dietsch ::

7

All seven and we'll watch them fall
They stand in the way of love
And we will smoke them all
With an intellect
And a savoir-faire
No one in the whole universe
Will ever compare
I am yours now and you are mine
And together we'll love through all space and time
So don't cry
Today all seven will die.

C & L

Whoo!

MxMo to go

If you're interested in following my adventures in spirits, I advise you to follow me over here:

Bacony yum

Oh, and by the way, Mr. Petrullo, my motherfucking home-smoked bacon is delicious, so neener-neener boo boo to you and your fancy-pants grill.

O bacon! Two pork bellies from Flying Pigs, cured in the fridge for a week in a mix of salt, sugar, and aromatic spices. Then smoked over applewood and hard-wood charcoal (no briskets or lighter fluid for me, dammit--and definitely no gas) on Memorial Day morning, while I sipped beer and finished a good book.

The bacon is unctuous and rich, smoky. Sweetened with apple and salty and well-spiced from the week of curing. We had Berkshire bacon, from Fresh Direct, for breakfast on Monday, and good as that was, mine was better. I do think that the rich aromatics might provide a bit much flavor for simple bacony breakfasts, but it'll be a great seasoning. Jen plans borrachos, with the bacon subbing in for the salt pork.

Gimp your grill

This is ridiculous:

Last fall, Dave and Allison Petrullo of Commack, N.Y., installed a custom-built Cal Spas grill on their patio with an outdoor refrigerator. They spent more than $100,000 renovating their backyard with a new synthetic deck, masonry, a whirlpool and a pool waterfall, so $6,500 more for Mr. Petrullo to have a brick sanctuary with a Cal Spas grill as its central altar seemed like nothing. "I told him to just go for it," Ms. Petrullo said. "And get your dream barbecue."

Though they have actually cooked on the grill only three times since they installed it, it has been a hit with Mr. Petrullo's friends, who congregate around it at parties and give it a going-over like a pack of high school boys around a Corvette, Ms. Petrullo said. "They like to lift up the hood and play with the knobs," she said. "They open the doors underneath, and they open the fridge next to it to check it out."

You spend $6,500 for a grill you use three times and then show off to your buddies? I'd much rather have a $40 Smokey Joe that I use at least THREE TIMES A FUCKING WEEK for roasting veggies, smoking meats, and searing bison steaks. I love that little grill. I'm smoking bacon on that little grill tomorrow. Has Dave Petrullo ever motherfucking smoked bacon?

Don't get me wrong: I want a bigger grill, but right now, I'm just eyeing the Performer model from Weber. But even that "bigger grill" is only $370, not some $6,500 conspicuous-consumption ego stroke.

Sure, it would be delish to have a custom job with built-in fridge, hot smoker, and sink. But that ain't happening while we live in NYC, and it's hardly my A1 consumer-lust fantasy anyway.

Some folks just got more money than sense.

Yargh!

Our frackin' PC crashed again last night. Hard drive failure. This is the second time in three months; the previous time, I got away with reformatting the drive and reinstalling the OS, but since the drive is now making funny noises, I think it's near the end of its life. Jen inherited this computer from her firm, so it's probably six years old, which is a pretty normal lifespan for a Windows box.

So it looks like we're PC shopping after work. Luckily, the monitor's fine, so we only need the tower for now, and it appears we can get something suitable in the $400-500 range.

The timing here is both bad and good. Good that we can actually spare the $500 or so, but bad in that we'd hoped to wait it out and save up enough money to get a package deal with a flat-panel display and a new printer. But we can add that stuff on later this year, probably.

And, of course, I still crave one of these, but that can wait until Apple works out the bugs and we have space for a second full-sized PC.

Germy ick

Periodically, veteran comic-con attendees will give tips to first-time congoers, advising them on ways to get the most out of the con. One popular tip is to carry a hand santizer so you don't pick up germs from the unwashed masses.

This weekend is the NYC Comic Con, and I'm still deciding whether it'll be wise to go, since I'm still recovering from my Ick. If you do see me there, you might pull out the Purel after meeting me.

Blarghy

It seems that every time, at least during winter, that I go see these people*, I return with a bad case of the ick. This year's model: bronchitis.

Well, I think it's bronchitis anyway, in that self-diagnosis sort of way. I have a bad phlegmy cough, and, now suddenly, a fever. The cough gets worse when I'm horizontal, disrupting my slepp, which is why I"m up at 4:49am (and, apparently, why I'm mistyping "sleep" and "I'm"). The fever hit tonight, as I was coming back from refilling my water glass. I shook so badly with the chills that I almost dropped the glass on the floor.

I called in sick for Wednesday, and it appears I'll do the same today. I hate doing that. My company watches our sick time so closely that they'll be on me like genital warts on a whore, even after only two days out, but what can I do?

I've had bronchitis before (officially diagnosed and everything), and it usually clears up in a week or so. Because it's normally viral, antibiotics don't work against it, so I'm not sure a doctor can do much other than to tell me what I know: rest up and stay hydrated.

I don't want to stay in bed all day because as I said before, the cough gets worse when I'm horizontal, but I'll prop up some pillows so I can sit up and read, and I'll alternate between napping and sitting up with a book or the TV.

Sigh.

*The wise wife says we should visit in warmer months anyway, since it's always cold and windy in Indiana during the winter and we're always delayed by weather-related airport snafus. This ick is just another reason she's so smarty.

Mixed-up, muddled, shaken, and a little verklempt

Jen's V-Day gift to me (mko will be so envious):

Mixed Up, Muddled and Shaken: A Curious History of the American Cocktail

Presented By: Dale DeGroff, David Wondrich
Tuesday, April 18 2006, 6pm to 8pm
The Balance
215 West 28 Street
New York, NY 10001

Dale DeGroff, author of The Craft of the Cocktail, and David Wondrich, Esquire magazine's Drinks Correspondent and author of Killer Cocktails and Esquire Drinks, will escort you through the highways and byways of more than two centuries' worth of cocktail history, as you learn how to make some of the finest examples of the bartender's art. Drinks will include the original "Cock-Tail," the Brandy Smash, the Enchantress, Champagne Cobbler, General Harrison's Egg Nog, and other great classic and original drinks.

Enjoy this hands-on seminar and the wonderful collection of cocktail memorabilia at The Museum of the American Cocktail's new location in New York.

Worst blizzard in New York City history*

No one bothered to ask, but we do have power and food. Thanks for, uh, I dunno... caring? Whatever. *That's means the second worst blizzard since 1613. SIXTEEN THIRTEEN, motherfuckers! And no one called to check in?!?! [NYTimes link]

Grand Central

Jen 'n' me at Grand Central, via Lauren.

I do, and so does she

Jen 'n' me at the muni building, via Meriko.

24

The hour approaches. I feel like Jack Bauer.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick...

TTFN

I'm closing up shop for a few weeks, folks. Comments will remain open, and I hope to post to Flickr from time to time. But this is a Bad Time for me to be blogging. More later.

January 20, 2006

Yup, we changed our plans. We're getting married here in NYC next month, instead of Orlando in October. Read all about it.

I think this is damn cool. The municipal building is beautiful (at least outside), and we'll get to stomp around some of our favorite classy NYC locales: the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central, the public library at 5th and 42nd, and Bryant Park, before retiring for swanky cocktails and an intimate dinner. I'm excited!

Narcissism

Pissed PC

Blargh. The Win2K box at home is f-u-c-k-e-d, fucked. I rebooted it yesterday, and as it rebooted, it splashed up a blue screen so quickly that I couldn't read the error message(s) and then rebooted itself. It keeps doing that. It would probably keep doing that until it caught fire, if I'd let it.

I've found a post on the Microsoft TechNet forums from others with the same problem, but no one's posted a fix yet.

I'm assuming the worst--the boot hard drive is hosed. I kinda sorta tried to boot into the backup hard drive (the one where we keep most of our data--music, porn, photos, etc.), but I had two problems: a) I can't really decipher Compaq's F10 bootup screen to figure out how to boot into the other drive, and 3) the other drive has only data, no OS. So it probably won't boot anyway.

My feeling is that I'm going to have to yank out the offending hard drive, install Windows on the backup, and try booting off that. I've got a spare hard drive around (thanks to Alex Krieger), but I'm assuming that one's completely blank and also has no OS.

The only bright side: maybe this'll finally get us to XP at home instead of Win2K.

The Mac is working for us, so there's email and forums at home, but even it's hanging by a thread.

Bah. Stoopid komputers higher maintenance than stoopid kats.

