why seeing what sort of PDF software was available at sourceforge. It was an open source J2ME software project, called Bloody Mary, for keeping track of ones menstrual cycle. This in and of itself was pretty mundane and sensible. I'm sure many such things exist.

However, what really made me say WTF?!? was the server side component of this application. Apparently you can create PDF reports of your menstrual cycle with this report. Why one would need such a report is beyond me. I think an alert from the device running this software of the probably onset of menstruation would be enough. Of course, not being a woman or a gynecologists, I lack expertise on the subject.

However, I did stop and think, "How can this be made useful?" and did come up with an interesting idea. A large company like google could market this program and get millions of women to use it. They could also collect all the data into a central repository and associate it with demographic information such as race, age, number of children, etc. Once we have all this data, some researcher will find a use for it.

Process Hacker: Thoroughly Awesome TaskMan.exe replacement

2009-04-18T14:50:00.004-04:00

Process Hacker is a thoroughly awesome task manager replacement.

I have nominated it for a sourceforge community choice award. You should too.

Open source PDF utilities for Windows

2009-04-18T14:14:00.005-04:00

Adobe's PDF format is the de-facto standard for printable read only document exchange. Adobe has added some new features to the format recently. As a result, Acrobat and Acrobat Reader, both currently at version 9, have become somewhat bloated as it has picked up these features.

That's not to say these features have no merit. My employer uses the electronic signature and form features of Acrobat for their ISO Quality Management process. And while the main feature of Acrobat is the ability to "print" any document to a PDF file, You can certainly do a lot of manipulation of acrobat files such as marging and adding form fields.

However, outside of work, I just need to be able to view PDFs and "print" documents to PDF format. I'd also like to avoid the bloat of Acrobat Reader 9. I do so via two open source utilities.

The first utility is Sumtra PDF Reader. This is an open source windows app that makes use of several open source libraries to view and print PDFs. Its very simple and light weight. It just works.

The second is PDFCreator. This is a PDF print driver. It allows you to save any document you can print to a PDF or email the PDF directly. Their is also a network feature I have not experimented with. I'm not sure the benefit of a network PDF generator. Perhaps its intended for rendering large documents. PDFCreator also exposes a COM interface for making PDFs programatically. I have not experimented with this, but it apparently comes with samples.

My only grip with PDFCreator is that it attempts to install a toolbar on Internet Explorer and FireFox. Its pretty explicit about letting you know you want to do this, and Acrobat Distiller 6.0 does the same thing. I can only assume Acrobat 9 Standard and Pro do the same.

WinCalendarTime, customize your windows clock

2009-04-18T13:56:00.002-04:00

Have you ever said to yourself, "If only I could display the date as well as time in the windows task bar without making it take up more than one row?" Well I used to, until I discovered WinCalendarTime a few months ago. Its a simple windows C program that allows you to format the time display your windows desktop. You can chose to hide either the date or the time and there are three date formats. You can also display seconds of the minute. Unfortunately, it does not allow me to display the date in ISO format (e.g. 2009-04-18 23:34) . One day I might write a patch for that.

Revisiting My Education Views

2009-03-26T23:31:00.004-04:00

I wanted to clarify my education views. I think my last post was not as clear as it should have been.

First of all, I do support the eventual complete privatization of all education. I think with the proper social structures in place this is feasible. However, unless circumstance forces this to happen in the US, such as complete failure of the government, such a situation must come about gradually.

However, I mainly want to talk about realistic short term goals. One of those is moving education to the state and local level. Another is encouraging private education.

I want each state, or better yet county to have different educational standards. I'd like for all these schools to seek accreditation, and I think that as long as the the schools intend for a portion of their students to enter a white collar professional career, that will happen.

I'd also like to encourage private education. Ranging from traditional private schools to home schooling, to everything in between. These schools should and probably will seek accreditation because they want some of their students to go to college.

Now some will not seek accreditation. They might be vocational schools, which should probably form their own accreditation agencies. They might be for students of particular religious beliefs, whose insular religious groups will provide opportunities for them be productive members of society. Some kids will be hopelessly screwed up. However, some kids are hopelessly screwed up now.

What we will get is a variety of education styles, and different emphasis on different subjects. This will prevent the a situation where the vast majority of on particular generation in this nation being handicapped in one particular way by their education. This is what I mean by all kids being screwed up differently.

Education Views: Homogenity versus Heterogeneity of screwing kids up

2009-03-25T23:08:00.007-04:00

I'll admit, its a rather wordy and pompous title, even by my standards. However I can't think of anything catchier.

I was discussing education with a coworker, and we had a disagreement over whether the federal government should have a role in it. He was all for a nationally dictated minimal curriculum. I, of course want to abolish the federal department of education and leave it as a state issue. Long term I'd like to abolish all the public schools, but the private and charitable infrastructure is not available to deal with such a radical move at the moment.

As we talked, it became apparent that similar motives and opposite views were driving us to our opposing stances. He didn't trust the state governments of other states to provide good education. I don't trust the federal government, or any of the state governments to handle education. In both cases, the concern was not for our kids (the kids he has now, and kids I might someday have), but for other kids.

The heart of his argument is that the federal government would do a good job of not screwing up kids too much. It would prevent some states from teaching Creationism. It would set reasonable achievement levels for reading and math. Individual states could hold their students to higher standards if they wanted.

The heart of my argument is any education gets something wrong. Rather than have a nation of people all with the same incorrect views on some topic, lets take steps to ensure that everyone is wrong about different things. In other words, if everyone is screwed up differently, market forces will weed out the incorrect ideas quicker.

Tweeting Now

2009-02-09T21:56:00.003-05:00

I tweet now. There is a section on the right of this blog that displays my current tweets.

Why tweet? Mainly because a friend was tweeting about an open source project developed that I meddle with occasionally. I could talk endlessly about why, but my radical ideas have already occurred to others.

Singing the praises of Credit Unions

2009-01-11T16:27:00.005-05:00

I'm going to make a rare post where I talk about something in a positive light. That something is Peoples Alliance Federal Credit Union, my bank.

I joined shortly after taking a job in Hauppauge, NY in December 2002. The credit union was walking distance from my office, which was good since I didn't have a car.

My initial impressions were pretty positive. The first part was the lack of any kind of withdrawal or deposit forms. Instead, you had a membership card, and told the teller what you wanted to do. You would get a printed reciept, that you had to sign if you were making a withdrawal. This sped things up to the point that it was quicker to talk to a real teller than an ATM assuming both had no lines. There also happens to be a branch in JFK, which I can access via a short walk from my house to the air train. Finally, they handle ATM deposits prmptly.

It did have its downfalls. First of all, they charge fees for using other ATMs. This is made doubly annoying by the fact that they are not a large bank with many branches. That being said, I've had accounts at large banks, and 90% of my ATM withdrawals were from bodega ATMs then. Basically, I don't plan in advance for my petty cash needs.

They also opened a branch in Ronkokoma. This is near my current job so it convient.

I've always felt a large faceless multination bank would better serve my needs, but never bothered to make the change. That being said I am aware of the benifits of small, more personal banks. I just never need one until late December.

I had just gotten my bonus checks and was going to pay off my car loan. I made a deposit and scheduled a payment for the 27th, which would have given the checks 4 business days to clear. Since they were payroll checks I expected them to clear in 2 days.

A few days later I noticed a $25 dollar fee and that the check had not cleared. I decide to call them up and see if this matter could be rectified in a small bank manner. It turns out that a 10 day hold was placed on the check. I asked why so long for a payroll check, I was told to call the branch I deposited the check at so they could verify it was a payroll check. They apparently still had the physical check at the local branch. I would have expected the physical checks to be archived at the central branch same day.

I called that branch and explained my situation. I asked for the hold to be removed, and the $25 dollar refunded. She said she would find the check and call me back. When she called me back the funds were already released. She said since I get direct deposit, they assume any checks are not payroll checks, but i could write a note on the ATM deposit envelope next time asking for a shortened hold date. I will do this next December when I get my bonus check.

If this happened at a larger bank I don't know if I could get it rectified same day. I also don't know if they would be place a shorter hold on the check by default. All I know is that I was able to resolve this issue with two phone calls and one outgoing call.

NJ Transit

2008-12-14T19:55:00.002-05:00

Saturday was a day that required me to be in multiple locations. More specifically, the girlfriend and I had a holiday party in Succasunna, and my high school friends were getting together for dinner in Little Italy in downtown Manhattan. I decided to drive out to Succasunna, stay for the beginning of the party, and use NJT to get me to Little Italy. The girlfriend was spending the night at the house where the partywas held, so I would go back and sleep in Succasunna.

