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

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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

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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.

five minutes with the iphone

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

walked up to the apple store at 58th and 5th during my lunch hour. i figured that today would be a good day to venture there to see the new products, what with the terrible weather.

and it was. the apple store was indeed merely very crowded, and not packed so tightly with people that you could not move. and i saw the new imacs (very attractive — maybe that could replace the hdtv in the living room?) and got a chance to play with an iphone.

i’ve read all about them, but i’ve never actually seen one other than brief flashes. and i’ve never actually held one. my first impression was very good. it felt heavy enough to be substantial without being weighty — it gives one the impression of being a well-constructed singular thing, like it was hand-carved from a solid piece of metal.

and the screen is very impressive. it doesn’t noticeably smudge or get fingerprints on it, and the glare is really no problem indoors, though i don’t know what viewing while outdoors would be like.

i tried surfing the web — it seemed relatively fast, though i’m not sure if it was on wi-fi or the at&t network. i’d guess wi-fi. the iphone version of safari, the browser, was absolutely stunning. the pages were crystal clear, and zooming in and out worked perfectly.

i tapped on the address bar and tried typing “queerspace.com”. i’ve read that you should just keep typing and let the built-in error correction handle things. so i did that. maybe “queerspace.com” isn’t a fair test — what i got was qiwersoveee.com or something similar. it took quite a bit of effort to get “queerspace.com” into the address bar correctly. i’d guess that you’d get better with time, and that it would learn from your mistakes and all. i’ve never used a blackberry, so i don’t know how i’d do with an actual micro-keyboard. but with the iphone touch keyboard, i was all thumbs, and not in a good way.

basically, doing anything that didn’t involve the keyboard was intuitive and flawless. there’s no need for an owner’s manual, i’m sure. you wouldn’t need it. everything just made sense, and just worked.

google maps was cool, but in the end it was google maps. the widgets were cool, but in the end they were widgets.

the ipod worked spectacularly. scrolling through cover view and looking at songs was a breeze, and similarly scrolling through photos was easy and fun. i took a picture of myself with the camera and tried to email it to myself (again struggling with the typing of my email address), but the email wasn’t configured or something, so it wouldn’t leave the outbox. no dice there.

you tube videos played smoothly and were easy to access.

oh, and dialing the phone was easy. i called myself at work, and the sound quality of my voice mail message sounded clear and loud and perfect. much better than my current phone.

so, did i like it? absolutely. were there flaws? except for the keyboard, none that i could see. do i want one? yes, but not enough to shell out $600.

i’m glad i tried one. i’m betting the keyboard would get easier to use over time. someday i’ll have one.

but not yet. the new mac comes first.

things i’m hoping for today

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» i hope someone else besides me comes to work today. there’s absolutely no one else on my entire row of cubicles.

» i hope that that hysterical tourist who got off the 1 train at 50th street with her husband and left her kid on the train gets her kid back safe. i hope that someone on the train took care of the kid. if the kid was old enough, i hope that mom had made the normal contingency plan for such events–get off at the next stop and wait. i know she was a tourist, by the way, because she had a fanny pack. not a single person who lives in any of the five boroughs wears a fanny pack. they did a study.

» i hope that the food at the riverdale garden is as good as everyone says it is. it’s one of two michelin restaurants in the bronx (the amazing roberto’s is the other), and it’s a couple of blocks away from our new apartment. it would be nice to have an awesome restaurant in the hood.

» i hope for world peace and a cure for aids and an implementable solution to global warming and the full and sensible restoration of new orleans. why the hell not, right?

» i hope leopard ships early. i want a new mac, either an updated mini or an imac — not sure which. but i’ll wait until leopard ships, because then i’ll get it free with the new computer, rather than having to pay $129 for it. i’m cheap, or sensible, that way. since we don’t have cable tv, i want a mac to hook up to the hdtv so we can watch internet content on the tv. so we’ll either get an imac, and hook up the old mini to the hdtv, or we’ll get a new mini and hook it up to the hdtv. not sure which — probably the latter. the old mini still works fine for what we use it for — email, web surfing, light photoshop, and garage band.