Shadow Cat

Vacation, winter, etc.

Been back from Orlando since Wednesday. My cameraphone went kaput on Sunday, so I don't have many pictures. Bah. But what I have you can see on my Flickr page.

Although everyone thinks I'm nuts, I love colder weather. I don't like icey sidewalks or streets, but I like cold. One reason why is chili. Big old pot on the stove, simmering all day. Yep. That was my Sunday. Yummmmmmmm. Goes well with Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout.

Also, seasoned up six more duck legs for confit. I'll cure them until Tuesday (keep it down, down) and then bake them in some fat.

As I said earlier, my cameraphone is deader than Caesar. Cingular's shipping me a new one. Let's hope I see it before the new year.

Duck confit

I threw together some duck confit the other day. It was pretty easy: season and salt some duck legs and refrig those for a couple days. After that, pull them from the fridge and brush off the salt, melt some duck fat, pour over the legs, bake for three hours.

Then, last night, we had our first meal with the yummy confit. I took some of the fat from the fridge and fried up potatoes and garlic. While those cooked, I heated up two legs in the cast iron--just long enough to heat them through and crisp them up--and oven-heated a parbaked ficelle. Jen threw together a salad, and we served it all with a French red wine.

Vive la France!

Birthday geeking

Today's my birthday, and in celebration, I took yesterday off and geeked around the city. Jen and I are flying JetBlue to Orlando later this month, and we discussed taking the AirTrain out there, but since we'd never done it, I wanted to do a dry run. When the AirTrain opened in Jamaica, Queens, the connection from the subway wasn't complete, so people reported being unable to find the connection and having to lug their luggage up many flights of stairs. With Jen's fibromyalgia, it makes no sense to take the AirTrain if we'd have to hassle with that. So: dry run. Also, I'm turning into a railfan, and I've wanted to check out AirTrain for a while. So I ran out to JFK yesterday, just for the fun of it, and to see if we could get from here to the JetBlue terminal without breaking Jen's back. I rode in the front so I could look out the window. Decision: The connection is easy; the train is quiet, clean, and fast; and it was easy to find JetBlue. Since we'll be traveling light, we just might do this to get out there. (We'll still probably cab it home.) After rushing about JFK and dorking out on the AirTrain, I came into midtown (via LIRR to Penn Station, which I'd also never done), and took the E to Jen's building. I dorked around Barnes and Noble until she was ready for lunch, and we went to P.J. Clarke's. Then it was back to work for her and off to Midtown Comics for me--the quieter location at 45th and Lex--where I bought two trade-paperback collections. Next, Grand Central, where I browsed Hudson News and Posman Books. I caught a glimpse of Chris Ware's new Acme Novelty Library publication, which is beautiful. I swear that one day when I have the money, I'll buy two copies of his latest whatever. I'll read and keep one around, but, with the other, I'll actually cut out and assemble the various papercraft gizmos he usually includes. Of course, knowing my dexterity, I'll probably have to buy several copies so I can keeping trying until I get the thing just right. Jen joined me then after leaving work, and we went downtown, to Apple Store Soho. For this: Sigh. I might need a moment. Then, off to Pegu Club, a swank new cocktail bar on West Houston, operated by the libation goddess, Audrey Saunders. The goddess also runs Flatiron Lounge, one of our favorite bars, and where I usually get the sidecar. Cocktails and bartending are my newest geekery. We can't afford to go too crazy with this, but I've been having fun learning about how to build a really good cocktail. And so when money allows, we like going out and imbibing same. As good as the cocktails were, I enjoyed just as much watching her expert staff of bartenders work their craft, and talking to them about their work. I'm not interested in mixing drinks in a bar, but I'd love to eventually have a cocktail party. Then it was home, to pate and cheese and wine and nano playtime. Trains, planes, comics, new gadget, good food, better drinks, and the best girl in the world. That's a damn good day. Oh, and tonight? Serenity.

Kriegers shoot the vaca

Go see!        

Kate's backyard

Back from vacation!

How soon is now?

The triathletic* Kelly Sue asks, "Where is here?" Here is Kate's Lazy Meadow, owned by Kate Pierson of the B-52s. Kate's is in Mt. Tremper, New York, not far from Woodstock. [Link: lazymeadow.com] "When" is Thursday through Sunday. "Who" is me, the missus, and the Miami Kriegers. *Triathlon: That's not the one where you ski around and shoot things, is it?

On Thursday, you'll find me here:

Pound peeling

From Kelly Sue's place, a Mayo Clinic evaluation of five popular diet plans. More interesting for me, though, was the related article providing six strategies for weight-loss success. I've been doing the Hacker's Diet (no, that's not a joke) for about five weeks now. I'm doing well so far but since I have a habit of dropping exercise and weight-loss plans after a few weeks, I'd rather stick it out a while longer before really talking about it. [Links: Weight-loss options: 5 popular diet approaches - MayoClinic.com  |  Weight loss: 6 strategies for success - MayoClinic.com]

Confidential

Please don't strap an empty saddlebag to my back and then chastise me for failing to carry two hundred pounds of provisions up the mountain.

It's true

We're getting married. Ain't that a kick?

Grillin'

Oh my god, I just ate a chicken leg that was larger than a chihuahua. Grilled, free range, textured more like duck than chicken, and slathered with Gates ’cue sauce (thanks to DeFractions). And it was yummy, but holy damn. That's a lot o' chicken.

Cameraphone

If you look immediately below this post, you should see a Flickr image, posted from my cameraphone. (Sorry, JOSH, it's an image, not a text post.) Yes, after four years with a crappy Nokia straight from the era of Ricardos and Cleavers, I finally have a phone that enables me to take and post pictures, read email, control the Space Shuttle, and perform cardiac surgery. (By the way, you wanna hear something dumb? My new phone is a Motorola, and one of the ringtones plays this goofy little ditty followed by the voice of some Eurotrash dude going "Hello, Moto." I think they use this in commercials. Anyway, everytime I hear it, I giggle. Yes, I'm that dumb.) So, I love having a camphone. Hop on over to Flickr (the image below links to my photostream) and see what I'm seeing.

Hat baby hat baby

Angier on atheism

The Center for Inquiry reprints a speech by science writer Natalie Angier, in which she discusses how to raise a child as an atheist. Angier discusses, for lack of a better term, an atheist's world view, and she raises a few points that I think are worth mentioning. The first thing I want to mention is her belief that we have a duty to "understand the universe to the furthest extent that our brains can manage." I raise this as a way of explaining why I find good science writing so enjoyable, and why so much of my leisure reading is spent on non-fiction--and not just science, for I think I have just as much to learn from other fields as well. She then brings up Einstein's famous humility before the same universe he worked so hard to explain. But anyone who gazes up at the stars or out across the ocean can be humble before the grandeur of the universe. What distinguished Einstein was his life-long aim, as Angier puts it, "to honor that grandeur by seeking to understand it, bit by bit, with his weak little intellect." This, to me, is the call of human intellect, and it's one reason religionists upset me so much when they try to use ancient texts to beat down science. It's just too damn easy to stop thinking and learning and exploring when you believe that, beyond the veil, there's a god waiting who will explain to you all the mysteries of life. [via Arts and Letters Daily]

Swag and shit

Busy busy busy. Flew to Alabama on the 17th; Jen's bro Jeff was graduating from college, so we went to Birmingham to surprise him. Spent a couple days with her family and flew back on the 19th. Was plied with good food, gift cards, a bottle of cologne, cookies, and sundries. Jen's family is very generous and hospitable. Spent Christmas Eve volunteering at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, probably the first time... Continue reading "Swag and shit"

The End?

Okay, I've just about had enough. Jen's site got bombed yesterday with over 300 comment spams from the same bottom dweller. While we were literally in the middle of fixing that, the server on which Jen's website resides went belly up. At first, visiting Jenblossom.com got you a message saying that no such website existed, and then, the site displayed a page of ads for a fly-by-night "financial services" company. I got on the Technical Support site for Jen's web provider (the same company hosts this site), and also filed a help ticket. As I waited, I saw a number of people, who had accounts on the same server that failed, come in with the same problem--their sites were either offline entirely or pointed to the fly-by-night "services" company. This went on for hours as Jennifer's provider tried to fix the problem. Unfortunately, when they finally did solve that issue, another major problem cropped up--for some reason, they had to reset Jen's username, which wound up lousing up a number of settings in both Movable Type and Gallery. I was able to fix the problems in Movable Type by going into her configuration settings and updating her mtconfig file. Or at least I hope I fixed them all. Hours after I fixed one problem, another popped up. And then another. So I don't really know whether they're all nailed down. But Gallery is still fucked, which means Jen can't edit or update her photo pages. And I'm at a loss, because although I use Gallery, I don't really understand it, nor do I like it all that much. I burned up probably three hours this weekend, trying to fix this. Which isn't much, but when you're not having fun and you had planned to spend those hours doing something else, it's a pain in the ass. I used to enjoy troubleshooting web stuff, but now I find it all a major irritation. Bloggers want the world to believe they're journalists and pundits; they talk about a "blogosphere" as if there's a world of young publishers all interacting in some New Age, hand-holding, Up with People kind of way. But I don't know how it's ever going to happen if our tools continue to be so fragile and hard to fix. I don't need to debug the code that runs Microsoft Word in order to edit a file, and I shouldn't need to hassle with PHP when our web provider renames Jen's user accounts.