It took a bit of Research to figure out that the closest train station operating on the weekend was in Dover, NJ. Their iternary planner does not handle a walk or drive of more than a mile to a bus stop or train station. The third rail terminates after that station, requiring diesel locomotives to operate trains beyond that station. It is a 15 minute drive to the station, so while not being the closes train station, it was still reasonably close, especially for a rural area.

I got to the train station and learned that all parking spots in the lot required either a permit or had 12 hour meter. I'm talking an old fashioned analog quarters only meters. However, the lot is closed from 2am to 6am and all day on Sunday. This is a source of anger, because I will be returning after 2 am.

I walk to a liquor store and use the ATM. I then ask the clerk where I can park past 2am. He tells me to park on a side street. This proves to be quite easy. I'm still angered at the town arbitrarily closing of the parking lot while trains are running, especially the metered parking spots. However, its no longer an issue of urgency to me.

I go on the platform and see no ticket machines. I go to the station and see that a ticket agent is working on a Saturday at 6pm. There is a line and my train will soon be here. However, everyone else on the line has the same problem I do. I ask the person in in front of me in line about ticket machines. He say there are none. I comment about the parking regulations and he replies, "this is not a customer friendly station".

When I am next in the queue I approach the window. I place my bank card on the counter and say, "Hoboken." She informs me the machine is not reading cards. I am thankful I just went to the ATM at this point. I place $20 dollars down on the counter and say, "Hoboken." She produces a ticket. I take the ticket and change and thank her.

The train comes and I get on. At Newark Broad Street I transfer to Hoboken. At Hoboken I take the Path, then a Taxi.

Dinner comes and goes. A good time is had by all. I return to Hoboken Terminal. I am confused by the available trains and what I thought the schedule said. I decide to buy my ticket and then ask questions. I ask the conductor of the next departing train if i can change at Secaucas to the Dover train. He thinks for a moment and says yes. I get on the train and detrain one stop later at Secaucas.

At Secaucas, I initially think I cannot get on my train because I cannot find a scheule for my train line on the platform. This is expecially problemsom because I was expecting to get on the last train to Dover until 7am. My fears are relieved when I go upstairs and find out how large Secaucus Junction is. It is not the usual setup of several platforms parallel to each other that most multi line train stations have. Different tracks are at different levels. There are turnstiles with card readers blocking access to the platform I need to get on. They do not accept my card.

The station attendant tells me I need to buy an "access card" to get down. He punches in the cheapest ticket he can in the machine, a one stop Senior/Disability ticket that costs $1.50 and has me pay for it. This ticket works.

I had to wait a bit for my train. I wandered between the waiting area that is too hot and the platform outside in the below freezing weather. The train arrived and I got on.

Before the last stop the conductors herd us all into one car so they only have to operate one set of doors. This doesn't bother me. The fact they that the conductor herding from the front and the one herding from the back can't agree on which car to herd us into does. We get out, and as I am walking along the platform I realize I have left my book on the train.

I flag down a conductor and he opens the door. He says he is pretty sure he saw an old guy in a red vest carrying it. We check the train to be sure. I run down the platform, find the guy and get my book.

The drive back to Succasunna was not without events. I could not find one street and went to a Dunkin Doughnuts to ask for directions. No one was at the counter. Seeing a large wad of ones in the tip cup made me realize I could have easily absconded with the register drawer. I of course did not. I decided to relieve myself in the bathrooms, which, surprisingly for a Dunkin Doughnuts, required no key. When I came back I saw a man waiting at the counter. I informed him I was waiting a while and asked him for directions. He told me how to find the street I was looking for and went to knock on the kitchen door. I walked out and got back in my car.

Other than having to stop twice for deer in the road I made it back to the house where my girlfriend was staying for the night a few minutes after 04:00. Yes deer in the roads. This is the part of Jersey where the backyard landmines are deer, as opposed to the geese and dog droppings in small parks more civilized places tend to have. Since the parks I refer to are about the size of backyards in this part of Jersey, the analogy is fair.

I am contemplating writing to NJ Transit and town of Dover about my experience. I think one or two ticket machines would be beneficial to the station, and reduce the need for a station attendant on Saturdays and weekday afternoon evening. I have to research the Secaucus Junction transfer fee, and if it was really necessary to take that route. Finally, I must verify that the Dover Station parking lot is operated by the town of Dover, as is the case with LIRR parking lots. I will then air my concerns about the parking lot closing from 2am to 6am and on Sundays.

Changing a fuse

2008-11-25T17:51:00.004-05:00

I was driving to work Monday. This particular commute happened to involve 2 states, 6 counties, 2 bridges, three distinct land masses, and one 2005 Toyota Corolla

I was going over the second bridge, when I realized that I forgot to plug my Samsung T509 cell phone into the charger. As I started plugging in the charger and the phone my center console died on me. The fuse failed.

Eventually, I managed to replace the fuse with a spare in the front fuse box this particular fuse happens to be in a very inaccessible fuse box under the steering wheel. Thanks to Albert's blog post on neocarz.com, I had a easier time than if I had to rely solely on my Corolla's owner manual.

Interesting Chinese Proverb

2008-06-09T11:40:00.002-04:00

I was reading slashdot, and the fortune on my slashdot home page was the following:

The universe is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be
ruled by interfering.
-- Chinese proverb

An interesting proverb from country that seems to prefer order to liberty. Now I'm painting with very broad strokes here, well more like a 12" roller than a brush. However, though provoking none the less.

Judging anomity

2008-04-29T19:18:00.002-04:00

I am a big fan of freakonomics, both the book and the blog. However, I am having trouble following the point of Ian Aryes in the article he wrote today. Apparently in 2004 a bunch of newspapers adopted a rule that journalists had to explain the reason their sources were anonymous. He and others proceded to collect data based on this, and he felt the reasons for requesting anonymity were not good enough.

Nobody likes a snitch, but if someone snitches to me, its not my place to judge the feelings of the person being ratted out. That is reserved for those being snitched on. We have social conventions for dealing with this. As a reporter, if I am given information I shoujld report it unless I feel it is a matter of national security, uneccesserally destroying someones reputation, or something to that effect. However, I would use the same standards for reporting information that I revieced from sources I considered legitimate.

I'm really failing to see this as a case of taking the moral high ground. I really just failing to see this guys point.

Thoughts on "The Wealth of Nations"

2008-04-13T13:11:00.006-04:00

I was looking through drafts on my blog and came across this. It was last saved 2008-04-13. making it a little over 1.75 years old. I am going to present it mostly verbatim and follow it with an update. By mostly verbatim, I mean I will attempt to proof read it.

Draft begins:

I was in a bookstore the other day when I noticed a book entitled On The Wealth of Nations (Books That Changed the World) by P.J. O'Rourke. I've previously read another title by him called Peace Kills, so the author as well as the subject matter intrigued me.

The book is a 200 page commentary and summary of Adam Smith's classic work. I've personally tried to read Smith's 900 page manuscript on two occasions and got through less than 25% of it. For anyone else who has even begun to read the book, one knows that it is 900 pages of Smith belaboring his ideas about economics.

I'm debating adding PJ's commentary to my to read list. However, I felt the need to give the primary source another shot. I decided that maybe an audio book might be a better format for digesting he text.

I've never listened to audio books before, and I had no idea if their was a place to download audio books of public domain works. After consulting Google, I found a site called http://librivox.org/ where you can upload and download audio books.

The recording of The Wealth of Nations is still a work in progress at librivox. The first ten chapters are complete. Their works in progress are apparently available through their phpBB forum. I find that a little weird. However, the phpBB installation is customized so the first post of a "book in progress thread" has an iframe with a list of book chapters and their statuses. So if you just want to download the completed chapters, no need to read through an entire forum thread to make sure you have links to the right versions of each chapter.

After downloading them from the forum posting, I've listened to the first ten chapters once, and I plan on doing so a few more times, as well as listening to the rest as they are completed. I might have to listen when I have time to make notes so I can further research things he comments on.

Unpublished Draft Ends

So first an update on the audiobook. Books 1-3 of the work are complete, as is part of book 4. I have listened to some of the audiobook, but not all of it. I did read P.J. O'Rourke's self described cliff notes of the book. It was a very educational commentary. At the very least if verified that one other person thought that Smith's writing style is long winded and a bit dull.

Personally, I recommend that people try all three works, the original, the audiobook, and Mr. O'Rourke's commentary. The book is a dry read. Listening to the audiobook while commuting is beneficial. And finally, the commentary contains information about Adam Smith's life as well as the work itself. It is quite well researched. Finally, the commentary is short and interesting so you will make it to the end.

Standing before the judge like a coward

2008-04-10T22:51:00.002-04:00

This is the last of the three acts of dealing with a parking violation in the Incorporated Village of Valley Stream, NY. For context refer to Part 1 and Part 2.

