Post-apocalypse

The SoHo Apple Store is housed in a former post office giving it the coolest exterior of those I've seen (tho' I'm still voting for the Michigan Ave. Apple Store in Chicago for best evah). The wireless is also free ... I'm blogging this during a lecture on OS X which makes me feel like a bad student.




Yesterday, Steve and I drove down to Baltimore to catch the Yankees at Camden with Anna, Lauren and LEG. During my debate days, I drove up and down I-95 oodles of times, en route to Hopkins, UMBC, Georgetown and so on. Whenever we'd pass over into Maryland from Delaware, we'd see signs for the Decoy Museum in historic Havre de Grace. Many, many jokes about it being a carved, wooden museum.




Not so! Steve and I stopped by, and tho' it was closed, we could easily see the many cases of 19th century duck decoys. Seriously. I'm not sure what's going on in historic Havre de Grace, but, man, they *hate* ducks. There are poems on pedestals about tricking ducks into going after the decoys.

The hunter's ploy has worked.

For it was not real canvasbacks that lured the ducks, but well crafted decoys.

When we reached Baltimore, we heard that there were tornado warnings in surrounding counties. Giant, black thunderheads gathered over Camden and during the 2nd inning it began to pour.




I'd realized recently that I hadn't seen a serious thunderstorm in many years; I think there's been lightning once in SF in 4 years.




After last night, I've seen it all.




Saucer-sized raindrops forced our retreat to the top railing of the upper deck. That's when horizon-wide forks of lightning erupted over downtown Baltimore and thunderclaps rocked the interior of the stadium. Hearing thunder reverb off of the seats of a baseball stadium is quite the harrowing experience.



But not as freaky as noticing that the sky had turned green. As every midwesterner knows, green sky = windy death. I was seriously figuring how I could use the straps of my backback to lash myself to the handrails in case a tornado touched down on homeplate when we realized that the strange sky was due to the setting sun.



The storm passed, the grounds crew drained the 3 feet of water from the visitors' dugout, and the sun set spectacularly as the Yanks went on to win behind a monster A-Rod homer.

Spin

This evening Steve and I saw Jehane Noujaim's new documentary, Control Room. Noujaim first flick was Startup.com, a big favorite of mine. (I find myself quoting "But I wanna name it renderuntocaesar.com" a bit too often around the office.)



Control Room is signficantly better. It documents the media coverage of the current war in Iraq from within Al Jeezera's headquarters and the US CentCom in Qatar. It's an amazing illustration of one of Robert McNamara's points in Fog of War - the need to empathize with the enemy. The US military repeatedly and continually refuses to understand why Arabs across the Middle East would react with horror to the death of civilians at US hands ... regardless of the brutality of Saddam.



That being said, there is an amazing scene in which a marine media officer reflects on how he felt at seeing images of the war's brutality. And another when an Al Jeezera correspondant confidently declares that he believes completely in the US Constitution and the American people to take it upon themselves to stop what it happening to Iraq.



Damn.



In the spirit of proving him right, I think Rummy's on the way out. There's no way he can survive Chalabi being turned out as an Iranian spy. Steve and I were discussing who should be his replacement and we decided on McNamara. Basically, he's on this redemption kick anyway ... might as well give him his shot at pulling us out of this generation's Vietnam, caused by another Texan president.

Parkwire

My tour of famous, public WiFi hotspots continues ... Today's stop: Bryant Park.



This is a swell fusion of old and new. Bryant Park feels like an old world public commons - largely because it is. On my left, the Great Lawn stretches out to New York Public Library. On my right, 41st stretches out to Times Square. And in the middle ... hot & free WiFi. With tons of available tables upon which to perch your 'puter.



Good work Bryant Park. Someone needs to do this for Dolores Park back home.

Reuned

And they say people in New York aren't friendly. I'd been here only a couple hours and found myself entrenched with a ton of former debate pals ... folks visiting from DC, others who had just gotten here, some I hadn't seen in 5 years. Good timing.



Incidently, things in the ole' debate world have taken a turn for the preposterous. Which is saying something because it is collegiate debate afterall. But while we may have been an astonishing group of obsessive dorks, no one ever created a debate fantasy draft.



This is sort of like if you've got a group of dorkfriends with whom you play Dungeon & Dragons, and all of a sudden they start getting into LARPing.



Also I hear that there was a musical.



Seriously.

How high's the water, mama?

Things are getting pretty dire over at my elementary alma mater. Mom reports from the front:

We are deeper in the stuff than we thought. The sewer collapsed and permits are needed to repair it. No school for us today.

A clear sign that I've been playing way too much SimCity 4 - my first reaction was to reach for the public utilities slider.

After 

Before 

Blogs save my day

I've been having this intermittent problem with my 15" PowerBook where it won't wake from sleep. I've asked various experts but been completely unable to figure it out.



Today I was clicking through Jason Sutter's blogroll and went to read Daring Fireball, which I check out infrequently. Basically, there're a whole host of sites I check out every couple weeks - these are the links in blogrolls of the sites in my blogroll.



Anyway, DF has a post about how he had this problem with his Mac and when he wrote it up, he wrote it not as a blog post for his blog readership, but for Google. "Or, more specifically, for people using search engines to find an answer to the same problems I had."



That's savvy thinking and the sort of thing that makes working at Google so cool. Folks understand how they can make the product better without even using the product.



But what's amazingly hot is that the problem he's describing is the freaking Mac-won't wake-up trouble I've been having for the last 3 months! And now it's hypothetically fixed (altho' if having a custom date format is what threw off the energy management thus Rip Van Winkling my Mac, that's odd).



And, of course, I found it not because of Google, but because of blogs!



And thus I learned why we were acquired.

Friday to Friday

So ... it's weird. I've got, like, free time now.



Last Friday, my mom came in from St. Lu and graciously sat around BloggerHQ as we sanity checked the Blogger release candidate. 'Happy Mother's Day, Mom! Wanna execute some test plans?'

A side story here. My mom enters the bloggerarium and there's a bunch of dudes hanging around. You know, the team. I say, "Hey guys, this is my mom - Mom these are the guys. Uh ... we also have some ladies but just not right here."



Chris Wetherdeal: "Yeah, it's a regular sausage factory up in here."



Nice!

Had a great weekend with Mom - nearly distracted from thinking about work obsessively ... but you know, not entirely. Sunday happens. Sunday is amazing! And I've spent the whole of this week in some kind of bouillabaisse of stressed, joyful amazement.



And now things are creeping back to normal. It's no longer about the giant huge thing that's left to be done. So I need to find a hobby or something. I'm not sure if blogging counts.



Luckily, I'm going on vacation week after next. A week in NYC with side trips to various points on the eastern seaboard. I'm looking forward to catching up with old friends, both lanky and ffoggy. And just breaking away from the set of activities that, tho' immensely satisfying from a personal and professional perspective, have completely defined my life for the past little while.

Baseball Dork

I used to keep score when I went to ballgames.



Now I'm blogging from one.



I've somehow become an even bigger dork at the ballpark.



Luckily, I'm not alone.