jamie lawrence-howard • highly absorbent redundant and superfluous verbiage • clogging tubes since 9.1.98
my morning commute? not bad at all.
i’m lucky, in that where i live is located near suburban rail lines going into manhattan, and those workers aren’t on strike. not everyone is so lucky.
i’m less and less on the side of the union, though i’m still on the side of the workers.
let me explain.
Continue reading “my morning commute”
if you have money, that is.
isn’t that the new york way? well, it shouldn’t be.
if you don’t have money, or you need to go to work in an outer borough, you are pretty much out of luck this morning. that’s the big problem i have with this transit strike. it doesn’t hurt people with resources–it hurts people like the strikers themselves, or people in worse situations.
so here’s the story of my morning so far.
Continue reading “new york still works”
nathan lane talking to katie couric about “brokeback mountain” on the “today” show:
“it’s really when [ledger] said, ‘this thing gets hold of us the wrong time, the wrong place, we’re dead.’ i thought, ‘what do you mean, like the a&p? you’re in the middle of nowhere! get a ranch with the guy! stop torturing these two poor women and get a room! what’s the problem?'”
i hereby proclaim nathan lane to be an idiot who needs to venture out beyond new york and los angeles. except for the torturing the women part, which has a modicum of truth, this is as clueless a point of view as i’ve seen uttered in quite a while.
now this is the funniest thing i’ve seen in ages.
you know that ubiquitous 5-foot dancing talking santa they sell at wal-mart? well, this artist/hacker decided to reprogram it to, well…
let’s just say that santa has now been bent to this very creative guy’s will. at the artist’s request, i haven’t linked directly to the videos of santa in action, but the links are on the site and you have to watch them. i’m not going to spoil the fun, but they have to be seen to be believed.
Continue reading “animated singing santa hack”
what a night.
about 6:30pm yesterday we had firemen come into the building for some unknown reason. in a separate incident at the same time, the paramedics came for someone. and, in a third separate incident at the same time, a pipe burst in the apartment above us, sending water cascading down the living room wall.
that would be the wall where my mac mini was plugged in.
to say the least, i am not pleased.
Continue reading “it had better work”
this is too priceless for words. president bush talks about the ipod, his favorite music, and which features are his favorite.
ever wonder how polluted your neighborhood is in relation to other areas of the country?
well, you can check it out here.
i put in the info for my neighborhood. and guess what?
Continue reading “i’m not polluted”
the new york transit workers may be going on strike tomorrow at midnight. and if they do, my commute to work is going to be much, much more difficult.
it’s easy to take the subway for granted, and of course, even easier to take the workers who run the system for granted. and i am, of course, a big supporter of unions and don’t mind a little discomfort if it means that a whole lot of people get paid better.
still, it’s a big unknown and there’s some trepidation associated with that.
Continue reading “transit strike apprehension”
sometimes you don’t need a lot of words. sometimes i just feel like being an epigrammist, or an epigrammatist. take your pick.
so here’s my short but pithy quote for the day. apropos of nothing. i thought it up while daydreaming today.
“i avoid the middle of the road. that’s where the trucks can hit you.”
pretty good quote, huh? use it the next time someone tries to make you a political pragmatist. i think i got there first with this idea. if i didn’t, please let me know.
so i’m still making up my mind about last week’s storyline from “the boondocks”.
but i think i’m ok with it.
the topic? the new movie “brokeback mountain”.
Continue reading “the boondocks”
or, also, why didn’t i think of that?
this guy is trading up for items starting with a red paper clip, with the ultimate goal of trading for a house.
he’s already traded up to a snowmobile, and now the story is all over the internets and the media, so you just know this guy is eventually going to get his house.
as well he should. brilliant idea. you go, trading up to a house guy.
in other news…
Continue reading “why didn’t you think of that?”
the maple syrup, that is. i’m not smelling it.
supposedly, the smell of maple syrup is all over manhattan, and it’s inexplicable. some people think that it’s a chemical weapons dispersal test that the government is conducting.
i’m not that paranoid–since i didn’t smell it last time and since i’m not smelling it this time i’m going to assume that it’s not a government conspiracy.
here’s a map of where the smell has been reported. those little map dots are all around me.
i feel a bit left out. i want to smell the maple syrup too.
here’s what i’m digging today.
by the way, radio city christmas show tonight. the orchestra settled their strike or lockout or whatever, so there will be live music and therefore i will be in attendance and not yelling at the house manager instead.
oh yeah. here’s what i’m digging today.