» i hope you don’t think i’m too privileged. i worry about that quite a bit. not, i mean, what you think of me, but rather that i’m too comfy with my stuff.

» i hope the mets stay in first place and win the division. the braves have me worried, as do the phillies.

schneier interviews the head of the tsa

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bruce schneier’s blog on security issues is one of my consistent favorites on the web. i love people who can take a subject about which i know little and care even less, and make it fascinating. schneier is one of those people (and rands is another).

anyway, schneier recently interviewed kip hawley, the head of the transportation security administration. to give you an idea of how it went, here’s the first question posed to hawley:

By today’s rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they’re in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you’re going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station—which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous.

Can you please convince me there’s not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?

it’s a must read — one of the best-written things i’ve come across recently. thanks to daring fireball for linking to it before i got there myself.

mets fan catches historic barry bonds baseball

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here are a couple of stories about it.

unfortunately, i’m not the mets fan, as the ball is supposed to be worth upwards of $500,000. but it was nice to see a guy from queens emerge victorious from what i’m sure was quite a battle for that ball, after it went into the stands in san francisco.

good for him.

and, i suppose, good for barry. i promised to ease up on the barry bonds hating, and i have to admit that i smiled a bit as i watched the video online this morning.

history will judge him, blah blah blah. maybe fairly, maybe not. but for now, it is what it is, i’ll live with it, and you can debate about who the true home run king is. you can make a strong argument for babe ruth, after all, who hit 714 in far fewer at bats than either aaron or bonds, having spent a few years as one of the best pitchers in baseball before becoming one of its best hitters.

but in the end, the number is the number. wonder what number will, in the end, be a-rod’s new target? 800? more than that?

we’ll see if barry plays next year, and which team will have the nerve to sign him.

who made steve?

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

but then who made steve?

here’s the brilliant answer

an excerpt:

This oft-quoted text presents a mystery. If God did not make Steve, then where did this uncreature come from? How did Steve come to be?

God did not make Steve, therefore we must also assume that Steve was never born. If Steve had been born, after all, then he would be “begotten, not made.” Surely we are not meant to conclude that Steve is a little-known fourth member of the Trinity.

short, funny, cogent, and insightful — one of the best things i’ve read in ages.

the pope gets it right

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pope: creation vs. evolution clash an ‘absurdity’

there’s not many topics on which i can agree with the pope. but, my god (no pun intended) did he nail this one (again, no pun intended).

from the article:

The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

and he expands this concept to stewardship of the earth, and environmental issues.

The pope, leader of some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide, said: “We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.”

“This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness … than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive,” he said.

too bad the jesus camp crowd won’t be listening. they are too busy planning/hurrying the end of days.

never thought i’d say this, but yay pope. go pope. you da man, pope.

bedtime stories a problem for many parents

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

via digg, a story about how many parents don’t understand the bedtime stories they read to their children.

from the article:

Almost a quarter (23%) skip passages they cannot read or invent words to get to the end of a sentence, the poll found.

well, at least we have this —

…the poll found that reading stories is enjoying a renaissance, with 73% of families preferring it to playing in the park or watching TV.

i’m hoping that the former isn’t true, and that the latter is.

the last move of my life is complete

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

well, the last one if i have anything to do with it. i’ve always thought that i’d love to retire in nyc — i want to retire in a place where i don’t have to drive a car. and since kirk staunchly vetoes sun city center, florida, where i could drive a golf cart to the grocery store, nyc it is.

anyway, yesterday was horrible move weather. torrential rain interspersed with occasional downpours. a string of wackiness made me doubt that it would go smoothly — the movers showed up two hours late, and the moving company kept trying to pull guys off the job to go elsewhere. but the guys themselves turned out to be very careful movers, for the most part, and got the job done well before the building’s 5pm cut-off time for moves.

too much negotiation over the price for my taste, though — one of those situations where cash tips talked loudly. i hate that — i’d not do very well in a lot of cultures around the world. i want to pay the asking price (or not) and have it done with. i hate the dickering.