I arrive at court slightly after it started. The judge is not in the court room, but their are lines, and various people in the employ of the court are in the area between the bench and the public seating area. I find the correct line to stand on and give my information.

The judge enters. All rise. Please be seated. He gives his opening spiel. He starts off with the housing and traffic violations. These are matters that were scheduled. Towards the end he starts on the parking tickets.

It became apparent that he's going to knock off all my late fines and reduce my debt to the county to the original $25 penalty if I plead guilty. It also became apparent that the woman that took my information should have asked me how I planned to plea, but assumed I wanted to plea guilty. Because this is convenient I do so, walk out the door, and wait in line for the extremely slow clerk staff to take my money and write me a receipt.

I had little legal ground for declaring myself not guilty. I have not to this date seen the parking regulation posted, except for a photocopy of a photograph of a street sign stating the village speed limit, and a village wide 4 hour parking limit and no parking between 03:30 and 05:30. I do support the concept of juries judging the law as well as the case, even though I have trouble reconciling this view with my strict constructionists view of the constitution. Regardless, I felt it necessary to make it a matter of public record both my disdain for the elitist concept of wanting to limit parking on the street for its own sake and the unintended consequence of enforcement of said ordinance encouraging drunk driving.

When the Boston tea party was held it was more a matter of principal than practicality. The price of tea had gone down with the monopoly. However, the concept of monopoly and taxation without representation was what bothered the colonies. Perhaps the problem is what I just wrote is utterly false, and this is one of many areas of American history that I need to brush up on. However, I still feel that keepi9ng silent over a matter of a hundred dollars was an act of cowardice. Such an act requires penance on my part.

Its hard to pay a parking ticket

2008-04-08T14:46:00.003-04:00

This is part 2 of the saga of my Valley Stream parking ticket. Part 1 is here.

I tried to pay my parking ticket at the courthouse today. I show up at the clerks office at 08:00 and discovered they don't take credit cards. She looked up my info and saw most of the $125 I owed the village was due to fines for late payment. She suggested I go to traffic court on Wednesday at 7PM to get the judge to lower it. Apparently you just show up, wait your turn, and see the judge.

So a bit of an update on why I never paid this ticket. Basically, Valley Stream does not offer a web payment method and I rarely use the postal service. There is no principled reason behind this, I'm just to lazy to print an envelope, buy a stamp, etc. So collection letters started coming in. I called the number on one of them and offered to pay over the phone. They claimed that they only send the letters and I'd have to settle my debt with the town. They also verified that I'd have to mail a check or show up to the court house.

So I ignored the letters until I got one that claimed my vehicle registration was in jeopardy. This prompts me to show up to the courthouse in the morning and try to pay the ticket. I should have went to the ATM beforehand in anticipation of them lacking a credit card merchant account. However, I didn't.

So yes I am entirely guilty of the cardinal sin of sloth here. If a cop knocked at my door I'd walk to the ATM and come back with $125 in cash no questions asked. I did not deal with my issue in a timely manner, so I lost any legitimacy to my reasonable arguments to why the county giving me was ticket was wrong. So I am entirely at the judges mercy tomorrow. I will provide an update then.

More adventures in FLL

2008-03-31T22:16:00.003-04:00

I spent Thursday and Friday in my employers Florida office. These were uneventful days of training a coworker interrupted by me being required to do some billable work. The travel was somewhat adventurous.

Having just come back from the Phillipines, I was short on both cash and credit on my credit card with an intentionally low limit. I arranged for my employer to buy the plane tickets beforehand for me, and had enough to cover the rental and meals on my credit card.

Well, it seems that the rental car company wanted to authorize significantly more than what the rental fee was and it wouldn't go through. I was advised to try another rental company because their computer system would not allow for the card to be swiped again for 24 hours to avoid the company getting charged back.

So I took public transportation. The tri-rail system in quite convient, and I got a ride from a coworker at the train station closest to my companies Florida office. I of course forgot to arrange for my employer to pay for my hotel in advanc, but a manager faxed over his credit card info to them.

Everything was relatively uneventful until it came time to get on the plane. I was in row three so I got in the plane last. While waiting in line to get on the plane an older gentleman pushed ahead of me with his luggage. Then we all watched 3 drunk twenty something men take the walk of shame out since they were on the wrong plane.

When I got on the plane the gentleman in front of me shoved his luggage in the overhead bin and proceded to sit in my seat. I told him it was my seat and he discovered that this flicgh was going to JFK and not Texas. That was the fourth walk of shame of the flight.

Before takeoff, I made some smalltalk with the women next to me, an attractive woman in her mid thirties with raven black hair and an all black outfit. During the flight I kept to myself and enjoyed the direct TV through my BOSE triports, which I mainly use on flights.

When we landed the woman wanted to get her bag down before we started deplaningto get her coat. She was having some trouble and a man about her age started helping her with her bag and began to flirt. He was mentioning that Spinal Tap just came on and how he was disappointed that he couldn't finish watching it. She said heah it was a pretty good movie and eventually said Rob Reiner was her uncle. Not getting the hint that maybe she didn't want to talk about a movie she was probably sick of, he proceded to say how he used to be a "working musician", and how he had similar experiences to that of the band in the movie.

Well I deplaned and ended up on the same shuttle bus from the temporary gates to the main Jet Blue gate area. I didn't see him. After that was an uneventful trip home. This counts as the closest I've come to a celebrity encounter, besides walking past Ben Stiller driving a white corvette out of a Manhattan parking garage. However, I didn't recongnize him and can only assume the people traveling with me identified him correctly.

This is what happens when you have too many ingredients

2008-01-19T20:33:00.001-05:00

I wanted to find a recipe for french onion soup that also incorporated shallots. More specifically, I wanted to see if shallots would caramelize and reduce like onions do when you make French onion soup.

I come across this recipe, apparently from a BBC Cooking show. There are only two circumnstances that could lead to this recipe being developed. The first is someone was looking to use up a hodgepod of ingredients in their kitchen. The other was someone had access to so many ingredients that they simply cannot grasp that most people do not cook anything with two distinct alcohol ingredients.

I mean there is a lot of leeway in the wine requirement for French onion soup. I use marsala wine, mainly because my girlfriend bought a bottle of the stuff that is almost drinkable. On a total side note, I recommend it as the cooking wine for fresh clam sauce.

That being said, I am sure that with proper execution this recipe is divine. I also realize that these ingredients are all regularly available year round and if one cooks with wine and liquor, they probably have a bottle of sherry and brandy handy. However, this recipe is such that one can remove half the ingredients and still have a very nice soup.

I understand that you absolutely need butter to reduce onions. I also understand that mixing it with olive oil is good if you are impatient and plan on spending less than an hour reducing the onions. I'm sure that there is a difference between simmering off and burning off alcohol in terms of the resulting flavors. I am also sure that if I took some weekend intensives at the Culinary Institute of America I would understand enough cooking theory where it would be worth it to follow this recipe exactly.

My point is this reipe is quite complex for its intended audience, people that get their recipes from cooking shows. It is complex in the ingredient list, as opposed to the techniques. If I am feeling adventerous, I'd be willing to reduce onions for 3 hours, but I don't want to get 15 ingredients at the grocery store.

I am not the man who calls himself Zippy Catholic

2008-01-15T18:40:00.000-05:00

I've used the handle zippy1981 for a while. Generally, I've not done anything to terrible online, and I don't particularly mind employers or potential employers searching for what I've said under the pseudonym. As a matter of fact I'd prefer if they googled that to my real name. When I google my real name, I find that many people that share it are quite active on the internet.

That being said, I recently became aware of a blogger that calls himself Zippy Catholic. I happen to be a practicing Catholic, and some might think I've created that blog to present my viewpoints that are particularly Catholic. This is not the case.

I was referred to this blog via one I subscribe to, Code Monkey Ramblings. The particular article was Single People and Women Should Receive Less Pay For Equivalent Work. Well I disagree. Perhaps I might explain why one day. However for now I will say I agree with this argument:

Zippy,
. . .
You are overlooking not only the division of labor, but the division of responsibility and of obligation. And you are treating employers like things -- in this case an ATM. After all, employers have children to support and bills to pay. Their obligation is to take good care of them; your obligation is to take good care of your own. Don't treat your employer as a thing, an impersonal money source to which you can go in order to have it meet your domestic obligations. Furthermore, not to put the domestic obligation where it belongs is to treat employees as things, not as real persons with real obligations before both God and man. Your solution to the alleged impersonalization of employment is itself an impersonalization.
. . .
Michael Bauman
www.michaelbauman.com

My specific economical views will hopefully get discussed here in the future. For now, you can assume His Holiness might just excommunicate me for my economical views, or maybe suggest I become a Jesuit Priest. One might assume me to be an Evangelical Christian if discussing economics or politics. Well I think the "religious right" is shifting back to a Jimmy Carter-ish
left. Us Americans often forget that he was the man that introduced many outside the bible belt to the term "Evangelical Christian."