Thanksgiving 2k4

What I Did On Thanksgiving Day, by Mikey Dietsch, age 36. [or skip the jabbering and go straight to Jen's pictures] Jennifer and I had a yummy Thanksgiving Day with lots of good food and fun things. First we went to Sarafina Broadway, where we met up with members of the Lunch Club. We had brunch while watching the parade pass outside Sarafina's big picture windows. Continue reading "Thanksgiving 2k4"

To hell with my home state

First state called for George W.? Piss on Indiana.

Good night, Superman

Once upon a Dietsch

three-six

Happy fucking birthday to me. Is it time for my mid-life crisis yet?

Moving

Jennifer and I are shacking up, starting this weekend. We've spent the last week painting and packing and freaking out. Blargh.

Recipe for oblivion

2 gin and tonics 6 McSorley Dark Ales 1 Red Stripe 1 blue kamikaze 1 scotch Swill around in the belly of one 35-year-old man who should know better than to go out drinking on a school night.

Sick nephew

My six-year-old nephew, who spent the weekend in the hospital, has been diagnosed with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks and destroys blood platelets. Idiopathic means the disorder has no known cause. Jake's doctor treated him with a IV of gamma globulin, which stimulated new platelet production. He was released yesterday, his platelet count back to normal. According to the NIH, "[a]bout 85 percent of children recover within 1 year and the problem doesn't return."

Blargh

Blargh.

How I became an asshole

I was at the corner of 7th and Garfield, waiting to cross 7th. The light changed and I had the walk signal. I started into the street. A woman was turning right from Garfield onto 7th and didn't want to stop for me. I saw her, threw up my arms, backed away, and went back onto the sidewalk. Impatiently, she motioned me to cross. I motioned her to keep moving. She rolled down her window and yelled at me. I told her to "just go, goddammit" and then I said she was a bitch. She stopped her car like she was going to get out, but then she kept going. I don't know--is that a big guy against a tiny woman, or a big guy against an even bigger automobile?

This is my life

Wake up. Work at home. Get on a train. Work at the day job. Get on a train. Work at home. Sleep. Eat, if there's time. Load boxes. Fall off a truck. Unload boxes. Go to emergency room. Ice and elevate. Drink. Sleep.

Another light week

Posting will be light for the next couple of days. Jen moves to New York this weekend and I'll be in Boston starting tonight to help.

Debt and the kids

If I ever have children, one of the most important lessons I want to teach them is responsible debt management skills. My generation faces crushing debt loads, crippling interest rates and late fees, and deceptive practices from the agencies that we trust to "counsel" us. Banks and other credit issuers pay colleges big bucks for the right to market to teenagers, and they send offer after offer for new cards to people with proven bad credit, and then they turn around and rail against debtors for being "irresponsible" and petition Congress to tighten consumer bankruptcy laws. The trick is to teach kids to use credit responsibly without outright forbidding the use of credit cards. Teaching them how to build a good credit rating while still staying on top of their bills is an important skill, but that's a hard balance for adults to manage, let alone for teenagers to understand.

Light week

Blogging is obviously light here this week. Blame an overactive work schedule.

Ain't nobody's fault but mine

Over a year ago, fresh from the haywagon, I decided it would be smart to register to vote. In filling out the form, though, I was excited to see I could actually register as a Green. So excited, in fact, that I failed to realize the implication: I wouldn't be able to vote in another party's closed primary. It just so happens that "another party" is holding a primary today, and thanks to my error (and a New York State rule that prevents voters from changing parties in the same year as a general election), I have no voice. Gr.

Jury duty

Blogging will be light, and I'll be away from e-mail most of the week; I'm serving on a jury this week.

Logistics

If you want on the elevator, you need to let me off first. If the door opens and instead of stepping aside to let me out, you just stand there blinking at me, none of us will get anywhere. I realize that because you live in New York and take the subway to work every morning, you've probably grown used to the idea that when the door opens you just stand immediately in front of the person trying to exit the subway car, which forces that person to either shove you aside or step on the toes of the rider to his left so he can dodge around you. But this isn't the subway, and even though I am now used to the idea of shoving people aside so I can exit the train, I'm still Midwest enough that I don't want to muscle through a wall of co-workers so I can get off the elevator.

My U.S. / My World

A new travel site allows you to map the U.S. states or other countries you've visited. My state map is bad enough, but my world map is embarrassing. (I do, however, like the code CAFRUKUS that the script passes to the server to generate the map; in terms of curse words, Cafrukus is the new douchebag.)

Morality test

Check out my Morality! 77% liberal, 23% conservative The Morality Test takes about 15 minutes, and I think its results for me are generally accurate.

Merry Christmas to me!

The girl bought me these: She's all right, that girl.

They're smoking cigars

Today is my birthday. 35. I can see 40 from up here and it looks a litttle scary.

License

I've added an explicit disclaimer to my Colophon today, which explains the rights to anything you might find on this website. Most of my weblog pages already have a Creative Commons license, but I hadn't yet applied that license to my longer writings or to my photographs. Today, however, I got an e-mail from someone in Brazil, saying they'd found a couple of my pictures in a Google search, and asking whether they could use one of those pictures in a photo montage. I granted permission so long as the person credits me for the work and doesn't sell the photo. I think it's so cool that someone in Brazil likes my photos enough to reuse one.

Autumn

Today is First Sweater Day! Well, it is for me at least. Today is a scratchy-wool, red-and-navy, polo-style day with a stray fiber causing my neck to itch. Today is unhemmed sleeves with edges that roll back a little. Today, I have to admit, is an Abercrombie day. First Sweater Day is always exciting because only then is it really fall, no matter what the calendar says. Fall was my favorite season when I was a kid. I'm an October baby, so fall always meant birthday parties and presents and cake. My hometown has a street festival every autumn, arriving near my birthday, so fall also always meant bad food and carnival rides and pretty girls. Fall is back-to-school time and I was always geek enough to love that. I mean, how couldn't you love back-to-school time? New clothes, new people to meet, new books to read. It always made me completely neurotic, but I still loved it. A couple of years ago, when I went to grad school, I moved down to Bloomington from Indianapolis and I bought new clothes and new shoes and then I went out and bought all my books. And then, on Orientation Day, I cycled in, hyper and nervous, to the main library in a new white T-shirt and new blue jeans but it had rained and all this road grime splattered up onto my T and I went into the bathroom and sponged off as much of it as I could, convinced I had totally ruined my chance to make a good first impression. Late fall, after the leaves have fallen and the trees have the beauty of stark, fractal potential, is delicious and bittersweet. When people around me complain that the trees are barren and the skies are gray, I secretly disdain them for being impatient and unimaginative. I'm old fashioned. I think there's truth in the seasons and their metaphors. The leaves and limbs and grass and husks rot away over the winter so we can have fresh topsoil in the spring to nurture the new greens and yellows and reds and blues that everyone else worships so much.

Blue kamakazi

Friday night, 8/28. Joshua Tree, Manhattan. Ed Mathews orders a round of blue drinks...

I had one, too. I think it hurt me.

Photos courtesy the lovely Lauren Martin.

Subway stuff

More and more, I'm fascinated by the New York subway system--how the tracks run through the city, where various lines go, the system's history, and so on. I love reading about abandoned stations, platforms, and sections of track, and having romantic fantasies of underground lairs like Lex Luthor's in the first Superman movie.

I recently bought the book Tracks of the New York Subways, which features full maps of the entire New York City subway lines. It shows where all the tracks and switches are and the intricate ways in which trains move through the system.

Recently, I read a blog post by someone who has traveled the entire 722 miles of the subway system, seeing every train line and every station. I think that's my new ambition; and it doesn't bother me that I'm not the first to do it.