anyway, the boxes and furniture are in, the cats are roaming freely around the new apartment, the building suffered no damage, a good chunk of belongings were put in storage with more to go, and kirk and i slept on a bed and had clothes to wear to work today. not bad.

hot water would have been nice. it was shut off during the plumbing renovations, and we couldn’t figure out how to get it back on. hopefully that will be fixed tonight.

the unpacking will go pretty quickly, i think. more than half the boxes are books, so once we get the bookshelves in place a lot of boxes will be emptied quickly. and that will give us room to work to get the rest done. we unpacked the four enormous wardrobe boxes last night, which gave us comparative acres of room in the bedroom.

new couch is delivered friday, along with the sink that ikea forgot the last time. then we can finish putting the kitchen together — it’s done now except for the sink installation.

it’s definitely starting to feel like home.

if you don’t like the weather

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…then just wait, because it will change. or so the saying goes.

at this time last week, i was bemoaning the heat and humidity. we were painting the new apartment, so you can’t close up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. fumes, and being overcome, and all.

this week we are having the floors refinished. and while heat and humidity isn’t ideal for that, i sure would settle for that weather right now.

because it’s raining.

in torrential downpour style, with no end in site for several days. and the only weather worse for refinishing floors than hot and humid is raining, which is of course 100% humidity.

aaaaargh. the weather means that we probably aren’t going to be able to get into the apartment until after this weekend, because the floor will most likely not be dry until then. and with the move date on monday, that means we are moving into a largely unfinished apartment.

but, as i keep telling myself, it’s our very own unfinished apartment.

benjamin moore aura paint: an unsolicited recommendation

~ jamie ~ 8 Comments

i thought kirk had lost his mind when he said we should buy this special paint from benjamin moore.

i went along with getting our friend deana, the color specialist, up to the apartment to choose paint colors. up until this point i had been an enthusiastic advocate of ceiling, trim, and walls all in the same color, preferably white. but i knew i was time to break out and get some color on my walls.

so she brought her voluminous paint sample books, and we chose several colors:

» jalapeno pepper eggshell finish 2147-30 for the bedroom walls
» moroccan red eggshell finish 1309 for the kitchen, one living room wall, the front door, and under the archway
» dash of curry eggshell finish 2159-10 for the living room walls
» driftwood eggshell finish 2107-40 for the bathroom walls
» sandlot gray eggshell finish 2107-50 for the hallway walls
» pale sea mist matte finish 2147-50 for the bedroom ceiling
» alpine white matte finish 2147-70 for the rest of the ceilings and all of the trim

whew.

that’s a lot of color for someone who liked his white walls so much.

and kirk really wanted this aura paint. i guess you can get less expensive benjamin moore paint, and i’m sure you can go to home depot and have them mix up an approximation of the color, but kirk really wanted this specific paint. it’s their best, and it covers well and is more environmentally friendly and has fewer fumes and needs a special machine to make it and blah blah blah.

fine.

and when, in the store, i found out that the paint was $60 a frigging gallon, i gulped but just whipped out the amex. i’d never paid more than $10, maybe $15 a gallon for paint. and, when my ex caitilin and i painted our house in st. augustine, caitilin’s dad got us the paint in 5-gallon industrial buckets, and i’m pretty sure he “borrowed” it from a construction site.

let me tell you. that paint is worth every penny of $60 a gallon, and more.

it went on smoothly, covered a myriad of wall problems, didn’t run down the wall or drip off of the ceiling, or off of my paintbrush onto the floor. the quality of the paint made it a pleasure to paint, and i hate hate hate to paint. the paint made it easy for an amateur painter to get professional-level results.

and the colors are absolutely stunning, and vibrant, and chameleonic. by chameleonic, i mean that the color shifts subtly in various levels of light. the sandlot gray in the hall has an eggplant-y hue in one light, a grayer hue in another light, and a greenish cast in yet another. it’s amazing. you can’t imagine how good they look. i’ll have to post some pictures when i get a chance.

so, benjamin moore. you made me a believer. i’ll never buy cheap home depot paint again.