A few more issues I'd like to quickly touch upon. I read my doopleganger's blog profile and would like to point out a few ways we are different:

The other Zippy has Academic Degrees. I have a high school diploma, a drivers license and a bartending certificate
The other zippy has 5 software patents, I am against software patents. Of course I don't know what I would do if I was caleld into my bosses office and told to fill out patent forms for some piece of code I was working on. Its easy to take a firm moral stand when it doesn't affect you.
The other zippy currently fufills executive roles. I am am quite clearly a developer

Perhaps I will read some more of his works. Regardless of what happens I hope no one confuses the two of us.

Plus size fashion is getting smaller

2008-01-09T21:48:00.000-05:00

I spend far too much time thinking about plus size womens clothing considering I don't have any need to purchase plus size womens clothing. However, for some reason they always find ways of attracting my attention. Tonight at at Green Acres Mall, a second datapoint pointed to an emerging trend; plus size clothing stores were catering to slightly less plus size women.

At some point in the recent past I saw a sign advertising the fact that Ashley Stewart now sold size 14. I briefly amused myself with thoughts of not quite plus size women rejoicing that they could buy Ashley Stewart fashions and size 16 women relieved that they could overeat a little less and still be able to get a pair of jeans that fit them just right.

In actuality, there are plenty of fashion labels that cater both above and below the Ashley Stewart price range and are of similar quality. Also, many men and women struggle with real and imaginary weight problems, and they should all be thoroughly offended by what I write here.

So fast forward to the present, I pass buy a "coming soon" storefront. It is called "Fashion to Figure," and the sign said they catered to sizes 12-26. This is a step down from size 12. In keeping with my duty to pretend to have journalistic integrity, I went to their website, which claimed to sell sized 14 to 26. I can only assume that when they open this and any other soon to be opened stores, they will put out some ads letting their customers know they are free to drop a dress size.

I plan on keeping tabs on the plus size industry to see where this is all going. By keeping tabs I mean that whenever I am in the mall and see a plus size store I will make mental note of the sizes they serve. This means I will get new data points approximately every 6 months. Many of you will point out the possibility that the clothings are remaining unchanged, but the size on the label is shrinking. I am unwilling to cross dress to test this theory.

Adventures in buying petrol in the garden state

2008-01-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

In the early hours of New Years day (~02:00 GMT -04:00) I found myself at a gas station just outside the wrong end of the Holland tunnel. I had to parallel park in the center of a three pump island since it was the only available pump at the gas station.

I soon realized that this backup was caused by a lack of a station attendant. Since this was the garden state, it is illegal to pump your own gas. I often attempt to do so anyway, and sometimes succeed. I've never had the opportunity to do so in the presence of law enforcement, but I'd be willing to risk a night in jail to see how well the law is enforced.

So I park between a NYC livery cab and a towncar with Jersey plates. I believe the Jersey plates said "omnibus," which seems to be what taxi plates say. The New York driver was pumping his gas, and the Jersey driver was contemplating doing so. I don't know if he was afraid to or simply didn't know how. Its possible to reach the gas station via side streets so its entirely possible that he has never been outside of the garden state.

As I'm pumping my gas the station attendant appears. He aids the man who would not pump his own gas. I get back in my car with the childish pride of someone who has just gotten away with minor mischief and drive to the girlfriends house.

I forgot to stick the drain catch in the diswasher

2007-12-31T13:57:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend has a dishwasher. She also has a wire mesh in her sink for filtering out particles. I personally prefer an actual stopper, as I like to fill up the sink with soapy water when I wash hand wash dishes.

Regardless, sometimes I like to load the dishwasher up with things that dont get washed every day. Things such as parts of the coffee maker, wire brushes, sponges, copper scrub pads. In other words, when I clean the kitchen I like to stick anything small enough in the dishwasher. Part of this includes the drain catch.

Unfortunately, I do not clean the kitchen in an orderly fashion. As a matter of fact, I usually start cleaning the kitchen while preparing lunch, and never arrange it so that the dish washer is started immediately after I finish my dessert course of a sour pickle and some kim chi.

As such I always forget to throw the catch in the dishwasher. I think I will have to buy the girlfriend a second drain catch so I can always have one in the dishwasher. It would be much easier to integrate a drain catch swap into my diswasher unloading routine than to decide that I'm going to cook lunch, eat it sitting down, and then clean the kitchen in an orderly fashion.

Happy New Years Eve and belated Winter Solstice Greetings

2007-12-31T13:53:00.001-05:00

Its been a while since I posted. I just want to say I hope everyone enjoyed their Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Saturnilla. or whatever winter solstice holiday they observed. And I wish you all a healthy and prosperous new year.

Great Ceasers Ghost - The Things People Will Post

2007-12-08T15:42:00.001-05:00

Well Kath hates her sister in law and felt the need to tell the world. So she tells the world in her blog. I happen to come across this blog article while searching for the origin of an expression that happened to title one of her blog articles, "Great Odins Raven."

So I ask mys, "has she thought her sister in law might find the article." Its very possible her sister in law does not spend much time browsing the internet and therefore will never find it. However, you never know. Perhaps she does secretly wish the article to be discovered and she would never have to talk to her sister in law again.

Happy Repeal Day!

2007-12-05T23:17:00.000-05:00

December 5th, 1923, the 21st Amendment of the US Constitution made the 18th Amendment null and void. Prohibition was ended.

Everyone celebrate by having a drink.

The Return of Imus

2007-12-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

I was stuck in traffic yesterday morning. This was probably a good thing as I got to Listen to a good portion of Don Imus. I think it made me appreciate on some small level what he meant when he said he was thankful for being fired:

I was thinking how fortunate it was that I had been fired, because had I been there talking to them, and apologizing to them, and offering them these excuses, and still had my job.... they would have thought that I was there to try and save my job, and that might have been true, but I was there to try and save my life.

Another thing he said was he realized that when he met with the students and was "providing context" to his remarks, it was irrelevant to them. This hit somewhat closer to home. I think more people have had the experience of being forced to face their own prejudice, and find themselves saying something to the effect, "But I have (insert group here) friends!" or otherwise justifying behaviors or statements. In the end it doesn't matter.

However, does it matter that Imus had done so much good? Well perhaps it both mattered and was irrelevant at the same time. Maybe it didn't directly make up for the remarks, but taught us a greater lesson.

I sort of grew up listening to Imus. My dad mainly listened to 660 AM "The Fan" in the car when I was growing up. Especially in the morning. I don't know at what point Imus was syndicated, but really it didn't matter. From my point of view there was always Imus in the morning.

When I rediscovered AM radio on my own, I became a WABC fan. Morning Drive time was time for Curtis and Kuby. Although I had mixed opinions about the "incident," I was not reallt affected by it. To be honest, I was initially disappointed to hear that Imus would come to WABC, as I had grown accustomed to the cast of characters that I heard in the morning.

My memories of the I-man pitching his charities was first SIDs and then later his ranch. Regardless of any accusations of fund misappropriation, and the general waste of money that charitable bureaucrats can do sometimes, kids with cancer go to the ranch and have fun. It's somewhat ironic that it is a functional ranch, uet the meals are vegetarian, but hey not everyone can eat their own dog food.

A left learning person I know remarked years ago that the man is a bigot and he carries a handgun. Well I don't see a link between gun ownership and bigotry. Unless he has shot anyone we cannot link his gun ownership with prejudices. However, I think his owning a gun and behaving certain ways provided a different context for people who had negative views about Imus before the incident.

So in the end nothing has changed, but Imus's position on the dial. Oh and of course 2 black comedians working on Imus's staff. Perhaps if he makes some off color remark about non celebrity African Americans before 6am, and the two black comedians on the air don't get offended by it, that will provide some context we can all agree on. Then again perhaps not.

Lean Pockets with a Whole Grain Crust

2007-11-27T22:21:00.000-05:00

As previously stated I am dog sitting and the dog comes with Whole Grain Lean Pockets. I have discovered these are not to my liking.

Now generally I like most whole grain foods. These however, taste more like cardboard than there white flour counterparts. I can't explain why. They just do. They are slightly better in the toaster oven than the microwave. However, only slightly.

Now on to the lean part. Generally, if a processed cheese is "light" it is not tasty. There are many cheeses made from skim milk that I like. obviously, the hot pockets is made from processed light cheese.