Jumping continents, London's Transport Museum has a nice Flash feature contrasting the London Underground map with the geography above. The tube map isn't really a map, in the way we usually think of them; it's a conceptual schematic.  The tube map shows, for example, Notting Hill Gate station on a perfectly straight horizontal red line that passes through Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, and Holborn, before veering sharply downward to Bank. In reality, however, the line runs at a slight upward diagonal to Holborn before diverting down to Bank.

The map as it stands is a thing of simple elegance. All angles on the schematic are at 45 or 90 degrees, for example. But it's criticized for distorting the geography of the landscape above it. You can easily assume, as I noted above, that Bond Street is due east of Notting Hill Gate, when that's not really the case.

The Transport Museum's Real Underground site allows you to contrast the original 1993 map with today's map. Click to see the "real" Underground, and the Flash interface morphs the elegant curves and lines and angles of the schematic into a more chaotic map that shows where the trains actually go. Not only is it informative, but it's a creative use of Flash.

I'm not dead

The last couple of weeks have been busy, stressful, and tiring, and instead of spending time on this site, I've been starting to redesign and overhaul my entire site. My plan for September is to transfer this site to a different hosting company and to transfer my blog over from Radio UserLand to Movable Type; but all of that will take some time, and so if you don't see me much around here, that's what's going on.

Gay writers, gay couples

This quote is coming at me from about ten different blogs this morning, and it obliquely illustrates a point I want to make about living in New York. Interviewed by Publisher's Weekly, Michael Cunningham (writer of the book The Hours) discusses being labelled a "gay author":

"What I do look forward to is the day when the notion of gay and lesbian books or a gay and lesbian section in a bookstore will seem as strange and old-fashioned as a section devoted to books by women or books by people of color. I'm more than ready for books to be on the shelves all together and for readers to be trusted to decide for themselves what books they want. For me and my friends, whether gay or straight, it's never a question whether or not a book is by a gay writer or if it's a story about gay people. We just read books."

I've made a similar comment about seeing gay couples on the streets of New York. I never saw gay couples walking hand in hand in Indianapolis, for example, and I rarely saw it in Bloomington (and when I did, it was always lesbians--never gay men).

But gays in New York can be openly coupled no matter where you go (holding hands on the train, quick smooches in the bagel shop, cuddling in Starbucks), and I'm tired of thinking that's significant or exceptional. I don't see straight couples hand in hand and think, "Oh, how cool that they can be so open!" Similarly, I'm tired of thinking it's exceptional to see interethnic couples together, especially now that I'm part of one myself. I don't want to see a "gay couple" or an "interethnic couple"; I just want to see a couple.

I'm an idealist, of course, but I think all this should be wallpaper--something you see but never really notice because it's just part of your daily life.

Visit Old Madison!

Visit Madison, Indiana! We're xenophobic and too boring to matter to terrorists!

A safe place to visit...When you visit Madison you will discover that we have no tall buildings to fear, no nuclear power plants, airports or anything anyone would want to blow up. When you step into Old-Madison, you step back more than a 100 years in time experiencing a past as much alive today as it was a century ago. Old Madison was a time of adventure, an age of grandeur the great steamboatin era. Most of the folks around here are American Americans and you too are welcome here. We have "great" old homes and buildings to see, antique shops, great food, sleep in one of our old homes and walk on our lighted riverfront. Experience Old-Madison today.

Wonder what they mean by American Americans. Even if this is a joke, it's a perfect example of why I got the fuck out of Indiana.
Oh, and Madison? 100 means one hundred. The construction a 100, therefore, means "a one hundred." And that really doesn't make much sense, so keep your illiterate, furriner-fearing, antebellum culture to your damn selves.

Lights out!

Thursday's blackout found me having to get from the Bronx to Brooklyn. I leave work daily a little before 4:15, so I was headed out the door when the power went down. I walked to the train station at 161st St./Yankee Stadium, only to find the trains not running. So along with a group of co-workers, I boarded the Bx113 to Washington Heights in Manhattan, where we'd supposedly be able to catch an M5 bus to Houston St. [more in link]

Tim Maroney

Teresa Nielsen Hayden reports the death of Tim Maroney, a man I once knew vaguely via the Warren Ellis Forum on DelphiForums. Tim used to post learned commentary about scientific news items, but the main reason I remember him is due to a chat session one night. Tim, Jessica Linker, and I were the only ones in chat, and I was freaking out a little about my impending thirtieth birthday.
Tim talked me back from the edge by assuring me that his 30s were, to that point, the best decade of his life. When I finally met Tim in person a couple of years after this late-night chat, he remembered neither me nor the conversation.
But that's okay, because I'll never forget.
There's something strange about learning, via a weblog, of the death of a man I knew only on the Web anyway.

Some personal musings

Bear with me here. I never wanted to be one of those bloggers who seems preoccupied with minutiae from his own life. I've lived long enough to know that what's bugging me right now won't necessarily be bothering me tomorrow, so to sit and angst in public about the current agita just seems counter-productive to me. On the other hand... ...this blog has been almost entirely impersonal lately. I love information policy. I think that's obvious. And I love New York. That's pretty bloody obvious, too. Just skim down the page at the entries below this one. But just last week, I was talking to my uncle and he said, "Have you ever considered being a professional writer?" Today, a friend I've been out of touch with for over a decade wrote out of the blue. Among his comments: "Had no idea you were such a good writer." That's flattering. I've looked back over this site, tonight, and I've remembered how much fun it is to write about my own experiences. Check out the writing section of my site. None of it will win awards, but all of it was a complete kick to write. I need to do that again. Soon.

Back from holidays

What a week. I flew to Indiana on the 23rd and spent a few days with the family. Thursday morning, Mom and Beth dropped me off with my good friends Amy and Courtney, who then took me up to Bloomington for dinner with Abbie and Dave. The five of us had a great time over curries and other yummy dinner treats. I flew back to New York on Friday and then headed up to Boston the next morning. JOSH and I went up to visit friends. He has high-school chums there, and we both have Delphi-forum friends there. Anna's visiting from London, and it was great seeing her again. I also saw many of the same people I met during my first visit, back in March 2001. JOSH and I decided at the last minute that we'd rent a car for the trip, rather than take bus or train. So I hauled out to a couple nearby rental agencies. The only thing available was a Dodge Caravan. That's right, a minivan. When Christopher saw it, he mockingly whined, "I wanna go to soccer practice!" Grrr. The drive itself was unremarkable. We arrived in Boston in late afternoon. I checked into my hotel (JOSH stayed with his friend Rob Saturday night), and then we went up to Comicopia to terrorize poor James Wu. After dropping loads of cash on comics and other geekery, we met Rob and Stephanie and headed to Jillian's for a few rounds of pool. Then it was off to Boston Beer Works to meet back up with James, Anna, and the gang. Loads of fun. I must have consumed a couple gallons of beer, though. JOSH and I had great fun at the expense of the City of Boston, when the Beer Works closed up at 1am and spewed us onto the street. "Hey, JOSH, what time you got? My watch must have stopped! Is it 4am already?" Rob dropped me back at my hotel. Newbury Guest House is a bed-and-breakfast on Newbury Street, which is really one of my favorite places ever. The Guest House was very nice, though. I got the bay-window room, which was charming and quiet. I need to remember this place, because it would make a lovely weekend away with just the right someone. I always spend too much money on Newbury. I'm especially fond of Allston Beat, where the clothes are normally way too hip for me, which never really stops me from buying. I wandered the strip alone Sunday morning. Sarah had suggested brunch or lunch and I was waiting to hear from either her or JOSH and Rob. I enjoyed that much more than I expected to. It was the first time I'd had fully alone in nearly a week and it was a great way to while away the time. We ended up at Jazz brunch at a place called Ryles, which is in Cambridge. Or Somerville--I'm not really sure. I hopped in the minivan and drove out there. JOSH and Rob came up from Plymouth, and Sarah arrived with her buddy Mike in tow. Sunday was leisurely, which I really needed. Finally, we drove back to New York, after a strange liquor run to New Hampshire (not drinking and driving, but stocking up for the winter), which might be worth a separate post. Long week and I'm damn tired, but it sure was worth every second. [EDIT, 10/25/04: I met the lurvely Jenblossom during that weekend, too. Funny how your life changes without you even noticing sometimes.]

