Category: General

our iphone is updated and perfectly fine, thank you

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

we updated kirk’s iphone on thursday night. completely without incident. he synced, the update installed, it restarted and relocked itself, and it now works perfectly with lots of added functionality. as we expected, because we didn’t ever attempt an unauthorized hack. not even the so-easy-a-child-could-do-it ringtone hack. however begrudgingly, we paid 99 cents for the ringtones on the phone.

i treat my mac the same way. applications only. i try not to install anything that modifies the system, even though these mods are authorized, as opposed to the iphone, where all mods are unauthorized. self-contained apps only, as much as possible. less trouble that way, come update time.

of course, the media coverage of the update makes it seem that the vast majority of iphone users are howling, wailing, and bemoaning the loss of their precious at the hands of the evil apple empire, which willfully turned their functionings into non-functionings.

give me a break.

if you are savvy enough to be able to unlock your iphone, which is in itself not the easiest of processes, then you should have been savvy enough to have found and read the admonitions of apple, who implored people not to update modified iphones lest they become unusable. that news was all over the internet for days before the update was issued.

and you are also savvy enough to have found and read the news that the dev team that produced the unlock method implored people not to update unlocked phones lest they become unusable, until they come up with a workaround.

and you are also savvy enough to realize that, if your phone is locked but you have installed third-party apps, you should heed apple’s advice, not install the update, and wait to see how everything shakes out. or, at the very least, restore your iphone to pristine condition before updating.

so, in spite of apple’s warning’s and in spite of the dev team’s warnings, these people updated their iphones anyway. guess what happened? in some cases, their iphones were unusable. unlocked phones were definitely unusable. gee, what a revelation. if only they had, somehow, been able to know.

oh, that’s right. everybody on the internet told them, but they didn’t listen.

if you don’t update your modified phone, will it still work? yes it will. the people with hacked phones who didn’t apply the update are still merrily using their iphones on tmobile or using their third-party apps or whatever, and are completely unaffected.

is apple legally responsible for the non-functioning iphones? hell no they are not. you can argue whether or not apple should have been a better corporate citizen in all this, and i personally think that it’s not only bad form but bad business for apple to have done what they did, but the fact remains that no one held a gun to anyone’s head and made them update.

is it legal to unlock or modify your phone? sure it is. it’s your phone. you paid for it. do what you want to with it. but when you modify your iphone, you are taking a step down a lonely road. no matter how small or insignificant the hack may seem to be, the first mod you make means that you are assuming full responsibility for maintaining the hardware and software, with whatever assistance the unauthorized third-party developers who produced the hacks you installed choose (or choose not) to provide. and it’s your responsibility, once you have hacked, to keep yourself updated on the status of that hack, and how the hack affects your use of your iphone.

responsibility. you assumed it when you hacked. you can’t then whine because apple bricked your iphone. apple didn’t brick your iphone. you did.

from the ny times article:

Jennifer Bowcock, an Apple spokeswoman, said that when people went to update their software with their computer through iTunes, a warning appeared on the computer screen, making it clear that any unauthorized modifications to the iPhone software violated the agreement that people entered into when they bought the phone. “The inability to use your phone after making unauthorized modifications isn’t covered under the iPhone warranty” Ms. Bowcock said.

from the same article:

Ross Good, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had added several programs, including one for instant messaging. After the upgrade, the phone went into a semifrozen state.

When Mr. Good called Apple, the reception was cool. “They said I put third-party software on my phone, and so it was my fault no matter what.”

Joel Robison, a systems network engineer near Seattle, said his phone stopped working immediately after he installed the upgrade. He said that when he took it to an Apple store, he was accused of having unlocked the phone. But he said that with the exception of one aborted attempt to install a piece of outside software, he had made no modifications to the phone.