So if I am complacent to eat them, when there is other food in the house, why do I write about them? Well I guess this is proof some people rather sit on their soapbox than take action.

Dog Sitting

2007-11-27T08:05:00.000-05:00

I'm watching this thing for the week.

It's name is Willie. I figured today would be his freak out day after waking up and realizing mommy didn't come home so I chose to work from home so he wouldn't be so lonely. He slept until about noon and ignored me most of the day. The one exception was a bought of activity around noon that inspired me to take him for a walk. Generally he poops in the backyard during the cold months. Since the weather was warm enough this was a bit of a treat for him.

Willie of comes with its owner's apartment. This is something I enjoy. Its not terribly far from my place and the apartment comes with food, which other than the whole grain lean pockets, I can't complain about. Being I ate lean the lean pockets twice, I guess I have little right to make that particular complaint. Fool me once, shame on lean pockets, Fool me twice, and I should have gotten pizza for lunch.

Well its off to bed. I have a full day of staring at my laptop screen from my desk tomorrow.

We need a figure skating channel!

2007-11-25T19:54:00.001-05:00

Today was setup the tree day for the girlfriend. She's a fan of live trees. I grew up on artificial trees, and wish to continue the tradition when I have a family of my own. However, this is not the story of how a man and a woman compromise on important matters that define us as human beings, or at least Judeo-Christian homosapians. Rather, its about figure skating!

So, while the girlfriend was setting up the tree, and I was writing about matters of profound unimportance in this blog, the TV was on. The channel was ESPN and figure skating was the event being broadcast.

I don't remember what competition was being televised, but I was paying more attention to it than I would like. What I mean by that is I have a terrible time tuning out background noise and was distracted by the TV. However, the girlfriend wanted to watch it and I wanted to let her.

After the event , the next sport being broadcast was NFL football. Now here in the United States, we all know every man loves football, and figure skating is a womans sport. We also thank God that we have at least 5 ESPN to broadcast all sports, including "mainstream sports," "alternative sports," "extreme sports," "vintage games," and of course curling.

However, until ESPN and the Oxygen Network team up and and provide us an all figure skating channel, our Sunday afternoon rituals will be interrupted by "girl sports." So I beg of you Oxygen, deliver us from Nancy Kerrigan!

Apparently I like Congnac

2007-11-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

Authors note: I originally wrote this on Black Friday 2007, along with several other articles I never finished. I am finishing this now. Perhaps I might get a chance to finish the rest of the series.

In between dinner in Little Italy and After Dinner Cordials at McSorley't I sampled Ferrand Cognac at Astors's Wines and Liquors. To my surprise I like cognac when its done properly. At least I like it when it's done by Ferrand.

The tasting was lead by Jean-Francois Daniel, apparently a representative of Ferrand. He claims their cognacs are comparative to single malt scotches, and I agree with that.

They showcased three of their products at the tastings. They were the 10, the 20 and the 30 year equivilant. A bit of a note on that. These are blended cognacs. In the world of scotch, a.k.a. that which I know best, to say a blend is X years old is to say that the youngest cask used in it is X years old. Apparenly, in the case of Cognac you are allowed to call something the equivalent of X years. Well despite this ambiguity, and the fact that these are blends, I reeaffirm that these are single malt scotch equivalent.

The 10 year old was quite oaky, but still a Cognac. The 20 year old was quite fruity. The thirty year old was divine. I don't pretend to have developed my pallet or pallet vocabulary enough to explain the difference. However, its there.

What Makes a Good Grab Bag Gift?

2007-11-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

This Saturday the girlfriend is hosting a small Christmas party for her friends. By the time plans were settled, there was no time to draw names from a hat, so the gift exchange will be grab bag style as opposed to Kris Kringle. This means of course that we are tasked with picking a gift that anyone would like.

So what makes a good gift in a grab bag context? I'll set the following criteria.

The gift should be consumable, that is the act of using the gift destroys it. Food, spirits and candles are examples of this.
As a corollary to rule 1, if the container for a gift is meant to be saved and reused, it should be as small as possible. Stackable is an inferior but satisfactory substitute for small.
As an exception to rule number 1, if it can be mostly assured that the gift's receiver will be able to make good use of the gift something permanent may be given. Seasonal items also count in this context of permanence. Examples, would be Christmas tree ornaments.
I would shy away from giving something personal. Its a grab bag.

Now for the explanations.

I'm of the belief people have too much junk. I'm by no means an advocate of green living and low carbon foot prints. I just think we collect more things than we need. This is why I'm a big fan of consumable items. If I receive smoked salmon I will eat it and not have to store it in my attic. If I receive a smoker, I will cook smoked meat two or three times and then it will take up space in my garage until the statue of limitations on selling it at a garage sale passes.

Items specifically marketed as gifts in stores fall into two distinct categories. Those that come in pretty cardboard boxes with gold accents, and those that come in pretty reusable containers of non cardboard material. Opt for the former not the later. Some people are very good at making use of square wicker baskets, but most are not.

If you absolutely must give something permanent, a Christmas tree ornament is a good idea. However, there are exceptions to even this rule. Parents of older children generally have more ornaments than they need. If you compare the Christmas trees of younger adults versus older adults you will see that younger adults tend to have ornaments that are sold in ten packs and older adults have acquired more than their share of unique ornaments of sentimental value.

Am I being just slightly heartless here? Yes I am. However, that is the point. I am a packrat by nature. Many others are like me. We all like to give and receive gifts. If you give me a gift I probably will never throw it away, and the same is true for my fellow packrats. By following my guidelines, you allow the gift giving and receiving to continue, without causing attics to become needlessly cluttered.

Obligatory Happy Thanksgiving Post

2007-11-22T09:57:00.001-05:00

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. I don't want to get into a history of the Holiday at this time. Rather than attribute it to certain parties, I will point out the origins of the concept of thanksgiving.

Originally, days of thanksgiving were days spent in church declared whenever something good happened in the community. What we call Thanksgiving evolved from special day of Thanksgiving declared once a year as a harvest festival that in addition to the church going, had a large feast associated with it. It was usually on a Thursday in New England because that was the day of the midweek prayer service., so most people attended then.

Each colony would declare a thanksgiving once a year and eventually it became a national holiday. These days the president pardons a turkey, and eats another.

Perhaps one day I will further study the origins of this holiday and report them here. Until then, happy thanksgiving to all readers of my blog and their families.

A blog as a journal that just happens to be public

2007-11-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

Some bloggers that deem themselves successful think that the bad ones are doing a disservice by existing. I don't believe this, but I am obviously biased. First of all, my Google searches are not filled up with irrelevant personal anecdotes. so I do not see how anyone suffers because people like me make their hatred of whole wheat lean pockets public. Secondly, these blogs serve a similar purpose as a journal does to the writer. I say similar because as I recently realized there is a different between a public blog and a private journal.

I'm rather straightforward in this blog, but not because I hide under the blanket of anonymity. A quick Google search of my handle will turn up my real name and my email address. Because of this, there are certain things I won't say for various reasons. These are not of the secrets I will take to my grave variety. They are more along the lines of things I'd rather not let certain people know. Many of them I have no problem with letting most of my friends and total strangers know. It would just be for the best if certain other people didn't know.

An example of information I previously wanted to keep secret from certain parties is I quite my job as a customer service representative for an ISP to work for a company that printed t-shirts as a programmer. Except for the first couple of months at the new job I worked weekends at the old job. Now I probably would not be fired for having a second job, but its generally not something looked upon in a positive light. This is especially true when you are a salaried employee. At this point in time I no longer work for either party so I don't mind sharing this fact.

At the time I did note in my myspace blog that I was moonlighting, and my new coworkers found me and my blog with my little secret. In the end nothing came of it, but it was stupid on my part.

So your potential audience affects what you say. While in general I may write the same sort of things in this blog as I would in a journal, some things are said differently because others might see them. The same could be said for a journal I intend no one but myself to see as opposed to one I would allow others to see.

In my case that means certain things are not said, Also, I make an attempt to make events sound more interesting since I potentially have an audience. In that regard I find this blog a better tool for improving my writing than a journal. The hope that random people will find me interesting enough to read me regularly makes me want to say something interesting.

Observations on airport security.

2007-11-16T02:18:00.000-05:00

My company has an office in Florida. I am flying back from my second trip there. Both times I've smuggled contraband on the plane. By contraband I mean items that I can't technically take on a plane, but would not make effective weapons.

The first time I traveled there I brought a larger than 10 oz container of body wash in my carry on. As JFK they just didn't notice it. It was confiscated on the way back at FLL. The second time I brought network cable crimping equipment on. I was told by the TSA employees at JFK it was ok. In line for scanning on the way back a read a sign that specifically forbid tools such as screwdrivers and hammers. I think a crimper, punch down tool and wire stripper fall into that category. Somehow I make it through screening.