Continue reading “stuff i’m digging today”
well, not quite irate. and not quite hdtv hell. the hdtv is hooked up to the cable box, and i have hdtv, and it looks spectacular, but there are a few caveats.
there’s something called hdcp copy protection that your tv has to have enabled in order to hook up the explorer 8300 cable box to the all-digital dvi port.
my tv has this hdcp copy protection.
but the cable box can’t find it. so i can’t use the all-digital connection from the tv to the cable box. i have to use the component connections, which are fine, but then that means that my dvd player doesn’t have the highest quality connection it can have, because the cable box is using those outlets.
so when i play a dvd it looks less than spectacular.
i will add here that my mac mini has a digital dvi connector and my lcd computer screen has a digital dvi connector. and when i plugged those two devices in, they both worked together flawlessly and perfectly. why is that? it’s because apple knows how to build something. if apple built my cable box, i’m sure i would be writing about some other subject and not griping about how none of my electronic components work together. because it would all just work.
the cable guy is coming on the 20th. i’m not optimistic.
grrrrrrr.
here’s an interesting story about a new way that evangelicals are attempting to convert homosexuals.
of course, that’s just my opinion of what they are trying to do.
here’s why i think that.
Continue reading “the latest evangelical scam”
i’m busy at work today and have to leave early for my annual checkup at dr. kamlet’s office, so i’m going to just repost an email i got this morning.
and i’m in such a hurry that i’ll even leave the capital letters intact. banner day for queerspace.com.
it’s a very funny letter written in reply to a comment by dr. laura. who knew that old gasbag was still bloviating? i guess she is. if anyone knows the source so i can give “jim” proper credit, please let me know. this may be the oldest circulating email on the internet for all i know–i don’t have time to check it out on snopes.com.
read it after the jump. that means click “more”, in case you don’t know what a “jump” is.
Continue reading “the easy way out”
step one: guy foolishly buys a $3000 camera from one of those internet rip-off camera stores and, what do you know, gets ripped off. and then he blogs about it.
step two: guy’s blog gets dugg on digg.com.
step three: all hell breaks loose.
Continue reading “internet story of the day”
hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about our new hdtv comes news of a possible new mac mini-based home theater center from apple coming in january.
do i have good timing or what?
of course, several problems remain, not the least of which is that, even if the thing is relatively cheap, we won’t have the money right away. and it doesn’t matter anyway, because my rule is to never buy first generation anything–electronics, computers, cars, whatever. they always need time to really work the kinks out based on real-world product usage.
that just gives me time to save for the second-generation implementation of the thing, which i’m sure will be around in time for christmas 2006.
in the meantime, i’ll be happy with my hd-dvr.
kirk and i decided to get a new hdtv for christmas. it’s our present to each other, except for stocking stuffers and such and i think one other present for kirk since he had already gotten me one thing before we decided to get the new hdtv.
i’m getting kirk a pony. don’t tell him.
and the new hdtv will be delivered tomorrow.
Continue reading “hdtv time”
lots of news stories recently about various people “stealing” apple software, like front row or the apple operating system running on generic intel computers instead of apple hardware.
is this stealing? technically, of course, yes. kirk is an artist, so we have a vested interest in understanding the concept of intellectual property. and my machine doesn’t have a byte of bootlegged software. heck, i’ve even paid for a lot of my shareware. bottom line, don’t steal software!
that said, my sense is that apple knows exactly what they are doing with this software and, to a degree, even encourages its “theft”.
Continue reading “ripping off apple”