“Their accusation was very damaging to my opinion of Apple’s service,” Mr. Robison said.

stop whining. start taking responsibility. apple did. the producers of your hacks did.

you didn’t.

update: daring fireball’s john gruber and i arrive at the same conclusion at independent times, but of course he states it more elegantly. hopefully his broader reach will prompt some people to think twice about their entitlement.

going to the picture show

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tickets for a 6:00pm showing of “into the wild”, the sean penn movie about the guy who starved to death in the wilderness of alaska. that shorthand version of the story, of course, does it no justice whatsoever.

i vaguely recall reading a long piece about this guy, maybe in the new yorker, and being absolutely fascinated by him. it’s the old ditch-your-possessions-and-escape-the-world story, taken to an extreme. and sean penn is an artist i respect, even if i think his politics are themselves a bit extreme at times. anyway, reading about the movie made me want to see the movie.

and that happens less and less, lately. there was a time, not so long ago, that i went to the movies several time a week. now, not so much. maybe once a month, probably even less. i watch a lot of movies at home, via netflix, but rarely go to a theater.

i don’t have the standard complaint about noisy awful obnoxious audiences. for the most part, new york movie audiences are well behaved. i go at odd times, and i (for the most part) don’t go to movies that attract large crowds of teenagers. but even when i do, i find that those teenagers are noisy and rowdy in context of the movie. you can hoot and holler all you want if it’s appropriate, and that’s fine with me.

maybe i’m being provincial with this next comment, and i’m the first to admit that my sample size is small to be making it. but the bad experiences i’ve had in movies recently have been outside the city. kirk and i saw that last awful m. night shyamalan movie “the lady in the water” somewhere in new jersey about a year ago. the theater was so full of kids running around talking to each other, talking on the phone, running laps around the theater, etc., that we went and got our money back about 20 minutes into the movie. it was clear that they had been dropped off by the parents on the way to dinner or whatever — no supervision whatsoever and the theater management could have cared less. it was impossible to hear the dialogue in the movie over the din — that’s how bad it was.

but i’ve not had similar experiences in the city. yet, anyway.

hopefully all will go well tonight, and i expect it will. and hopefully, “into the wild” is as good as i think it will be.

briefly noted

~ jamie ~ 4 Comments

» the last piece of the kitchen renovation puzzle is almost in place. the final cabinet (the one that replaced the microwave cart) has been assembled, and rafael our super cut the countertop to size. he did an incredible job — you can’t tell which is the uncut side and which is the trimmed side. kudos, rafael. we just need to screw it on, along with one side trim panel, and it’s done. except for replacing the fluorescent lights in the header. that comes much later. pictures to come.

» upgraded to the new version of wordpress, which includes tags. zim, who in a brilliant bit of thinking sees the world as a series of tags, rather than being separated geographically, will be pleased. if that thinking took hold in a widespread way, there’d be hope for us all.

» had a great dinner with our real estate attorney on tuesday night — she’s become a good friend. she says we were lucky to buy our apartment when we did. the mortgage situation is really touchy right now, and if we were trying to get the same deal now it would be difficult or perhaps impossible. thankfully we had good timing.

checking out my google stats

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i use google analytics to get aggregated info about the people who come to my site.

aggregated means that i’m not gathering personal info about you, just to clarify. i could care less about you, really. it’s just an interesting snapshot of where site visitors come from, how long they spend when they get here, the pages they like to visit, and so forth.

here are some fun facts about my traffic:

» by far, the most search engine traffic comes from people looking for info about kristen hall. there’s not a lot of kristen hall info here, other than my voluminous mad ravings about how wonderful she is. but if you googled “kristen hall”, odds are you already know that. still, i guess people hopefully click through and, if nothing else, get some affirmation of their opinion. a lot of the visitors spell it wrong, as “kristin hall”, just like i used to.

» i get a good share of hits from people searching for “celeriac disease”. the term is “celiac disease”, but i jokingly referred to it as “celeriac disease”. so i get a bunch of traffic from people who can’t spell, or alternately from a tiny subset of the world population allergic to an obscure root vegetable.

» 15% of my new visits come from an semi-obscure portal page at home.bellsouth.net — i’ve searched the site trying to figure out why to no avail. there must be some reference to this site somewhere, because the hits keep on coming and have been for several years. but i’ll be damned if i know why.