This is what I don't like about the war on terror. I don't know enough about security to be able to make statements about the usefulness of flight regulations. However, I think that not enforcing them is probably a bad idea.

These sorts of incidents eventually lead me to think how I would behave if another passenger on a plane I am taking announces he is hijacking the plane, I plan on making it very clear they will have to kill me before they bring down the plane. Of course being unmarried and childless I have the luxory of being able to make principled stands like that. At least in my own mind I do.

2007-11-16T01:58:00.000-05:00

Cars, Trains, and Airplanes

The past 72 hours have been quite interesting for me. Below is the run down.

I left work at 17:00. I was given two tickets to the New York Performance of Blue Man Group. They are not affected by the stage hand strike. I think the stage hands are actually actors as they participate in the show and take their bows at the end. Curtain time is 20:00. My plan was to drive from work to Jamacia Station, then take the LIRR and the A train to my destination. My girlfriends plan was to take the bus to the PATH Train to the A train.

This part of the plan executed fine, except for a minor reroute on my girlfriends part. We grabbed sandwiches for dinner. The show was excellent. Afterwards we took a taxi to the world trade center. She takes the PATH train to the Godless land across the Hudson that no New York enjoys going to unless he happens to be one of New Yorks Strongest driving a garbage truck. I take the A train back to Queens. As I am walking from the subway station to my house I remember that my car is in Jamacia.

This meant that I would have to wake up an hour earlier, walk to JFK airport, take the Air Train. Pay $5 dollars to get off at Jamacia, and walk to my car. Normally this would be a minor inconvenience. However, I happened to have to catch the 6:55 Jet Blue flight to FLL in the morning. This cut 5 hours of sleep down to 4. I could not leave my car there because it would be ticked and possibly towed in the morning, and my laptop, which I would need in Florida, was there.

I wake up, stuff a change of cloths into my jacket pockets and begin my pilgrimage to my car. I arrive at my car. Soon after starting my car I discover that there is so much dew I will have to clean off the windows by hand. This is a task that has always annoyed me greatly. I take a short drive back to my house and walk back to JFK.

Upon arriving at security, I began top remember the multitude of rules the TSA enforces at these check points. Mainly I keep alot of junk in my book bag and pockets, and much of it is electronic. I average about 4 trays at the scanners. I forgot toiletries, so I don't have to worry about the liquid rules.

However, I dis have one thing to worry about, a set of network cable tools. These are strange looking and have sharp edges. Luckily the TSA employee knows what they are and after a consult with her red shirted supervisor I am allowed to bring these weapons of mass communication upon the plane.

The flight departs on time and is uneventful. No one claps when we land. This pleases me. Unless an engine catches fire I feel clapping is unwarranted. If you are a nervous flyer I suggest you OD on caffine and take a 16 hour nonstop flight. Repeat until flight does not bother you. If you fear terrorists, consider flying a stupid, but brave symbolic act.

I am offered a Dodge Charger upsell by Avis for only $10 more a day. The clerk did no know the engine in it, and I didnt check. I believe it was the V-6. There is no tiptronic like shifting. Wikipedia claims that on a Dodge the closest technology would be called AutoStick. The interior is very spartan. It was an interesting change from my Corolla. The squareness of the front allowed me to park easier. That being said, I'll take my 5 speed corolla any day over an automatic Dodge Charger.

The business aspect of Floridia was fairly straightforward. I took a walk down Hillsboro Blvd looking for a place to eat and eventually settled on a Mexican restaurant. I walked back to my hotel, watched some TV and went to sleep.

They next day was more of the same and the trip back to the airport. The TSA employee was very insistent that I only use the trays for my laptop and shoes and keep the rest of my bag intact. Small trays were provided for pocket contents. They much have newer scanners there, and to my surprise, my bag doesn't require manual inspection.

I get to my flight gate and discover the flight is delayed. It was scheduled to depart FLL at 18:10. A little after 7 we were allowed on the plane. Its now 20:00 and I am sitting in seat 20C, typing this from the Tarmac, As I finished the last sentence, at 20:03 an announcement was made that planes destined for JFK are now allowed to take off.

---------- HIBERNATE LAPTOP ----------

---------- UNHIBERNATE LAPTOP ----------

20:35 and I'm in the air. I'm anticipating my Dunkin Donuts coffee black no sugar and blue potato chips.

I end up home a little before 01:00.

Christman List Fun

2007-11-09T08:40:00.000-05:00

My mother requested a Christmas list from myself and my girlfriend. I post the email thread here for the amusement of the general public.

The lists

Girlfriend:
A house plant

Me:
Pony
German Shepard
underwear
world peace
world domination

The response

Thank you for your Christmas List. However, there is shortage on
ponies, German shepherds decided to travel back to their homeland.
underwear that's a good possibility as long as its USA made, but what is
the size. world peace sounds heavenly but out of my control and world
domination--you're asking for too much.

Love,
Mom

Confusing Marketing

2007-11-06T22:51:00.001-05:00

Ok sometime I see something and just want to say what the heck. Palm's marketing copy for their Centro is one of those things.

The Centro's product page says the following:

Life starts after five o'clock. That's why there's the Palm® Centro™ smartphone. Palm Centro gives you voice, text, IM, email and web, all in a phone that's a lot smaller than you think. It even has a touchscreen and a full keyboard, so you can say L8R to those tricky keys on your cell phone. Carry names and numbers, shoot photos and video, and meet up with friends. Centro. Let's go.

What were they thinking? If you have a smart phone, you generally use it because you are a workaholic. You don't use it for you outside the office life. Even if it is a toy you use to communicate with your friends, you're probably using it to check your rss feeds or myspace messages when you should be talking to the girl sitting next to you, since its 5 o'clock and that means its happy hour.

A tale of bad documentation - Part 2

2007-10-29T01:27:00.000-04:00

In part 1 I discussed a real life story of bad documentation wasting peoples time. In part 2 I provide an update and some notes on the more human side of this all.

After some correspondence on the mailing lists, I submitted a documentation patch. There might an iteration or two of changes to that, but I expect it to make it into the final product (the website) in short order.

All in all its been a mostly positive experience as far as interacting with people. The people on the list were pretty helpful and quite responsive. However, the tools were a bit obtuse. I'm hoping to be able to help fix that fir future releases.

Observations on Parking Tickets

2007-10-28T12:22:00.000-04:00

I get many parking tickets. This comes from growing up in an area where you could park on the street 24/7, but in my adult life having to drive to areas with things like alternate side of the street parking.

First a definition of alternate side of the street parking. Basically in New York City, neighboring Jersey City, and I'm sure many other urban areas, certain areas where you can park on the street have signs where once or twice a week you cannot park on that side of the street for a certain time period. The times are arranged so that if you cannot part your car on one side of the street today, you cannot park your car on the other side tomorrow. Hence the name alternate side of the street parking.

The reason for this is to designate a time period that the street cleaning trucks can clean the street. The penalty for failing to move your car is of course a parking ticket. Also, if they actually clean the streets that day, you get a sticker on your windshield letting you know that the streets are dirty because of you. In addition to all of this are of course areas you just cannot park during weekday daytime hours because the extra lane is needing for moving cars or the area is designated no standing except for commercial vehicles. Violating those signs means getting towed.

I've received several parking tickets, and gotten towed once. I've never gotten a sticker on my windshield, but did once watch a street cleaning truck drive around my car and quickly moved it before someone came to apply the sticker and write the ticket. I've even gotten towed once. These I can all attest to personal irresponsibility However, there is one ticket I attribute to personnel responsibility.

I was hanging out at a bar that was then called Central Ales in Valley Stream. The location of the building is shown below.

View Larger Map

While I was there, a couple of friends I don't see often showed up. They said they would give me a ride home and my friend the manager said he would give me a ride to my car in the AM. So I did a few shots of Jagar and hung out for a few hours before being dropped off at my residence.

The next day I saw a pink slip on my windshield. It said my crime was parking between the hours of 03:30 and 05:30. The merits of such a law on quality of life is questionable to me. Then again I find the concept of wanting to forbid parking on the street for the sake of forbiding it quite elitist. Generally it means people can park on the street to visit homes and residences, but need to secure a private parking spot if they reside there. Of course, the way the law is written, the main culprits are those that frequent bars in the area, and the law has the unintended consequence of encouraging drunk driving. Now in addition to having to go back and get my car the next day, and pay for a cab, I have to pay a ticket if I decide that I had too much to drink and want to do the right thing.