Holidays, holidays

I'm off this morning for Indiana. I'll be back in New York on Friday, and then it's out on Saturday morning to Boston. I love Boston, and I can't wait to get back there. This trip is a short one. I go up on Saturday and come back Sunday. Several of my Boston friends are gathering Saturday evening for food and spirits, and it'll be fine fun to see them again. Anna should be somewhere over the mid-Atlantic right about now. She'll be blogging about her U.S. trip over here. I think it's just Boston and New York for her this time around. She'll crash here during at least part of the New York leg of her trip, before flying out from Newark on Jan. 8. Now I must shower and pack.

Can anyone loan me a car and three friends?

As Commuters Line Up Rides, Some Hope to Ride Out Scare. For all the determined bikers and walkers, many commuters seemed unable to fathom how they would get to work or school. By Randal C. Archibold. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

I've been worrying about this, also. If MTA workers go out on strike next week, I'll need to find some other option for getting from Brooklyn to the Bronx. I'll bike it if I have to, but it's a 16-mile trip, one-way; the idea of 32 miles in the cold kind of blows. I have a colleague who lives just a few blocks from me; she has a car, but she plans to crash with her sister in Westchester until the strike ends, so that's not an option. My workplace started compiling a list today of workers affected--they took down names and locations of possible drivers and riders. When I added my name, only one driver had signed up, compared to ten riders. I hope that ratio changes. MetroNorth will apparently offer a special shuttle from Grand Central to Yankee Stadium. That's probably my best bet; I already walk to work from the D or 4 stop at Yankee Stadium anyway. The trick there is getting to Grand Central. Again, I could bike it, but where would I lock up my bike all day? (With the crowds that shuttle would see, I don't think carrying my bike onto the train will be an option.) I could get on Long Island Rail Road at Flatbush (to which I'd walk), ride out to Jamaica in Queens, ride in to Penn Station, walk to Grand Central, and then get on the shuttle up to Yankee. To make that work, though, I'll probably have to be at the Flatbush stop by absolutely no later than 6:30am--more like 6am, I suspect. Would I be home before 7pm? Unlikely. Sucks, eh? This strike had better not happen, that's all I'm sayin'.

Tortellini

I believe I've mentioned how much I love this city; here's another reason why:

Tonight, I was hungry for tortellini with a nice red sauce. So just before 7:30, I set out to buy some tortellini and some sauce. I walked down the stairs of my building, turned right at the entry way, and walked up 7th Ave., about a block, to Fratelli Ravioli, a shop specializing in Italian foods. I bought some spinach tortellini, a tub of frozen sauce, a sphere of yummy fresh mozzerella, and a jar of Nutella. (Nutella might not seem Italian, but apparently it is.)

After making those purchases, I walked another block and stopped in at a store specializing in wine and spirits. A lovely young woman was conducing a wine tasting, so I sampled her offerings and selected an Argentinian red to accompany my pasta. I then walked home, arriving back at the apartment a little after 7:45.

So. In just under twenty minutes, I bought all the makings for a delicious dinner and I drank wine from the hands of a hot blonde.

I love this place.

Editing and ferrying

I've fallen behind on some of my projects over the last week, so I spent most of yesterday afternoon in the NYPL's reading room trying to get caught up. I'll have to work most of this afternoon as well. But when I left the library, feeling a little stir crazy, I had to decide what to do with my evening. I'm still in the operative mode of "cheap," which limits my options a little. Luckily, though, one of New York's most enjoyable attractions is very cheap--free, in fact. Josh urged me earlier this week to get aboard the Staten Island Ferry while the weather was still nice. Because yesterday was mild, sunny, and cloudless, it seemed like the perfect day for it. The ferry ride across to Staten Island takes about 25 minutes. Riding it round-trip as I did (I didn't exit the ferry) will take an hour. After boarding the ferry, I made my way to the upper deck for a better view. An outside walkway allows you to look out over the water on either side of the boat. I looked out over the Brooklyn side for a while, finding familiar landmarks for orientation and staring off at Governor's Island, and then walked over to the other side. Let's Go New York claims that the ferry ride provides the best available view of the Statue of Liberty, and the book's probably right. Although many points in Manhattan and Brooklyn have provided nice views of Liberty, obviously none allow her to loom this large. I was happy the boat wasn't full. Finding a vantage was easy, no matter where I wanted to be. I stood watching Lower Manhattan recede from view as we passed Ellis Island, Liberty, and the New Jersey shore. I then walked over to the Brooklyn side, to get a view of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Brooklyn skyline. The breeze on that side of the boat was much stronger, so I closed my eyes to feel the air snap against my skin, to listen to the engines gently groan, and to smell the fishy salt of the bay water. When I opened my eyes again, I saw seagulls floating alongside us, wings spread wide to catch drifts off the boat. During the ferry ride, I felt a new dream beginning to take seed--to travel by ship across the Atlantic to Europe. Ship travel is probably some years hence, for I think the only companies offering such European travel packages are luxury cruise liners, which means the tall dollar, but that just means being diligent with my debts and getting money saved up.

I promised to tell y'all

I promised to tell y'all about Friday. Here's Friday:

My vegetarian, fiddle-playing, hat-knitting, uber-styling, Unix-dorking, zine-writing, subway-busking, bicycle-riding friend Elizabeth met me for lunch in the East Village, at a vegetarian restaurant of her choosing. Kate's Joint really is a joint. I mean, if you imagine what a restaurant would look like that calls itself a "joint," that's this place. The people passing by, with their piercings, spiked or mohawked hair, tattoos, and eclectic choices in clothing were fun to watch. The food was yummy.

We talked for a couple hours, and then she went off to knit another hat, while I made my uptown to meet Amy at the Hayden Planetarium. Amy, visiting from Minneapolis, is a much bigger space geek than I am--she majored in space science in college. She explained, patiently, the things I didn't understand as we toured. What a great place.

The show we saw in the Planetarium was lovely--I literally gasped when the star field filled the dome--but a little light on hard science for my tastes. Well, it's aimed at a general audience and considering it was written by Carl Sagan's collaborators on Cosmos, the science that was there was impeccable. But it's got me hungering for more, and fortunately, the Hayden offers lectures and courses. Introduction to Space Science looks especially nice.

After the Hayden, Amy and I wandered down to Midtown and the Times Square area, which of course was swimming in tourists. We called Josh, my roommate, and had him pick a dinner place. He met us at a charming, well-run Italian restaurant in the East Village. Yummy, yummy food.

After, we dragged Amy out to Ace for a drink-up. Quite a few people turned out, including Famous Comic Book Writer Guy, who seemed nice and funny, but a little geeky. I guess we're all a little geeky, but he was a little geekier. But that's okay. It's weird recognizing someone based on publicity stills...

Right. Drinkup. Not much to say. We drank and we drank. Then, we drank more. Following that, in an amazing and unexpected change of plans, we drank and drank and drank. Then I went home and slept.

That was Friday.

Sorry it's been so long

Sorry it's been so long between updates. My big news right now is that I've found a new apartment. This arrangement with Josh was always only temporary, but now I've found a permanent home here. Well, let's say, I've found my first permanent home here. In reality, it's simply less temporary than Josh's. More accurately, I didn't find the place. My new roommate did. He's a friend of Josh's who's been looking for a new spot to lie down at night. He found it and called me to see. We both liked it, so we grabbed it. So, the place. It's in Park Slope, just a few blocks from where I am now. The new apartment is on Seventh Avenue between First and Second streets. We're just a couple or three blocks from Prospect Park and we're in the midst of a great commercial district. Seventh is lined with all sorts of nifty stuff: a bar here, a hardware store there, a toy store, book stores, laundries, groceries, a neat little Italian place that sells canolis and fresh mozzerella made onsite, a co-op grocery, a health-food store, several coffee shops. You name it. The neighborhood has a great mix of old and young, families and singles. It's multiethnic and very hip. Finding an apartment on 7th Ave. in Park Slope apparently puts me in the realm of the trendy and fashionable, from what I hear. Imagine that. The apartment itself is very nice. New hardwood floors line all rooms but the kitchen, living room, and bath, which have brown slate tile. Cabinets still have that new-wood smell and there's manufacturers' stickers still on the fridge, bathroom sink basin, and tub. Chris's room is lovely: large, and with a bay window overlooking Seventh. My room's a bit on the small side, but it'll hold a bed, bureau, and night table easily, and there's enough space in the rest of the apartment to kick around in, so I don't mind. And I'm willing to trade off size for location anyway. Not even three weeks in New York and I find an awesome place. I must have a charmed life.