» the other weird post that’s rocketed to the top of google results is my post about benjamin moore paint. i listed the part numbers for the shades of paint that we bought, mostly so when i repainted i’d know what went where. still, that level of specificity seems to attract people looking for information about aura paint. hope i helped, paint lovers.

» the rings and the tattoos are still very popular items as well. amazing to me that people still are such hedwig fanatics, all these years on.

» i get traffic from five continents. i learned in school that there were seven continents (north america, south america, europe, asia, africa, australia, antarctica) but at some point either the rules changed, or google just decided to remap the continents. as powerful as they are, it wouldn’t surprise me. according to google, from what i can tell there are six continents, and i get traffic from five (americas, europe, asia, oceania, africa). maybe there are 5 continents, and they are lumping antarctica in with oceania. who the hell knows. next you’ll be telling me that there are only eight planets. i don’t like that south america is evidently no longer its own continent — zim should rightfully be upset.

» the daily search term list (which of course changes daily) is a nonstop evolution of amusement. here are a few search terms through which people found my site within the last couple of days:

— Lawnmower killed cat (never did such a thing!)
— “standing on cold concrete” (definitely did that!)
— why does my cat poop outside of the litt (i’m assuming they meant litter box and got tired of typing)
— liza minnelli gay fans (finally, some accuracy!)

anyway, the fun never stops. get a blog, and do some aggregate tracking. you’ll be glad you did.

distracted easily by shiny objects

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

now that the coop renovation is nearly complete, kirk and i are trying to get our financial house back in a bit of order. nothing outrageous, but we want to watch it a bit on the large expenses. don’t eat out so much, don’t buy expensive electronics like an iphone.

things like that.

anyway, we did pretty well over the weekend. didn’t spend much at all. helped along by my sickness and i didn’t feel like going anywhere, but that’s a minor point.

but, self-imposed rules be damned, there are times when money must be spent. and when one’s name is drawn from the magic hat, and one is given the opportunity to buy playoff tickets for one’s favorite baseball team, then one must buy tickets.

one must buy four, to be exact, and sell two at cost to a friend. which we are doing. and they are great seats, relatively: game two, loge reserved section 18. nice sightlines. you can preview your seats’ sightlines on the mets website.

assuming, of course, the mets get to the playoffs. given the team’s abysmal play recently, that is by no means assured.

but it’s probable.

probably.

Lessons on the surge from economics 101

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via daring fireball, an economics professor explains a dollar auction:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a “dollar auction.” The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

sound familiar? ghastly battle of spiraling disaster, indeed.

kinda loving the iphone

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

even though it’s kirk’s iphone and not mine, he’s generous and shares, and i get up before he does, so i get some time to monkey around with it. and i know his passcode.

i made a ringtone out of “stigmata” by ministry and kirk’s under strict orders to use it for when i call. actually, of course, i asked nicely.

it’s still tough to type on it, i have to say. but i also don’t use it that much. i’m sure if i had one and used it constantly i’d get used to it.

of course, there’s tons of crap being written about the iphone on the internet. and i’m contributing to that, in a noneffective and useless way. the macalope had the most interesting comment i’ve seen in a while:

Here’s the one thing that makes the horny one think that Apple might announce a 3G phone before the end of the year: the iPhone was still selling briskly at $575…when the company cut the price to sell even more. There’s plenty of room at the top end of the market for more features.

If you were having a hard time imagining what the so-called “iPhone nano” would be like, all the while laughing yourself silly at the idea of a rotary-dial scroll wheel, maybe it’s because the iPhone as we know it is the “iPhone nano”, at least for 2007.