I never paid the ticket, but that is another story. I should have fought the ticket, because I feel so strongly about the law being wrong in this instance that I should have made my feelings public record.

A tale of bad documentation

2007-10-16T23:06:00.001-04:00

I am a programmer by day for a small software company. By night I write open source software. I guess I like to program.

I once submitted a patch to an open source program called XML Copy Editor. It was small. Soon afterwards I volunteered to perform a small task and was given developer access to the source repository. I continue to correspond with the developer although I've only made that one original change to the programs source code.

My latest non code contribution was helping the author replace MSXML with Xerces on Windows. I originally expected to have to fight with Xerces, but by dumb luck the first thing I tried worked after a bit of tinkering. The reason that the programs author had trouble using Xerces on windows was not because of bad code or bad make files. It was because of bad documentation.

Because of bad documentation many hours were wasted by him that could have been dedicated to making XML Copy Editor better, or any other task he chose to spend his leisure time on. Because of bad documentation XML Copy Editor has fewer features than it could have. Because of bad documentation I am writing this post.

Now I decided to allow some good come out of this situation. As you all know, I decided to use this as a lesson delivered by the blog article you now read. In addition, I shared my story with the Xerces-C developers mailing list and offered to correct the situation.

Now if you read my email and the documentation I refer to, you will probably come to the conclusion that the documentation is quite good, except for this one oversite. You would be correct. However, the oversite was for common usage scenario, and caused significant harm to one developer and his user base in terms of wasted time. Since the documentation fails to cover the usage senario I care about, the documentation fails to address my needs. Therefore I could have been alienated by the documentations small oversite.

Lessons in Investing

2007-10-16T19:34:00.000-04:00

Today I met with a financial adviser from David Lerner. I decided that I will not be using them as investment advisers. This is the third adviser I have interviewed so far.

I was actually late for my appointment. I was supposed to meet with him at 5:30 but got stuck at work late and forgot about it. I say David Lerner on the caller id of my office landline and believe I greeted the man with "Hi, oh crap sorry." I felt pretty bad I felt from the beginning this would not be the firm I went with as they tend to be very conservative and I am 26 years old.

I am greeted by a security guard who escorts me to a client meeting room. On my way in I pass by Mr Lerner myself and am a bit awestruck to stand face to face with a man who I've only seen on a website and heard on the radio. My impression of this man from a short meeting is that it would suit his ego nicely to have others awestruck by him. However, he will probably be upset when he learns tomorrow that I said no.

Mr. Lerner says I look lost, and I later found out he probably had mistaken me for an under dressed telemarketer under his employ. When the guard said I was a client he said then your definitely not lost. I explained I was a potential client and he said he owned socks older than me. His employees addressed his as Mr. Lerner and he oozed fiscal conservatism. He was the foil of the archetype coke head day trader.

My potential advisor sat me down asked me what I do and what my goal was. I explained I was a programmer and being young I was looki9ng for a little more risk than his average client. He then sat me down and showed me three of his companies products. First he shows me a REIT fund. Its all local US based stuff, most in the region, and places anyone in the area would have heard of. Not great returns at all, but I assume good for a reit fund. I really haven't looked at reit funds at all so I can comment. He then offers me the fund of the moment, the Large Cap domestic. These return numbers were in the range of 13%. He then shows me one of their guaranteed income products. It involves investing in Marriott properties and basically you get a guaranteed rate of return of 8% with some reasonable rules.

This is when I started talking. I said I would not want to invest in a reit, as its a buyers market,. I said the large cap was a bit to conservative as the last investor I talked to showed me one with an 18% return and I knew someone that used him and I knew this was typical of what he actually recommends Finally I said that 8% is far too low for what I want.

In the end I thanked him for his time and walked out. This was what I expected, but I didn't quite expect the events to fold in exactly this way. I informed the advisor of my age, income, etc and he should have realized that there was no need to offer me the 8% interest product. He could have offered me multiple large caps, and he should have offered me something high risk for diversity. It was a great pitch of I was 50, but not for a man of 26.

So whats the lesson learned here? Know your potential customer. Then again, maybe I'm the one that needs to learn a lesson. Maybe the lesson is when your David Lerner, and you build your business on fiscal conservatism, you rather turn away clients younger than your socks than risk your established customer base.

This time you might be wrong Ms. Acres.

2007-10-14T22:36:00.000-04:00

So apparently a blogger called Ryan Holiday documented and justified his road rage, and Ms. Acres called him a self centered brat. I think in this particular case she might be right, but she does not see the whole picture.

I drive really fast. I run red lights. I'm a stupid youth that thinks I'm invincible. This is where I attempt to justify it.

First of all I speed for sport. I speed all the time, and I tend not to speed more when I am in a rush. My driving style is largely mood based and really has little to do with how late I am running.

I think this makes me safer than the "I'm in a hurry let me hit the gas" type in that I take the same level of calculated risks in a given situation. I don't push it.

Now here is my take on someone driving slow in the left lane being socially irresponsible. No in reality its not worse than murder, pedophilia, killing Jews, or whatever. However, let me tell you a few of my driving stories.

My First Accident

My first accident happened a few days after I got my license. I was waiting to go through the toll booth of the Tapanzee bridge. I noticed a few miles before that I did not have my wallet in my pocket and thought I might have left it at a rest stop. I was searching in a panic for it on line for the toll booth and accidentally let my for off the brake and scratched the bumper of a brand new Camry. The driver insisted on going through insurance even though the trooper even said it was a bad idea and since it was less than $500 dollars worth of damage and he was not under an obligation to file a damage report if both parties agreed. She wanted to go through insurance.

Naturally I felt guilty damaging another drivers car, but honestly I felt a lot more guilty about jamming up traffic in that tool lane for 5 minutes.

Learning Stick Shift

I always wanted to learn stick shift. So I bought a brand new Corolla that I planned to burn the clutch of in my companies parking lot on a Saturday. A kind friend offered to teach me to minimize damage. So I drove around a park until he said give it a go on real roads. I got nervous in my first intersection and delayed alot of people in cars behind me. During this time I felt it was quite selfish for me to want to learn stick shift. I drove around some more and now I am good enough not to burden the other drivers on the road.

Jersey City Bus Stops

Across the Hudson river from Manhattan is a place called Jersey City. Image the Bronx if it were a New Jersey Municipality. This is Jersey City. They even have their own subway system to Manhattan called the PATH Train.

I've been unfortunate enough to have to spend significant time in Jersey City. If it wasn't for my sworn duty as a New Yorker to have nothing but bad things to say about the Garden State, I would say a few good things about it. However this story is about something that pisses me off greatly.

In NYC people don't park in bus stops. We double park and occasionally block hydrants, but would never park in a bus stop. This is mainly because you will get towed. However, as a huge proponent of public transportation, I consider such an act morally reprehensible.

In Jersey City this is just not the case. Running into the pizza shop at 8pm? Just park in the bus stop no one cares. Granted there is a huge parking problem in Jersey City, and while you can rent a spot in someones driveway or empty lot, unless you are downtown or by the waterfront, there are no lots to buy a parking space for a day from.

This is why I came to the conclusion a while back that if I am ever was a mayor or local legislator, I would decree that whoever was found parking in a bus stop would have to spend the night in jail. This is how reprehensible I feel about the crime. Its not even a self centered thing. When I ride the bus, having to step twelve feet into the street does not inconvenience me. When I drive, I really don't mind getting stuck behind a bus as I am a big fan of taking buses. However, parking in a bus lane just shows a lack of caring for society at large in my opinion.

Conclusion

This Ryan is angry and aggressive and needs to grow up. He either exaggerates when he describes the anger of being behind a slow driver, or Ms. Acres is absolutely correct in her assertions that he is completely self centered. However, maybe, just maybe he has a similar thought practice as mine, and just wrote that post while still angry. Maybe he is absolutely guilt stricken, when others suffer for his actions. Then again I didn't read any other articles in his blog, so I am not in a position to back up these theories.

Predicting Reaction to Ms. Acres and her Response

2007-10-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

In her latest post, Ms. Acres talks about how she is ok with how she looks and hates the fact that most women aren't. No doubt she is generating a buzz for her apparent contradiction with her posts where she makes fun of fat chicks. However, it is not.

If you read her posts you realize what she hates is sloth, and self pitty. In her faq, she claims fat men are more acceptable because they tend to be jolly.

Also, one can be physically fit and have bad ankles and wrinkly foreheads. That is of course unless your ankles are ugly because of a total lack of muscle development.

Sensationalism in the media.

2007-10-09T19:17:00.000-04:00

I site here watching the News Channel 4 at & in NYC Tonight. As usual there is a story that is teased throughout the broadcast that is one of the last stories shown.