Busy busy

I've been a little busy lately to keep up with this: sending off resumes, keeping up with freelance work, visiting Bloomington friends, and making temporary housing arrangements for NYC. I'll be living for a little while with a friend while I look for my own place. I'll probably set up an address at Mailboxes Etc. so I have a consistent, continuous address while I'm moving around. I need to start packing. I've gone through closets and drawers, but need to take stuff to Goodwill. Next up is to sift through my books and begin boxing them up. Sofa, chair, and ottoman go to Amanda; I'll be listing my bedroom furniture in local classifieds. When I'm at my friend's place, I'll be living out of a suitcase. Everything else goes into storage in another friend's basement, here in Indiana, until I have a place of my own. Living light--with just clothes and my laptop--should be interesting. This is overwhelming--closing up here, saying goodbye, finding a job, knowing what a huge change is in store when I move--but it's exciting at the same time. Since I've never done anything like this before, I'm sure I'm making mistakes, but I guess that's okay. After the move, expect a return here to the kinds of blogging I was doing before: IP and IT policy issues, news bits, funky shit. I might split this blog out into one for my normal interests and one for moving-to-NYC stuff. We'll see. Crushes suck.

I'm tired

I'm tired. I guess it's no surprise--the last week has been busy, with my interview on Wednesday, going with Tim and Christine to see Twelfth Night on Thursday, the drinkup on Friday. The drinkup. Lot of drinking at that drinkup, but I guess that's the point. I met Todd at his workplace on Friday afternoon. We schlepped my bags back to his apartment in Brooklyn, he changed clothes, and we headed back into the city. We stopped off for slices of pizza before joining the crazy kids at Ace Bar. The Ace kids were loud and funny and drunk and flirty and funny and drunk and loud. Which is pretty much everything a good drinkup should entail, no? We left Ace around 3 and since Todd and Lauren were hungry, we headed out with Molly and got slices of pizza. Molly knew another place, so we ducked in there and ordered a pitcher of beer. It was kind of a dive, but it was fine, and we sat and talked. Todd flirted with Molly and Lauren; I just sort of watched it unfold in my own little haze. When the bartender switched off the neon and upturned stools onto the bar a little after 4, we knew it was time to go home. Molly lives around there, so she walked back, and Todd, Lauren, and I grabbed a cab back to Todd's apartment. Next day, got up at 11. We washed as much bar smell out of us as we could and swilled cocktails of filtered water and Advil. We met up again with Molly--and a guy named Slippery Pete--for brunch. Biscuits and sausage gravy. And coffee and coffee and coffee and coffee. A large picture of a smoking cat gazed over us as we fought to take in all that food before us. The plates, I fear, won. I think Lauren put away most of her omlette and home fries, but the rest of us left a lot behind. Molly went one way, Slippery Pete another, and then Todd and I saw Lauren off at Penn Station for her train back to Long Island. We later met up with Josh for a late, late showing of Metropolis, followed by beer and pub grub at a Greenwich Village bar. Stumbled back to Todd's, collapsed at 3:30. Got up at 7 to haulass back to Indiana. Subway to Manhattan. PATH to Newark. NJ Transit to Newark International. Tram to the terminal. Kludged heavily to the gate, with 45 minutes to spare before the flight was to leave. Suddenly from my backpack, a cell-tone rendition of I Walk the Line. I fumbled open the zipper, rummaged around for the phone. Elizabeth, calling to apologize for missing me twice last week. We caught up on the rest of my week and the unfortunate disasters that plagued hers, and made tentative plans to get together when I get back. Buoyed by a nice call from a pretty girl, I boarded the plane. Uneventful flight to Detroit on a sparsely populated plane meant room to stretch out and nap. My connection to Indianapolis was almost immediate, so I rushed down the terminal to my other flight, just in time. I'd rather rush from one gate to the next than sit like a toad for an hour waiting for a flight. Sparse again with room to unpack my legs and doze. At the Indianapolis airport, I collected my stuff and waited for the shuttle back. My iPod handed song after song to my ears on the trip back to Bloomington: Springsteen, Costello, Waits, Dylan. Prince, Madonna, Ella. I dread travel days, especially those like yesterday: four states, four modes of transportation, navigating unfamiliar stations and airports and ticketing systems. What I once saw as adventure, I now view as tedium. But with the call from Elizabeth, the relaxing flights, and the relative compactness of the trip (just over three hours from Newark Int'l to Indy), it wasn't so bad.

Purple Crayon

Memory is a funny thing. If you read the thing I posted yesterday about bookstores, you know there's a thread going on over on MLF, wherein people discuss their favorite whatsits. My web-friend Kira has been discussing her favorite books from her childhood. Something in one of her comments called to mind Harold and the Purple Crayon, about a boy who makes his imaginings come true by drawing them with his crayon. Now, I bought that book for my nephew, Jake, a couple years ago, and when I did, I had this half-memory from years ago of a cartoon based on Harold. But something didn't seem quite right. It wasn't exactly Harold I was remembering. I knew I was remembering a short toon with the adventures of a boy like Harold, but for some reason I knew that it wasn't Harold himself. It's bugged me for a couple years, but I've shoved these stirrings of memory back into my subconscious and never pursued them. But then, today, I decided finally to chase it down. Here's what I had: a boy, using some type of crayon or pen to create an imaginary world where he'd have these adventures; the cartoon was a regular short segment in a longer children's program--Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, or whatever; and there was theme song I used to sing along to, when I was wee. Not much to go on. But some strange neurological process shouted CAPTAIN KANGAROO at my highest centers of reasoning. Armed with that, I Googled "harold purple crayon captain kangaroo," which led me a page about Harold and his creator, Crockett Johnson. Turns out there was a segment on Captain Kangaroo, about a boy similar to Harold, who drew his imaginings in chalk. Simon had a theme song, which began, "Well you know my name is Simon, and the things I draw come true." Oooooohhhhhh. Now that rang a bell. So I Googled "simon captain kangaroo," which led me to a delightful page devoted to Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, a British cartoon that Bob Keeshan imported to use on his program. Now, scroll down that page. Nearly halfway down, you'll find links to the Simon theme, in WAV and MP3 format. I downloaded an MP3 and played it in WinAmp. I closed my eyes and listened; with remarkable clarity and precision, I was suddenly 25 years younger, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of CBS on a weekday morning, watching and hearing Simon on the Captain Kangaroo program. Memory is a funny thing.

IP paper

For the bored, curious, or merely masochistic, I have a short paper online that I submitted for my seminar in intellectual freedom. I wrote about the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, specifically focusing on how copyright extensions affect the public domain. It's all much more interesting than you might expect.

Job-a-huntin'

I've finally gotten around to updating my resume. Now that I'm looking for jobs, I think that's important, don't you?

Finishing up

I really haven't updated in a while, have I? Finishing classwork, relaxing--finally--after a pretty full semester, and beginning to dig out of the landfill I jokingly call an apartment have left me pretty busy. I'm pretty excited. I've finished the work required to complete my master's degree. I dunno exactly when to expect the damned diploma, but I hope it's soon. I didn't go through graduation ceremonies; they're far too impersonal here, even at the master's level. I understand why the University can't recognize every graduate by name--the ceremony would take weeks--but I'd rather not be a face in a crowd. If I get a Ph.D. or a professional degree, I'll walk the carpet then. The professor for my strategic intelligence class--he's also the dean of my department--made a point of telling us he seldom gives A's in his class. A B, he says, means you've met the standard set out for the course, so an A or an A- go only to work that exceeds the standard. I wasn't expecting, then, anything above B+. I got the grade today: A -. To quote my friend Kira, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" That's me feeling happy. So, otherwise, I've been relaxing. I'm reading now Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I think is excellent. Some reviews call it "dreamy" and "subtly disturbing" and I'd say those are valid comments. It moves slowly, but such a pace is perfect for this book. I wasn't familiar with Murakami's work, but I decided to dip in here after several people recommended his books on the various Web forums I frequent. Although I've graduated, I'm taking one class through SLIS--a seminar covering intellectual freedom. I'm excited about this class. I respect the professor and I'm fascinated by the topic, as you might expect from someone who attended the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference. I'm more and more serious about pursuing work in this area eventually, but I need to think long and hard about how and where. Should I go to law school and study the legal aspects of intellectual freedom and privacy? Should I study political science or public affairs and look at policy issues in these areas? I think there are many opportunities and perhaps as many directions to take this, so I need to really think it over and seek good advice. That's all for now. My dinner just came out of the oven. I'm hoping to update the rest of my Web site soon, with new writings and pictures from San Francisco.