So, iPhone Pro anyone?

that makes sense. i’ll bet you all the iphone buyers thus far did buy the iphone nano. i’ll be damned.

but it matters not. we’re enjoying what we have. you can’t delay a purchase of technology because the gadget might get better. if you did that, you’d never buy anything. you have to pick your point of entry, and jump in. i think that right after the $200 price cut wasn’t such a bad time.

and i know i always swear that i’ll never buy version 1.0 of anything, but this is a bit different, because it’s a gadget that’s infinitely upgradeable via software. the gadget itself might be 1.0, but it’s as polished a 1.0 gadget as you’ll ever see, and it’ll just get better as apple pushes out new uses for it.

and i promise not to get envious when the next, speedier, better version comes out.

i promise.

no, really.

fucked without a kiss

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i had to laugh at this quote from a ny times story about distraught iphone customers who feel that they overpaid:

“I just felt so used as a consumer,” he said. “They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran.”

leave it to some random apple fanatic with a blog to “feel so used”. it’s like the hooker stole his wallet while he was in the bathroom or something.

god knows i’d never waste my time obsessively blogging about a company and its products.

and just because kirk and i bought an iphone last night doesn’t mean that i buy into the hype.

and just because we wasted $69 on apple care for it doesn’t make me a mindless fanatic.

and just because we spent the entire evening oohing and aahing over it’s fantastically well-thought-out capabilities doesn’t mean that i have lost my perspective.

and just because the first thing i did this morning when i got up was rush to turn it on, baby, doesn’t mean that i don’t have a well-honed sense of life’s priorities.

it, after all, was a very practical purchase. made perfect sense. no other alternative, you know.

steve jobs is a marketing genius

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

don’t tell me that apple and steve jobs didn’t have this whole thing planned.

» step one: sell hundreds of thousands of iphones at $599 to enthusiastic early adopters.

» step two: lower the price by $200 two months later.

» step three: wait for the outraged early adopters to blather their outrage all over the internet and in the msm.

» step four: a day later, issue $100 store credits to all those early adopters, ensuring that they’ll buy yet another apple product.

» step five: bask in the love from all the early adopters who once again love you unconditionally, and from the bloggers and the msm and the analysts and so on.

apple tweaks the consuming public better than any other company. but with that said, at $399 we’re probably taking the plunge and buying kirk an iphone. his motorola razr is dying a slow death, and it’s as good a time as any.

goodbye snap guy

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

just walked down 6th avenue to the bank, and the snap guy has been replaced by, to all external appearances, grandpa jones.

no one passed out flyers like the snap guy. hopefully he’s moved on to something better. perhaps in an advisory capacity, or training. spreading the snap gospel, as it were.

unsolicited aerogrow recommendation, part two

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i’ve previously sung the praises of aerogrow, an exceedingly well-run company. and now i have to again.

we bought a second aerogrow. it’s a hydroponic growing system — perfect for a new york apartment. we’re using one to grow tomatoes, and a second one to grow various types of basil. the tomato-laden aerogrow was working fine, but the l.e.d. readout was a bit wonky. it kept telling us to put in water, but it didn’t need it.

now i’m not such a helpless idiot that i can’t grow the tomatoes without the l.e.d. readout. or, more accurately, kirk isn’t, because they are kind of his baby anyway. but we like things to work properly, and we know how wonderful the company has been in the past.

so kirk sent an email, explaining what was happening and asking what to do.

aerogrow tried to call him with the answer. and when he didn’t pick up, they followed up with an immediate email, pinpointing the problem — a cracked water detector thingy inside the aerogrow. who knows how it got cracked? more importantly, they diagnosed the problem accurately with a minimum of information and no fuss whatsoever.

and what’s more, they are sending the replacement part at no charge. and they also supplied us with detailed instructions on how to work around the wonky l.e.d. in the meantime.

i deal with crappy customer service all the time. we all do. and never have i seen a company so responsive, and so proactively out in front of any possible problem. i’d buy a hundred of these things, if i could afford them.

once again, kudos to aerogrow. keep up the good work.

riverdale garden: outstanding cuisine in the bronx

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

Here’s a reprint of a post I put up on chowhound.com:

We gave the Riverdale Garden a test run a couple of weeks ago. We were very happy with the service, atmosphere, and food on the regular menu, so we returned last night to celebrate my partner’s birthday with a 15-course meal with wine pairings (available by advance arrangement with the chef). It’s a really lovely setting inside, but the best seats are outside in the garden, weather permitting. And last night, it permitted.

