Craig's Blog

New York City

This weekend Annette and I are visiting the Big Apple. Growing up I had no urge to visit NYC but recently my interest has grown. I'll admit it, watching TV had a lot to do with it. Annette and I got into watching reruns of Sex and the City which takes place in NYC. Add Seinfeld and that Donald Trump show and I got hooked. So I did my obligitory research and gained more interest into the culture and history of the city. A friend called NYC the center of civilization. There's a lot of truth to that statement. When I was growing up NYC seemed to be old, dirty and crime ridden and it did have it's problems. Somehow they were able to clean up their act and get back on the map. So anyway we're going. What do we plan on doing there? I'm of course interested in the history and architecture. Number one on my list is to visit the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, classics of my favorite style of architecture - art deco. I want to see Penn Station, Grand Central station, Rockefeller Center. We have tickets to Ellis Island, see if we can find our ancestors in the records. We're going to try and get tickets to see the stage show Spamalot. I'm not sure if we'll be able to or not. Actually I have no idea what our chances are. Which is ok, I want to leave some of this trip up in the air, unplanned. I have no idea where we will eat. NYC is supposed to be an eater's paradise so we'll just let our noses guide us on that one. I have no interest in visiting art museums. I usually never do.

One of the fun things about going some place new is to compare expectations with experience. So I'll lay out my expectations and maybe follow up with what happened next week.

Craig's expectations of NYC
1. Awesome buildings
2. Busy, busy, busy
3. No kindness from strangers
4. Panhandlers - yuck
5. Many people
6. Massiveness

 

Celebrating the brain freeze

Slate is running an article on the 40th anniversay of the Slurpee. Wow I'm the same age as the slurpee. I grew up craving slurpees and still enjoy them a lot. There's just something about sucking a 32 oz cup of Coke slurpee through a straw that is extra special. My girlfriend's daughter (9 years old) and I will usually hit a 7-11 when we see one. Usually she's gotta fill up on some of that establishment's fine concessions such as nacho cheese chips. Although the consequences usually arrive an hour later “Craig my tummy hurts“.

The article pointed out some interesting points. Such as the the guy who invented the slurpee machine was a Dairy Queen owner in the 1950's who noticed that people went gaga over soda as it first came out of the freezer because it has that soda slush in it. 7-11 bought the machine and paid somebody to come up with the name, slurpee. I still like the knock off name slushee better. I always liked it when Apo from the Simpsons would always ask Homer as he walked into his Quickie Mart <in Indian sing song voice> “perhaps you'd like a delicious slushee mr. homer”. Slurpees are consumed most in Detroit and believe it or not, Winnipeg Ontario holds the world's number one spot for slurpee consumption. And lastly the elite in Manhatten have gotten their first 7-11 this year. I hope they put it right next to Prada or some overpriced coffee house :)

Sony is my ISP

I ran into an interesting yet scary opinion today. We all know the media companies are running around screaming the sky is falling since people are filesharing them into the ground. They've tried shutting down the sharing sites, suing individuals yet the filesharing community continues to grow. The p2p apps shift laterally around to keep away from the lawyers yet the numbers keep growing. The big entertainment companies are getting a bad wrap from internet users that is starting to make it's way into the mainstream press. They obviously can't stop the tide and are convinced they are losing money because of filesharing (it has nothing to do with the crap content they create). What their next step will be is to buy up the ISP's and control the pipes. Think about it, Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Time-Warner are basically entertainment companies anyway, they make their bread and butter from the likes of corps like Sony and Capitol Records. They're all in bed together. The US goverment allows monopolies like Microsoft and out of control behemoths like Time-Warner to continue growing and infringing on consumers rights. Why not allow these monsters to suck up the ISPs too? No longer will they need court orders to reveal IP's and they can clamp down on the p2p traffic and monitor all data flow. Problem solved on their end. This is one of the problems with allowing cancerous corporate growth to continue, it eventually overtakes and kills the body. To borrow a George Carlin quote -

Here's a bumper sticker I'd like to see... 'We are the Proud Parents of a Child who has resisted his teacher's attempts to bend him to the will of his corporate masters'. - George Carlin

The Scene

I've been watching an internet series of videos from a site called Welcome to the Scene. They produce one 15-30 minute segment every month. It's a story about a group of hackers who have a group that distribute pirated movies. They communicate via IM and IRC. They each have a role from the source who can get the dvd screeners from the factory he works at to the guy who encodes the movies to divx to the courier who moves the data. They are just one group in a much larger culture of pirating groups called “the scene”. Each video consists of one of the members shown on a web cam and a shot of his desktop filled with IRC and IM windows opened up. Every so often a voice over will inform the viewer as to the ins and outs of the culture, like most hackers are guys and those that are girls usually masquerade as guys. Also that it's an unwritten rule never to sell the movies or software they pirate. So the drama unfolds that one of the members of the group secretly decides to sell some of the material in order to meet college tuition. Ah but the web of deceit unveils itself and the lies continue to mount as the seller narrowly escapes the feds and the chinese mafia. Also the lies spill over into his love life as he tries to manage two girlfriends at once. It's well done since there isn't a lot of acting, mostly just typing. It does make me harken back to my days or irc'ng for hours and hours at a time. Having many friends from all over the world. One in which I ended up marrying! The relationships can be casual or become deep. The speed of friendship development is much faster than a real life friendship since the fear of rejection is sort of removed, there is not that face to face element. Internet time is a good term for this. Anyway if you've ever wondered about how, why and where the pirated movies and software come from, check it out.