Breaking out

Monday, 29 April. 4 am. I just finished a paper for my strategic intelligence class. It's not what I'd like it to be by a long shot, but it's better than I thought it would be. "Strategic Surprise in Conventional and Asymmetric Warfare" is its handle. Yep. I just e-mailed my Python final to my instructor. I surprised myself by how utterly incapable I was to answer the first question on the final. I finally cobbled together a hack that works, but only because I cheated and didn't implement full functionality. I'll get partial credit. I don't like doing that, but it was really the only way to turn the thing in on time. Sigh.... Luckily, the second question was easy to do and it works the way it should, so I'm hoping I'll get full credit for that one. I have one more assignment, due Tuesday at 5. I don't expect it'll be difficult to finish. So, with my paper due in my professor's mailbox by nine, I'm debating whether to sleep for four hours, turn it in, and come home and nap, or just stay up, turn it in, and come home and nap. I doubt it matters. I am so ready to leave this town it's hardly funny anymore.

Post-CFPin'

I am back in Bloomington, exhausted, happy, missing San Francisco already, and digging in for a long week of final projects and other work. It might take a while to get pictures online, because I'll be so very busy for the next eight or nine days. Look for them the first week of May. Maybe.

I really need to update

I really need to update this thing. Pending, pending.

No-one nowhere washed up baby

My song of the day: Stone Roses, "I Am the Resurrection"

Disappeared

I am science hero. I am ninja....

CFP2002

I've just been awarded a stipend to attend the CFP2002 conference in April in San Francisco. CFP stands for Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, and guests include the attorney general of California, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and science fiction author Bruce Sterling. Topics include constitutional law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, efforts to create a national identity card, restrictions on information in the wake of September 11, hacktivism (hacking in the name of activism--in this case, human rights), intellectual property, and public records versus personal privacy. I'm really excited about this. I can't believe they awarded me money!

Famous!

Very cool. Scroll to the addendum.

VD

So, my clock tells me it's Valentine's Day. I'm hungry and I'm craving chocolate. What's that chemical in chocolate that stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain that love does? Closest I'm coming this Valentine's Day. So I turn to ingredients onhand. Baker's Unsweetened. Ghirardelli cocoa. (Can't spell it; too lazy to look it up.) Milk. Sugar. So, melt up a couple squares of Baker's, stir in a hint of butter, let it all melt. Teaspoon of vanilla extract. Cinammon would be nice now if I had it. A pinch of chili powder will do. Stir stir stir. Oops, getting thick. Back into the micronuker. Pour in some milk and sugar. Stir stir stir stir. Milk enough for a mugfill, stir stir. Heat up. Oops. Boilover. Messy micronuker! It's not perfect, but it's perfectable. I really should tinker around with this; it's damned yummy.

Headspace

I'm in a headspace. I have a weird soup coursing through my veins. Ingredients: Caffeine; Kill Your Boyfriend; "I Wanna Be Your Dog"; Hammett's hardon, hard-boiled Continental Op. I want to tear the roof off the world and fuck God while he sleeps. If I had a tumor, I'd name it Marla.

You'd think

You'd think I'd have better things to do with my Web log than posting personality tests. You'd be wrong.

X-Mass

Got back yesterday after six days in Evansville with family. Still don't have photos online from my London/Paris trip. Should be soon. Today, tomorrow, Sunday--something like that. I also want to get some of those journal entries online, probably in a different space than this weblog (since they're longish). I've picked up a copy editing project that'll help keep me busy during this slow vacation period. It's always really quiet in Bloomington while students are away. I kind of like it, since it's much easier to move about town and get in restaurants and such. On the other hand, most of my friends are away with family and other friends during this time, which means my social life also quiets down substantially. Although with the amount of drinking and late, late nights I have during the school year, a slow week or two is nice. I'm going to update my site design (again) during break. I want to learn the trick of providing one CSS doc for Netscape users, one for IE users, one for the eight or nine people out there on Opera, and one plain-looking thing for people with crappy, outdated browsers. I saw how these pages look on WebTV finally, while I was visiting my aunt on Christmas, and it's ugly. The right-side menus overlap text. I'd like to fix that, somehow, even if it's just so my aunt can read my pages.

Have patience

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer...

-Rainer Maria Rilke
"Letters to a Young Poet," letter four

Life and junk

Yep. It's been a while since I've updated these pages. School, work, my girlfriend, and other pursuits have kept me pretty damned busy. But I finally have new pictures to share, so head over to the Photos pages and have a peek. I'll be adding new pictures again in a few weeks. And I've registered for Spring semester, my last in my master's program. Hard to believe I've registered now for the final time. Ugh. That means hitting the job market in the spring. Moving on is both exciting and scary, but more on that later. I have a paper to write....

Funk

It's been a while since I've updated this. I was exhausted and depressed today. My brain's chemistry, like most people's, ebbs and flows. Just so happens it's ebbing now at a time when I'm already sad about the events of last week and other things that are happening in my life. So, I'm crashing right now, and it's not pleasant. Strange day. I spent most of it in a complete funk, unable to really concentrate on anything. I tried taking a nap this afternoon, but that didn't help either. I think I napped for only about 20 minutes. I finally got the hell out of my apartment for a while and walked downtown for dinner at an Indian restaurant. Yummy. Strange thing there, though: I had my backpack with me and, to keep it out of the way, I placed it on the chair opposite. None of the wait staff seemed to know what to make of that. They'd look at my bag and then at me, quizzically, and then back at the bag. Even other patrons did the same. After stopping at the library and talking to Anne and Shannon, I hoofed it home. On the way, I heard a garage band practicing a crappy cover of "What's the Frequency, Kenneth," of all things.

Swingin'!

Well, I made a couple decisions today. First, I've decided to drop Japanese. The time I spend preparing is time I could be, oh, sleeping or eating. I just can't imagine that I'll catch up and be able to stay caught up given how busy my semester will be. And I had trouble sleeping last night, in part because I was stressed about the class. It's disappointing. I've looked forward to this for a few years and I was really beginning to enjoy my instructors and classmates. But I don't think it's worth the stress, in the long run. My other decision, one I'm happy about, was to join the IU Swing Club this evening. I'll be taking lessons the remainder of the semester and I'm looking forward to it. I think dancing will give me an outlet for stress. We just signed up tonight and watched the experienced folk take the floor, although we did learn a simple Charleston line, which was fun. Next week, East Coast Swing.

Redesigns, etc.

I just finished a relatively major update and overhaul to my site. I changed some of the headline fonts, replaced the background image, tweaked the colors, and added a bunch of new photos. There's new text on virtually every page, or at least changes to existing text, so if you're reading this and you're interested enough, go read through my site. My resume looks okay, but I still need to make some changes to my Course Information page. Just minor stuff, really, but it needs done. Otherwise, Japanese is still a challenge. I've memorized most of the hatagana syllabary now, but only in one direction. That is, I can look at most of the characters and tell you what sound is associated with it. I can't yet really go the other way, and unfortunately, I was quizzed on that this morning. I bombed it. Well, it's only five points and at least I know my weaknesses. I'll study up on that starting today. I'd love to go to the IU Swing Club this evening--learn a few moves, meet some ladies, get more exercise--but I'm not sure I have the time right now.

Updates are pending

Updates are pending. I have new photos to post (once they're developed) and my resume and course listings need an overhaul. It's easy to keep this Web log and the About Dietsch pages updated because they're kinda fun, but the other content is a bit of a drag. Japanese is getting better. I finally feel on an even keel with the rest of the class. We're all making roughly the same mistakes and I'm now neither better nor worse than the rest. This makes me happy, because it means I'm making primarily the same mistakes that new learners commonly make. And I feel less ashamed now. It's rather embarrassing to feel you're the only one in the class who's not keeping up. But I'm tired a lot and I've been depressed lately, so I feel like I've been kicked repeatedly about the head and torso. It'll pass, though, especially as the semester deepens and I get more involved in what's going on. It's funny, but when school's going full swing and I'm constantly meeting new people and trying new things, I usually never know just what's going to happen next. I missed that unpredictability while I was primarily working during the summer.

I don't like Monday's

On Monday, I wrote: "Monday's are rather light for me..." I am a copy editor. I know you never form plurals by adding an apostrophe and an s. Stupid, stupid, stupid... And that "little bastard" has turned out to be a rather decent fellow. Live and learn or whatever.