Here are the courses, along with a few general comments. I didn’t manage to get details for most of the wines, but I know that there was a heavy emphasis on Long Island wines — I know there was a Martha Clara chardonnay that was really nice.

Smoked trout with marinated peaches and onion.
Wine: champagne
— Very cool, trout lightly smoked and not at all overwhelming. Nice balanced start.

Heirloom tomatoes with chives, viniagrette
Wine: sauvignon blanc
— Tiny, thin slices of three different varieties, with light vinaigrette. Really understated and delicious; I could have made a perfect summer meal out of this and the cheese grits which came later.

Corn chowder with marinated olives, hot pepper
Wine: rest of sauvignon blanc
— Served in a tall thin shot glass, with the olives layered in and the hot pepper on the bottom. My partner’s favorite course.

Rosemary bread with Jerusalem artichoke, balsamic vinegar dots
Wine: Martha Clara chardonnay
— Very earthy, good combination of textures. Artichoke a bit stringy in spots.

Smoked duck with chanterelle mushrooms, light sauce dusted with ancho pepper
Wine: pinot noir
— Duck was lightly smoked, and the mushrooms cooled off the balanced heat from the ancho. The wine overpowered the dish a little, but the dish itself was one of my favorites.

Pine Island oyster with finely grated horseradish, pickled shallot mignonette
Wine: champagne
— I love oysters, but these were briny to the point of being slightly malodorous. Personal preference, but this was my least favorite course by far.

Slow roasted red and golden beets with camembert, friseé, toasted hazelnuts
Wine: Rosé
— Best flavor combo of the night for me was the camembert and the beets. The sweetness of the beets melded wonderfully with the creaminess of the slightly warm cheese.

Grilled squid, avocado, scallion, habañero
Wine: Rosé continued
— The sauce was spicy and the avocado cooled it off, continuing a theme. Great textures and taste combo–one of my favorites.

Smoked salmon on brioche with radish, chives, creme fraiche, caperberries
Wine: Rosé continued, I think. This is where I start losing track of the wine ; )
— Gentle, balanced, very nice.

Summer salad of mountain greens, jerusalem artichoke, corn, flat-leaf parsley, fennel, radish, pepper, favas
Wine: something white that continued through the cod
— Refreshing, light break from the action.

Soft shell crab, sauce with corn
— Flavorful but just a bit too tough and chewy for me.

Cod with saffron, eggplant, kale
— We talked with the next table while eating this course; I remember liking it but not the details of it.

Ostrich, pickled cherries, green roasted garlic, snap peas, parsnips
Wine: something red for this course and the next
— The ostrich/pickled cherry combo was awesome. Just enough acidity to give some snap to the meat.

Lamb porterhouse, pickled ramps, house made BBQ sauce, cheese grits
— At this point, three hours in, we were so stuffed that we split one plate and took the other home. I haven’t had cheese grits that good since I don’t know when. Incredible. The pickled ramps and the BBQ sauce gave the same acidity to the lamb that the cherries did for the ostrich — nice echo.

Dessert for me: Lemon tart with blueberry sorbet, hold the blueberry sorbet (I had the blueberry sorbet on the last visit anyway). My third favorite lemon dessert in NYC, behind the lemon tart at Le Madeleine and the lemon cake at Del Frisco.

Dessert for the birthday boy: buttermilk sorbet and coconut sorbet with a coconut tuile. The buttermilk sorbet was for me the best of his dessert lot. But I really love buttermilk, so I’m not a fair judge.

Two espressos
— Very welcome caffeine!

As I reread this, it would seem to a reader that the evening devolved a bit as it progressed, due to the overindulgence. Maybe so, but it was a celebration, and the food and wine were, with a few noted exceptions, absolutely marvelous. I think too that the atmosphere (good service, nice outdoor setting, convivial dining companions, regulars seated next to us) made us relax and enjoy ourselves far more than one might ordinarily, given the expectations of a 15-course meal. I also think that, given the quality, quantity and variety of the courses and the wines, $150 per person (pre-tax and tip) was a good value.