and really, you shouldn’t either. the extra money you spend is more than mitigated by your spending less time painting. and your time is worth something, right?

and the results. my god, the results.

outstanding.

easing up on the barry bonds hating

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

maybe i’m getting more forgiving as time goes by.

or more lax.

anyway, i’ve been a barry bonds hater for quite some time. to save you clicking through, here’s a relevant bit of what i said:

if he plays and passes hank aaron, and baseball honors the record, that’s it for me and baseball. seriously. one of the few things that keep baseball sacred is the years and years of impeccable apples-to-apples stats. and to honor a steroid-laden asswipe’s breaking of a record that important would dishonor hank aaron’s real accomplishment, and i won’t stand for it.

i’m taking that back. with barry bonds approaching the record, i’ve been doing some thinking. here’s where i am now.

performance-enhancing drugs have been a part of baseball for decades. what do you think amphetamines are? baseball players have been popping speed forever. and no one disputes the records set while players used them.

if you throw out records tainted by steroids, then an appropriate extension of that logic would suggest that you should throw out records from, say the forties on. all those records are tainted too, you know. did hank aaron pop bennies? you’ll never know, and of course at this point he’d never admit it. but if you investigate bonds and throw out his record, then you open a can of worms. should you then investigate hank aaron and throw out his record as well? where does it logically stop? did babe ruth cork his bat?

and how exactly did steroids help bonds? maybe he recovered a bit more quickly from injuries. maybe the strength he gained gave him a few more feet on some home run hits. how many home runs did that add to his total? impossible to quantify, but given that there are so many intangibles in the ability to hit a home run, lets say for arguments sake that the extra time and extra few feet gave him 20 more home runs.

big deal. all that means is that he’d be a bit farther away from the record. he’d still hang around long enough to break it.

and i’ve also come to believe that bonds is the poster boy for an activity in which scores of baseball players participated, but few got caught.

finally, as a mets fan i’ve largely ignored the return of guillermo mota, the mets pitcher suspended for steroid use last season. and, given his dismal performance this year, i don’t think the steroids did him much good.

in the end, i think that talent, coordination, concentration, experience, and willpower are probably far more important to someone’s ability to be a major league baseball player than a few performance-enhancing drugs here and there. you can give me all the steroids you want, and the chances of me hitting a home run in a major league park are up there with those proverbial monkeys trying into infinity to type shakespeare.

am i glad that steroids, speed, and the rest are gone from baseball? you bet. and i look forward to an old age where players who began their careers under the ban break all the records, establishing indisputable legitimacy.

ryan howard’s 800th home run will be a big celebration for me.

in the meantime, let’s let bygones be bygones. let’s not be hypocrites. and let’s not be haters.

let barry bonds have his moment. he deserves it.

Olbermann: Bush, Cheney should resign

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read it or watch it.

i started crying about halfway through this, and couldn’t stop. it’s the most powerful, reasoned, cohesive, intelligent, and provable statement on this issue that one could possibly make.

i won’t spoil his logic for you, but it’s airtight.

i sometimes wonder if our free republic can survive these men. if the next president continues down this same road of consolidation of power around the executive branch, it may not.

can’t stand the inactivity

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a month ago, i was complaining that there was so much to do to close on the apartment, but because of timing there was nothing i could start on.

i don’t wait well. i have a list in my head of what needs to be done, and i know what the deadline is, and i see the clock ticking, and it drives me bonkers that i’m just waiting, with no ability to get things done, because other people have to do what they are doing first before i can begin.

i’m back there.

a month has gone by since i posted that, and we’ve closed on the apartment and torn it apart.

and, as soon as the ceiling, the kitchen wall, and the floor are done, we can start our work — the painting, the installation of appliances and kitchen cabinets, the choosing of new faucets and light fixtures, the replacing of ugly light switches and power outlets, and so on.

we visit every day, and there’s progress every day. and our new super has been, well, super, and has worked and coordinated and sweated along with us to help get it all done.

i. just. want. to. be. done.

now.

aaaaargh.

i’ve gotta be more patient.