Fall semester, 2001

Today was the first day of fall semester. Monday's are rather light for me, with only my Japanese class in the morning and nothing after that. So I went to Japanese this morning, thinking, "Well, this'll be a joy. Dietsch and a roomful of freshmen and sophomores. It'll be like babysitting." I entered the room, feeling rather smug, like I'm older than you, I'm smarter than you, and by God, I'm better than all of you. I took a seat. The instructor handed out index cards and asked us to provide name, e-mail address, and a little bit about what we already know about Japan. I glanced over at the kid sitting to my left. I noticed that he was answering question 3 in Japanese, the little bastard. "Great," I thought. "First day, and I'm already out of my element." We had a typical first day lesson--learning how to introduce yourself and meet a new person in this language. If this were computer programming, we'd have done "Hello world!" today. But I was still a little overwhelmed. We learned several phrases in quick succession and I was having trouble remembering one even before learning the next. When it came time for practice, I needed the "kids" to remind of the phrases. I was a little embarrassed. Perhaps I shouldn't have underestimated them. But I did eventually pick up all the phrases. Language ability does decline as you age, so I'm sure their youth is an advantage to them. I'm hoping I won't have to struggle through this class, but I'm prepared to work hard for it. I guess we'll see.

Explodo!

I had a frightening thing happen today. I was driving up to Indianapolis for our monthly movie night. (I meet several former colleagues once a month and tonight was the night.) It was around 4:45 or so and I was going to do a bit of shopping beforehand. I was on the south side of Indy on 465, in the left lane (of three lanes), doing about 70mph. I realized suddenly that I was in the blind spot of the driver of the pickup in the next lane, so I began to accelerate past him. At the same moment, he decided it was time to pass the car in front of him, so he began to move into my lane. Without glancing over his left shoulder to make sure it was clear. In rush hour traffic. Whether he was fixing his hair, changing radio stations, eating a Big Mac, talking on his cell phone, or yanking his chicken, I'll never know, but I do know what the bastard wasn't doing--paying attention to traffic. I noticed the truck moving in my direction and thought for a nanosecond--what the hell am I going to do now? I glanced over, saw the shoulder was empty, and checked all around me to make sure I could go there. I pulled onto the shoulder to get out of his way, but I then saw, about a hundred feet in front of me, a large blown-out semi truck tire, directly in my path. The pickup driver hadn't yet clued into what was happening and was running next to me in the left lane, so I had no choice but to hit the tire. In the split second I had to think, I had to make a decision--namely, how do I hit the tire? It's funny how people react in these situations. It's usually either total panic or complete lucidity. The moment completely decompressed in my mind, like the seconds were stretching into hours. I actually had the time in only a few seconds to consider all options. My choice was to straddle it. I knew if I hit it with a wheel, I'd risk blowing out my own tire or, worst-case scenario, flipping my car over. Even a blowout would very likely cause me to lose control at the speed I was driving, so straddling it and letting the tire go underneath the car seemed the only semi-smart choice. So, I hit the tire. I heard a series of loud bumps and scraping noises and felt my car vibrate all to hell. As the back of my car passed over the tire, I glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw the tire literally explode behind me, sending shards of rubber and steel-belt up into the air and then down onto the interstate. At this point, the pickup driver finally realized that something was happening. He moved into the center lane and slowed down rather dramatically. I swear to you his speed dropped by about 10 to 15mph, because he disappeared from my view. I think during the three to four seconds in which this all occurred, he realized what had happened. I pulled back onto the highway and gradually made my way to the right lane. I considered pulling off the road, but I decided that stopping on the highway at that time of day would be the stupidest move possible. I thought about leaving the road altogether, but I wasn't sure where to stop or what to do. I continued on the highway. I watched my gauges and lights carefully and paid very close attention to steering, acceleration, and braking. Somehow, everything was fine. I stayed on the road. Finally, on the east side of town, it dawned on me that the Saturn dealer in Fishers (the far northeast corner of the Indy metro area) would still be open. Even though my car seemed fine, having it checked out by someone very familiar with my car seemed smart. But it was rush hour. I-69 was backed up onto 465, with traffic at a standstill. I got off on Allisonville Road and drove to the Castleton Arts movie theater, where I knew I'd find either Dave or Dione, both friends of mine. At this point, it was about 5:20. I went in, used the bathroom, and asked Scott at the box office for the phone. I called the Saturn dealer and learned they were closing at 6, so I booked out of there without saying anything to Dione, who I assume was upstairs. I was so shaken up I couldn't speak clearly to Scott or the Saturn guy, but I still managed to get to the dealership. The Saturn mechanic said there were problems with the heat shield and air deflector and a few other things underneath. The car's drivable, but he urged me to fix it within a week. So tomorrow, I'll call my insurance and figure out where to go next. It's an unreal thought and pardon the melodrama, but I honestly believe I nearly died today. I can't fathom that the damage to my car was so minor and the damage to my body was nonexistent, but just inches in one direction or the other and one of my front wheels would have hit that tire and I'm not sure what would have happened. I'm taking tomorrow (today, really) off. No chapters to edit, no housework, no billpaying, no worrying about the coming semester, nothing. I'm going for a bike ride and I'm going to read a while and I'm going to have dinner and wine with my friends here. Oh, and call my mom. Sorry for keeping all of you so long, but I had to get this off my chest. It scared the hell out of me.

Soopaman and family

So last weekend, I was in Evansville visiting my family, which is almost always the stuff of high drama, gnashing of teeth, and quickened pulses. This time, though, everyone seemed really mellow, including me, which was good. My nephew Jake, who will be four in a month, ran around my sister's living room with one hand tucked behind his back and the other extended over his head. He kept exclaiming, "Up, up, and away!" Later, as I was reading the comics anthology Bizarro Comics, Jake cuddled up next to me and said, "Soopaman? Where Soopaman?" My aunt called while I was visiting. She told me that she had seen my Web site and really liked it. "It's the first Web site I've ever seen!" she informed me. Huh! That's an interesting honor, and I find it strangely flattering.

Chocolate jones

Came home last night from my normal evening pursuits of yelling at old women and pouring red dye over children and I realized I was jonesin'. You know. You know exactly what I mean--that unquenchable and perverse craving for chocolate that you can feel deep into the marrow of your shin bones. Looked around. Well, not really anything here that's handy. Well....except for these squares of Bakers chocolate, but they're unsweetened. Ahhhh, but I do have sugar. So I began experimenting, mixing melted chocolate with sugar and powdered cocoa and a little milk and some butter. You have to understand something about me. I like chocolate that tastes as dark and rich as a cup of black coffee. The dark chocolate that you can buy in stores is still too sweet and benign. I want my chocolate robust and complex. First thing I learned from this recipe is just how generic-tasting Bakers is. Made by Kraft, so you know it's aimed at the everyday consumer. If I'm going to work with this, I'm going to need a gourmet chocolate. But here's a recipe I made up tonight that seemed pretty good. Couple squares of Bakers, about a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a splash of milk, a tablespoon of butter, two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa, and three tablespoons of sugar. I placed all that into the microwave and nuked it until the chocolate melted. Stirred it all together, let it cool, and voila. Piece of piss, as a British writer acquaintance of mine would say.

Richard Thompson

I just got back from seeing Richard Thompson. Amazing performance, just as I'd hoped. He played, solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, for nearly two hours, including three encores. Song selections spanned most of his career, which I guess isn't surprising, since he's touring to support a best-of collection. He performed, among others, For Shame of Doing Wrong, Shoot Out the Lights, Did She Jump or Was She Pushed, Dimming of the Day, Wall of Death, Beeswing, Dry My Tears and Move On, King of Bohemia, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Bathsheba Smiles, Persuasion (which he co-wrote with Tim Finn), and Valerie. He kept up a great patter with the crowd between songs and even, after mentioning Bloomington-son Hoagy Carmichael, sang a few bars of Stardust. After explaining a controversy in which Kenny G digitally inserted his own solos into an old Louis Armstrong recording, he performed a brutally hilarious tirade against ol' Kenny. During one encore, as he was performing Wall of Death, he exclaimed "Bob Dylan is 60!" and launched into an interesting tour of Dylan's career, singing snippets and lines from a variety of Dylan's songs. Thompson was witty and even charming and he kept the crowd engaged throughout the show. Many of his songs were note-perfect, which has to be hard to do, even when they're performed so often. He's either an excellent showman or very much in love with what he does, because his enthusiasm and joy were evident throughout the show. I continue to be amazed by people who've never even heard of him, let alone listened to his music. You'd think in a college town, people would know his music better. Now, granted, in looking at his U.S. tour schedule for this year, it truly is amazing that he'd play a small market like Bloomington, even with its college population. Most of his shows are in much larger cities. But still, I ask my friends if they know of him and over and again, I hear "no." I'm about to ready to smack the next person who says so. But in the end, it really is their loss. They're missing out on one of the finest performers and songwriters alive today.