It’s great for us, as it’s two blocks from our house, but I firmly believe that Riverdale Garden is worth the schlep from anywhere in the city.

my television-free life

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

it’s been several months since kirk and i decided to drop digital cable, and stop watching television. there was some apprehension, and some trepidation (would we miss watching baseball?). it was a financial savings, to be sure — our cable bill went from $120 per month with time warner cable before the move (digital tv + premium channels + dvr + high-speed broadband cable) to $29.95 per month with comcast after the move (much higher-speed broadband cable only).

and the verdict?

don’t miss it a bit.

we thought that no baseball games would be the dealbreaker. turns out that listening to the games on the radio is a much, much better experience. the guys who call the game on wfan radio are brilliant at setting a visual scene through words. in this regard, i feel lucky being a mets fan — the yankees radio announcers on wcbs are boring as all hell, with their vast quantities of dead air. the wfan guys always have something interesting and cogent to say, and even their occasional off-topic wanderings are worth a listen.

so, baseball is fine. what about the news? get it from the paper, and the net.

what about lost? i don’t care who’s on the damn island anymore. if i did, i’d get it from netflix.

and there’s the cheat. if there’s something i really really want to watch, i’ll just get the dvds from netflix. i was a huge deadwood fan, so we watched the entire season over the course of a few days.

i always said the nice thing about having a dvr was that you watched only things you really wanted to watch, rather than having to watch whatever was scheduled. no wasted time, and all. it’s much the same now, only there’s an effort involved to watch something, so it’s even more efficient. i find myself mildly interested in whatever new shows are being flogged in the press, but i’m not driven to watch them. the only one that’s broken through the clutter for me recently was mad men. that’ll probably be something i’ll watch when it comes out on dvd.

so what do i do now that i don’t have tv taking up my time? it’s amazing how busy you can make yourself, when you don’t have the default option of television. since it’s baseball season, we have the games on the radio in the evening. sometimes i lay on the couch and listen, sometimes in bed. sometimes i listen while doing other things, which isn’t really a good option with television. i find projects to do. i cook dinner. i take walks, read books and magazines.

time passes without your help. no need to actively try to passively pass it with something as nonsensical (i now realize) as television.

it’s a drug. don’t believe me? try to do without it for a week. you’ll go through withdrawal. i did. but then, like any addiction, time passes and the weirdness and imagined agonies lessen, then disappear.

nothing wrong with television, mind you.

not much right with it, though, either.

apartment renovation update

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

we’ve made some good progress on the apartment renovation front. and, in true me fashion, i can’t stop being obsessed with ikea and we’re planning more cabinets for the kitchen.

kirk wrote a bit about what we’ve been up to, and posted some pictures, and i posted some pictures on a great site i found — ikeafans.com. that’s the site that really inspired my latest addition to the kitchen. right now we have an island on the left of the kitchen (as you are facing it) and we had an old wooden microwave cart on the right. the cart is gone. in it’s place we’re putting a two-foot wide cabinet with drawers, and a matching wooden countertop with no overhang in the front (only a matching overhang on the side). the countertop will extend to the wall where the window is, to give us a bit of extra counter space, and a cubby underneath the counter (between the wall and the new cabinet) for a garbage can, etc.

i have to say i’m a complete convert to the drawer method of kitchen cabinets. instead of getting down on your knees and digging around for something that’s gotten shoved to the back of a cabinet, you just pull out a drawer. the ikea drawers are fully extending, so you can see the entire contents of the drawer — so no unutilized space. when kirk said he wanted all drawers, i thought he’d lost his mind, but i went along with it. except for one set of cabinets with shelves at the center of the bar.

i’m really glad i listened.

on saturday we put shelves up at the end of the bar, under the overhang for the countertop. eventually we’ll put a matching pair of shelves on the other side, under the matching overhang for the new cabinets on the right side. we’re putting all the cookbooks on those shelves, so that we can get rid of a big bookcase in the living room. getting rid of that bookcase will free up space for a true uncluttered dining area. and the drawers in the new cabinet will hold all of the contents of the recently departed microwave cart, and more.