This one seems like a first amendment issue to the uneducated, but is not. However, there might be federal fair housing laws that are applicable. I'm not quire sure of the constitutional validity of these laws, but I'm pretty sure most federal laws these days are unconstitutional.

The issue is a co-op board banned religions statues in residents front yards. A co-op board is a private organization, and therefore may make any sort of rules it wants to. They can erect a giant burning cross or a statue of Xenu, and any lawsuit based on the first amendment regarding the matter would not make it anywhere near the US Supreme Court.

I believe in religious freedom. Part of that is allowing people and private organizations to express religions views, or lack of religious views. Personally, I don't believe in going out of my way to not offend people. So I would not want to be a part of this co-op board. However, I don't exactly I'm co-op material in general.

So while I don't support this decision, I support the co-ops bord right to make it.

Camera's in the Supreme Court

2007-10-08T20:03:00.000-04:00

Recently Clarence Thomas has published a book called My Grandfather's Son, a book in which he tells the story of being raised by his grandfather. I've yet to read it, but I plan to. However, I heard most of an interview he gave to his former supreme court clerk, Laura Ingram as part of his promotional tour.

One of the topics he is asked about in the interview is cameras in the supreme court. He said he does not see a benefit to the process from them, and therefore would not place them in the court room.

This bothers me. I'm a fan of transparency in process, for government and the private sector. I've contributed to wikipedia, and make an effort to always do so while logged in. My behavior online generally occurs while logged in. I encourage others to do likewise, and to publish their work on the internet, especially when they think its of no value.

Thats not to say that I do not support privacy. I accept the necessity of Wikipedia's allowing anonymous edits. I hope to never be compelled to edit wikipedia anonymously, but cherish my ability to do so if necessary. While I store a large amount of data on googles various services including gmail, this blog, and my entire search history. I'm a fan of allowing court records to be sealed after punishment is served. I also have plenty of my own secrets that I attempt to limit knowledge of.

I feel he is asking the wrong question. If it were my decision, the question I would I would ask would be, "Would having cameras in the Supreme Court hurt the process of judicial review that occurs there?" Also if so, why? If a court is afraid to reveal its process, that is cause for alarm.

I don't refer to the "closed door meetings" that are necessary in any dealing making process. People have to be allowed to caucus. Small subgroups have to be able to reach consensuses to sell the idea to the group at large. However, I feel that the actual process of lawyers arguing their briefs should be a matter of public record.

Musing on healthcare

2007-10-07T19:32:00.000-04:00

Last week I had a sore throat. I believe it was strep. I will never know for sure though.

See I'm not a fan of sick days. I pride myself on not taking them. I found a walk in clinic on Wednesday that I thought I would be able to make it to after work. I was not able to. So I decided Thursday to make an appointment with my physician.

My physician is actually an APN. Her name is Emma. She works in a practice under the supervision of a Doctor. The first time I went to this office I was given Emma. My experience was good so I always request Emma when I sign the clip board when I go there. Of course I've been there about three times in 5 years, twice in the same month, so it would be wrong to call her my regular primary health care professional in any other sense than she is the one I would go to if I went to the doctor for checkups.

They had no appointments available that day. Friday's I work from my girlfriends house and the distance prohibits me from seeing Emma that day. So I call a doctor's office in my girlfriends neighborhood I used once.

The doctor himself picks up. His receptionists apparenty stepped out. I ask to make an appointment on Friday. He claims he is closed on Friday but can fit me in today, Thursday. I say that is not possible for me. I inform im I believe I have strep throat so I ask him to recommend a walk in clinic of some sort where I can get the back of my throat swabbed. He asked if I had ever been to him. I say yes and he says he will have an antibiotic and a cough suppressant prescription sent to the local Walgreens for me to pickup. He then gives me the standard "are you allergic too?" litany of questions. Other than my concern for overuse of antibiotics I'm quite happy with this arrangement. The only negative is that the cough suppressant contains codeine and therefore is only good to me during the nighttime if I wish to function.

So this got me thinking of health care. Being I am in the last developed country in the world to my knowledge that has something resembling free market health care and I am a die hard capitalist, I do this a lot.

The big question is why can I not just buy a strep throat test like a pregnancy test. Its a simple enough idea. Sell the things that the doctor uses to the general public over the counter. Their disposable and benign. If I don't have a strep throat I save a visit to the doctors and everyone besides the doctor wins. Being doctors are just powerless cogs in the health care machine, there is no one in power that would stop this.

Secondly I got thinking about the cost of drugs. The problem with the cost of drugs is that pharmacies have greatly varying prices, and doctors don't have any idea what the drugs they prescribe actually cost, and prescribe whatever the drug sales rep pushes for them. I think the doctor that wrote me a prescription over the phone is not a victim of this. The cough suppressant appeared to be a generic and the antibiotic was. Also the cost for both at Walgreens before I gave them my insurance card was $69.99. Thats hardly what I would call unfordable health care.

Finally I was reminded of one of the greatest quandaries of health care I have ever had.

When I was a child, my health care was provided by a team of pediatricians at a relatively large office. There were 3-5 doctors employed by this practice at any given time. So it was small enough where my doctor knew me, but large enough where they could have a small lab onsite. One of the things in this lab was a centrifuge for doing bloodwork. I knew my cholesterol within 15 minutes of getting pricked when my parents took me for a checkup. However, when I had strep, my parents would get called a few days later after they looked at the culture.

Fast forward to adolescence. I went to a general practitioner, this was not Emma but another doctor. Most of the other patients were at least 30 years older than me. First time I had strep I knew right away. But she sent blood tests out to a lab so I had to call to get results.

This has always bothered me. Unless my switching physicians coincided exactly with the invention of the quick strep test, there was no reason for my pediatrician to still use the petri dishes. The new tests were faster and required no capital investment. You buy tests and you buy swab. Both are disposable items. Now my general practitioner, probably had more patients with high cholesterol than my pediatrician. Could she not afford a few grand for a centrifuge machine to be able to get people instant results.

I Talked to a Real Marxists on Slashdot.

2007-09-28T00:12:00.000-04:00

Well he claims to prefer a system called distributism. However, he apparently wants to totally nationalize the transportation system. He goes by the handle Marxist Hacker 42, so obviously some of his ideas do stem from communism.

Unfortunately, I can't find a link to our discussion thread.

After looking into distributism, I will say it sucks less than most other non capitalistic systems out there. This is high complement from a liberterian such as myself. Apparently the government is supposed to keep businesses small and keep capital in the workers hands. Its also supposed to emphasize craftsmanship over mass production.

I have a few problems with this. I need to be able to buy cheap stuff from Walmart in order to afford a few luxory items such as my Grado SR125. Secondly, I don't like the government telling you how rich you can get. Thirdly, this just places a lot of power in the hands of government. Governments already have too much power these days.

Governments should do the following:

Fight my wars
Pave my roads
Provide a system to keep track of titles on real property (land)
Go out of its way to keep itself small
Provide fire and police

In Defense of the Term Slumlord

2007-09-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

Today I got into a discussion with a friend over my aspirations of slumlordship. I feel I could never have won the argument because I use the term slumlord. I think if I simply used a word with a more neutral connotation such as landlord to describe the same goal, there would be no disagreement. Even the woman whose every word I droll over, Ms Acres, prides herself in not being a slumlord.

Perhaps the problem is my lack of understanding of the term slumlord. My aspirations don't fit the definition found on wikipedia. I don't plan on purposefully not maintaining the properties. I will not allow fines, taxes and mortgage payments tofall into arrears. That would be hypocritical as I would naturally expect timely payment of rent. I'm sure as hell not going to actively stop gentrification from happening.

What will I do? I will buy cheap houses in bad neighborhoods, and get them up to code. I will put a fresh coat of paint and plaster any holes. I will do basic background checks. I have begun to "do my homework." However, if I had the money to put a down payment on an investment property today I would not be ready to buy because I have not worked out all the details. I will most likely buy a vacation condo with a full service management company before I jump into slumlordship.

One of the questions that you might ask me is "Would I live in one of my apartments?" The answer is yes. You have to trust me on this of course. However, I plan on continuing to rent myself after acquiring my first rental property. Really, the only thing that would cause me to "grow up and move to the suburbs" is marriage and children.

So I can apparently be a slum lord and live by the golden rule. The next argument is am I following thePlatinum Rule, treat others as they want to be treated. Well, unless I own enough property where it can be said I force people to rent from me, I must assume they want to rent from me. At the very least I am the least terrible option for shelter they have been presented with

There is one final argument. I really can't counter this one at the moment. That argument would be that I am sub-human for being willing to live in such poverty for the sake of economy, when I can afford better. Perhaps that is so. I leave it to the reader to determine that.