Couch potato season starts

Well football season started last weekend. Our Rams lost their opener to SF. This year will be a repeat of last year, lucky if they hit 8-8. Same strengths and weakenesses. I think it's time for the head coach to go. He's in a rut and can't figure out how to energize the team and give them an edge. The St.Louis favorite ex-QB Kurt Warner starts this year as the Arizona Cardinal starting QB. The Arizona Cardinals are the old St.Louis Cardinal football team. Lot of animosity still exists for St.Louis. However that has changed a little with people rooting for Kurt. His team lost the opener too but hopefully he can make a difference with that beleagored group. I noticed the Cincinnati Bengals won their first game. I have a feeling they finally have a team that can make a playoff run this year. Let's hope so, the people of Cincinnati live and breathe football, they are overdue.

TV's fall season starts too. I noticed a large number of crime related shows this year. Up from last year. I really don't care for them. I tried watching a couple of them but they really play on viewer's dark fantasies. It's not just a mystery murder that gets solved. It usually a perverted sex crime or some really disgusting murder that's highly graphic. Call me a prude but I find all of it to be repulsive that people allow their inner demons to be manipulated by Hollywood. Gross. On a brighter note my favorite series Lost is starting it's second season this month. Can't wait to see what's in the hatch! I decided to stop following ER, the characters and stories are so worn out. I'm also anticipating watching the new season of Everwood and Judging Amy. Good shows even if they are mostly chick flicks. Speaking of chick flicks I picked up the second season of Once and Again on DVD the other day. Great show, not sure why I can relate to it so well. TV is still mostly a vast wasteland, even with cable tv. I find most of the shows I watch are from the BBC that I obtain in several questionable ways ;-) I'd pay for BBC service if it was ever offered in the US.

eBook reader

I've been looking for a long time for an ebook reader that had the bells and whistles at the right price. I think I may have found it finally. It's called the eBookwise 1150 eBook Reading Device. Actually it's the old Rocket reader from several years ago. Back then it was overpriced and not very functional. After passing through a few companies it ended up with ebookwise.com who sell ebooks. I've read several reviews that have raved about it. It's got good battery life, plenty of backlighting, very readable font, usable controls and is the same weight and size as a paperback. It's priced at $129 right now direct from ebookwise. Haven't searched for a better deal, if one even exists. The reader uses a propietary format called imp. However they have a converter program that can convert txt, htm, doc and rb formats. It doesn't work on DRM formats however. But it's not like I have a bunch of those sitting around (wink wink). So you can transfer your books (once they're converted) over to your reader. You can also use the USB connection and purchase and download books off of their site. Their site has tons of short stories that are priced very reasonably. What I like is that you are not renting the book, you actually purchase it and own it. They have a great selection of novels from many genres.

Survival 101

I just got done reading Lucifer's Hammer, a story about what would happen if a comet were to slam into the Earth. Kind of a depressing tale about how people would resort to savagery fairly quickly and the few that would try and maintain some order. So now this disaster in New Orleans makes think about a few things. Reading the book I kept thinking well it'd take a pretty big disaster to remove civilization. In the back of my head I kept wondering, would people really resort to savagery like in the book? I know food and water were scarce and people will kill to live but still. I look at New Orleans and really wonder. You've got a bunch of loonies out there taking shots at doctors and cops. You got your looters too. I keep hearing stories of beatings, rapes and chaos in some areas of the city where people are bunched together. They interviewed some people driving out of N.O. with guns in their cars saying they were ready to shoot their way out it was that bad. That's amazing and disgusting to me that in a few days in a mini-disaster that people would fall back so quickly. Not all people but enough to create fear and chaos. And where were the troops to come in and clear out those hospitals right away, get people off their roofs and overpasses? I know that some of them were a bunch of welfare bums wanting big daddy to come feed them and whined and moaned for the tv cameras but still there were several legimate cases where older people were dying and children put in harm's way because there was no immediate action. What happened? Do we always have to have a meeting before we do anything in this country? I also heard that the flooding of N.O. was in the top 3 worst disaster scenarios on the FEMA chart. Where were their contigency plans? Where was the president during this time? Why wasn't he down there acting like a leader, hell at least get a photo-op. Sounds like all he did was fly over it and organize private funding. Private funding?! What's that all about? I understand that in the long term it should be decided who is going to pay for the rebuilding but in the short term money should be no object. Get that city evacuated pronto. Bush proved to me again that he couldn't lead a boy scout troop out of the woods.

Seeing the flood of refugees makes me wonder about survival skills. I can't help but think that people are really tied to the infrastructure. When it fails, they die. Chris has often commented that survival skills should be taught as a part of general education. Case in point. How fragile is our population? I'm thinking we're a weak lot, push overs. I as a citizen of this country look on and have lost some confidence in the strength of this nation's people. We can talk the talk but I haven't seen a lot of walking. In any case I'm trying to take the Christian approach of love thy neighbor. Even though the refugees are unable to save themselves they are still people who need help and we should make every effort to get them to dry land at least. At the very least enroll them in Survival 101 afterwards.