as kirk mentioned, we also put a second clothing rod in the closet in the bathroom hallway, and we cleaned up and reorganized quite a bit. the new lighting is ready to go into the hallway — we just need the super, rafael, to give us a bit of help with the wiring. in the bathroom, kirk has finished painting, the new lighting fixture is installed, and there’s just a little bit of last-minute cleanup to do.

on this week’s punch list — finish the hallway lighting, finish painting the trim in the bottom of the hallway wall (i taped yesterday and was ready to go, only to discover that we were out of that color of paint), maybe paint some window trim, maybe hang some blinds.

oh did i mention that the in-laws are coming on saturday? kirk’s parents are making the trek from reading, hence the flurry of activity.

it’s really coming together pretty nicely.

My Afternoon in Wal-Mart’s MP3 Download Hell

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

Thank jeebus that the medialoper tried wal-mart’s new download service, so i didn’t have to.

so it’s not really my afternoon, as my post’s title might indicate. it’s the medialoper’s.

a typical snark-filled excerpt:

Eventually I give up searching for music and decide to browse by genre. I start with Rock -> Alternative. I’m happy to find that many alternative rock classics are available from Wal-Mart, including: Ted Nugent’s Greatest Hits, Frampton Comes Alive!, and Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell. They even have Jethro Tull. It’s like Wal-Mart has created an online alternative rock superstore.

Since this is only an experiment, I decide to download the Emo classic Do You Feel Like We Do? from Frampton Comes Alive!. That’s when I find out that the song is not sold separately. If I want the song I’ll have to download the whole Frampton Comes Alive! album, and I’m not about to do that. Not even in the name of science.

fun reading, and it’s tasty too.

learning about joybubbles

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

one of the great things about the internet is that by goofing around you can stumble across the most interesting things.

and yesterday, via boing boing, during my lunch hour i learned about joybubbles.

joybubbles was the adopted name of joe engrassia, a blind man who was one of the first phone phreakers. phone phreakers predate computer hackers — they specialized in manipulating the phone system for fun and [sometimes] profit, but mostly for fun.

for instance, did you know that years ago, captain crunch cereal gave away a whistle as a prize in a box of cereal, and the sound produced by the whistle could be used to get free long distance calls? that’s just the beginning of a long, fascinating history of phone phreaking that was recounted in a seminal article in the october 1971 issue of esquire. among the readers of the article were two california guys named jobs and wozniak, who were then inspired to start tinkering in the garage. and we all know how that ended up.

the author, ron rosenbaum, took me on a journey into an underground that i didn’t know existed, and now i can’t get enough of reading about it. set aside an hour and read this. it fulfills my first rule of good writing: take a subject that no one knows about, and could care less about, and make it so engrossing that you can’t stop thinking about it.

why new yorkers last longer

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

great [long] article from new york magazine on how and why new yorkers’ life expectancy has surpassed that of rural and suburban dwellers.

the obvious answer: you have to walk more in new york. around here, you have to get out of your car and off your ass. i, proudly, don’t even own a car.

but buried within this obvious answer are some surprising fine points. for instance, these:

“Walking speed absolutely reflects health status”…New York is literally designed to force people to walk, to climb stairs—and to do it quickly.

A 2002 study by the National Institutes of Health found that people living in buildings built before 1973 were significantly more likely to walk one-mile distances than those living in areas with newer architecture—because their environments were less architecturally ugly.

Interestingly, urban theorists believe it is not just the tightly packed nature of the city but also its social and economic density that has life-giving properties. When you’re jammed, sardinelike, up against your neighbors, it’s not hard to find a community of people who support you—friends or ethnic peers—and this strongly correlates with better health and a longer life.

i won’t ruin the whole article by quoting the entire thing. it’s well worth a few minutes of your time to read it.

preferably while walking somewhere, after having printed it out.