An Apartment Dies, A Ghost Is Born

The past week brought a few surprises.  As many of you may know, RJ's apartment burned down this past week; in fact, it spontaneously combusted, taking with it all of his earthly possessions, but luckily, leaving him 100% intact, which is all that matters.  He has asked if I would mind conducting an interview with him and posting the pictures of the aftermath here, so we will be working on that during the coming days.

I have learned that my stint in Jersey is coming to a close, and next week, I will most likely find myself back down in our nation's capital for a few months.  It will be a nice chance to do some exciting work and be near friends and family.

I've picked up the new Wilco, A Ghost Is Born, which I am now listening to.  In their usual style, it sounds nothing like anything else they've ever done, which is great.  Some of the songs even have a slightly eerie feel to them that gradually becomes more uplifting, but the whole sound is definitely more gentle than they have done in a while. Now playing:  Spiders.  What a cool song. 

In other news, Iraq gained its sovereignty today, two days ahead of schedule, in an attempt to shield the ceremonies from violence.  Good idea, I must say, but in my opinion, this one is far from over.  For an interesting read, check out Sy Hersh's Plan B in this week's issue of the New Yorker for a take on the Israeli-Kurdish alliance and how it could potentially shake things up.

Have to hit the sack....going into the office early for a computer upgrade, then to the client, and a midday doctor visit.  I'm such the busy boy.

10:23:16 PM     Category: Random Musings

Big 'Ol Weekend

I always do this and it makes me furious. I accidently erased my whole entry and have to do it again:

This weekend started off with Jen's Birthday.  For the occasion, we headed into Hoboken to enjoy some Cuban eats at Zafra.  Things started off a little hectic, since we had to wait for a bunch of animals that sat down at 5:00 to eat for four hours and hold up our table for an hour past our reservation time.  Once we were seated though, everything was cool.  The food was awesome, the wine was flowing, and we had lots of great conversation with Mark and Lori and Jen's college friend Jenny and her boyfriend Aaron, who I met for the first time.

Saturday was Wendy and Nick's wedding down by the shore.  I have to say that they had the greatest wedding band I have ever seen (or pretty close to it).  These guys did everything from Sam Cooke to Aretha Franklin to CSNY, Springsteen and Sly and the Family Stone.  The whole thing was one non-stop party. Throw in great people, great food and great weather for a beach wedding, and you have one hell of a good time.  We had so much fun we didn't even take pictures!

Sunday, I rolled down to OB for Dad's Day. I got my dad a P-Touch, partially because he used to have one of those oldschool raised letter label guns, and partially because I just wanted to play with it.  It was great to see everybody and relax with the grill though. 

Overall, the fun weekend made it a little easier to get into  the work funk today.  Now I am pretty wiped out, but it could be because the days are now getting shorter.

News highlights from this past week:

• How Microsoft Lost the API War by Joel Sposky
• Unfarenheit 9/11 by Christopher Hitchens
• The Beastie Boys Sell Out as reported by Slashdot
• Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil runs for office,
• and finally the big enchilada....Iran Declares War on Britain.  (well...almost).

11:22:54 PM     Category: Random Musings

Son Of Stuff Yer Mug

It's been hard to keep up to date. The past couple of weekends, I've been getting a ton of stuff done. I've continued working out and eating right, and the pounds are continuing to come off.  I now fit into so many pairs of pants and shorts that I couldn't even touch a year ago. It's so awesome.  I also painted our bedroom which is now looking pretty snazzy.

Work has been pretty mellow; I've been using the downtime to brush up on performance tuning of my interface application and pick up some C# coding skills.

As Nukes pointed out this week, one of our high-school classmates is reopening a classic local restaurant with a new concept. I hope you can still get your own mug and hang it on the ceiling.

In technology news this week... Microsoft has patented the "To Do" List, a new visual web traffic tracking tool a-la-"The Sims" has been introduced, and some more headway in using SIM cards to track terrorists (watch out T-Mobile users). Thanks Dave and Adam for passing along some good stories.

Last night, I watched Victory, which I hadn't seen in years; I have heard that the guy that did Snatch is doing a remake of it soon.  Tonight, I watched Son of alQaeda and read some more of "The End Of Oil" which is an incredible read if you want to learn about the future of the oil industry and alternative energy sources like hydrogen fuel cells.

Uggh...I'm starting to jump all over the place, probably because the heat has made it so I can not keep a single train of thought.  I'm going to hit the sack.

11:04:55 PM     Category: Random Musings

Nick Berg Story In Today's NY Times

12:40:46 AM     Category: Random Musings

Hornby Rebuttal

Thanks to Fathead Minnow at the IDD for finding this rebuttal to Nick Hornby's piece in Sunday's times. I've yet to hear Selfish **** but, I look forward to it. I'm also looking forward to hearing this new Marah album ; speaking of those guys, I haven't listened to 'Kids in Philly' in a long time, but now I'm suddenly getting an urge to hear "Round Eye Blues".

I just flew in from the gym and boy are my arms tired.

9:43:32 PM     Category: Random Musings

Big Moves Made By Big Player-Haters

I was reading this article in the NY Times today regarding President Bush's speech to the nation last night at the Army War College.  At the end of the article, they mention that the President stated that the children of today's Iraqis would thank us years from now and mention that the president stepped down to shake the hand of Qasim Ghida Kadhim.  I was curious as to who Mr. Kadhim was, and a little investigation showed that he and a number of other individuals were victims of surgical hand removal by Saddam's henchmen.

Apparently someone was looking for coverage of Nick Berg here.  I don't mean to disappoint, but my feelings should be clear: I do not appreciate the fact that his brutal decapitation is not getting a fraction of the coverage that the Iraqi prisoner abuse stories have received.  I think the fact that this story has all but disappeared completely in the matter of two weeks goes to show that there is a major lack of priorities in terms of the news media and their audience, not to mention the fact that I feel that the unbearable climate of anti-Semitism in the world today is contributing to this desire to forget about this incident.  Part of me wishes I could have asked him what the hell he was thinking, going there without any affiliation with an organization that could protect him, but then again, what has stopped thousands of individuals who despise America and all it stands for from coming here while living in safety and security.  I hope that the prosecution of his killers is extremely public and thorough.

In lighter news, Jen and I saw her mom (belated mother's day) on friday, caught a screening of Mean Girls on Saturday (hillarious) and hit Wendy and Nick's shower on Sunday.  I installed the air conditioners on Sunday night since its starting to get pretty dang hot. 

I have decided to declare jihad on my lazy self and get back into my hobbies which I've been neglecting.  I've been back on my bike a couple times this week, picked up the guitar and done a little strummin', and tonight, I'm going to hit the gym before it gets too late (my old pants are big on me again...thank you very much).

7:37:04 PM     Category: Random Musings

A Quick One, While She's Away...

Just a quick one...

Joey's wedding was a lot of fun, most of all because it brought together a bunch of friends that I had not seen in some time.  Gabe even met us out afterwards for a little birthday celebration.  I put up the my pictures and Grynny put up his. 

Last night, Jen and I picked up some really nice flowers to hang from the porch out in front of the house. Next we have to buy some for the little flower boxes that we have out there.  I also plan  on painting the bedroom any day now.  Overall, this place is starting to shape up nicely.

The weather has been gorgeous, and I think I am actually going to sit out and read a bit on our porch and enjoy the breezes while I am still so awake.

Just a couple more minutes of catching up on the good war-monger news clips like this one about the Syria/North Korea connection. 

10:06:28 PM     Category: Friends, Random Musings

A New Week, A New Project and A Wedding

This weekend, I made my second trip to the bowling alley this year when I hit the Madison Lanes disco bowling night with the Resto crew.  All I have to say is...Awesome.  I crushed everyone with a mark in every frame and a final score of 193 and I definitely would have broken 200 had I not psyched myself out.  I think I need to join a league.

I am also proud to say that I dusted off the bike and took a nice ride this weekend, and also hit the gym a couple of times.  The road back to being in shape will be long and it will be hard....but it will be taken.

During the past week, I managed to watch the two Sopranos episodes that aired while we were on vacation. The good thing was that you could watch them independently, and it didn't really have an outcome on the continuity of the story.  After this week's episode, I have to imagine that the next couple of weeks are going to be intense after a couple of fairly tame episodes.

What else?  This past week I caught "21 Grams" and "Big Fish", both amazingly good movies which deserve more than the mention I am prepared to give them right now.

Joey's wedding is this weekend (actually on Gabe's birthday), and we're looking forward to that since we'll be seeing some friends that we haven't seen in a while.

Finally, I started a new project this week at the same client.  It will help my client move from being primarily a wholesaler of product to a direct retail supplier which is pretty darn cool when you think about it.  What's also cool is that I get to beef up some of the stuff we developed during the last project.  This week, we've just spent time doing the designs which I could do without.  Sometimes you just want to jump right in and CODE!  I'm such a dork.

Before I forget, I also want to give one more reason that my current client rocks:  We get advance versions of awesome books months before they come out!  I may have mentioned this before, but it's true.  Today, I am tearing through Mullahs, Merchants and Militants: The Economic Collapse of The Arab World; it's an amazing book that you should read if you are into getting a very thorough and inciteful history and commentary into the economic condition of the middle east. 

Ok...I'm being yelled at to get to sleep.  This is what I get for drinking coffee at night. More tomorrow.

11:59:41 PM     Category: Random Musings