Thursday, May 25, 2006

Grand Central Terminal

I had a very short post-work amble today (my leg, which was mostly recovered in early May, didn't deal well with all the exploring I've been trying to do). I walked through Bryant Park, then headed over to Grand Central Market even though I was stuffed from dinner. I love walking through the Market, and this time I stopped at the chocolate stop. I was thinking of buying some salad as well, but I was afraid it would go bad before I'd eaten it. Instead, I just admired all the veggies and cheeses and fish. Yummy just to look at.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Mats

I took two pictures today that I wanted to post to flickr, but I sadly left the cable that connects my camera to my ibook back in NJ. Ack. If only my camera had bluetooth or wifi! One was of the Empire State Building on my walk to work this morning. I was standing out on the edge of 5th Avenue waiting for a break in the cars so that I could jaywalk across, and I looked up, and noticed it was really nicely lit by morning sunlight. On my tiny preview screen it looks like a nice photo, but it's stuck on the camera until I get ahold of my cable again. And I'm really seriously thinking about getting EVDO. I need to do a little more research on it, and try to figure out if it works out in northern NJ. My GSM cellphone doesn't work too well out there, so coverage might be pretty spotty.

I found a blogpost on how to cut mats for your artwork today. It's a great, clear guide. It also gave me flashbacks to Jewett at 4 AM the night before a project was due, attempting to cut my own mats. I don't know how I graduated with all my fingers attached, because exhausted college students and mat cutters are a bad mix. I usually prefer to buy pre-cut mats from Target these days.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Quotable Geeks

I collected a few goofy emails and quotes over my years at amazon, and here are some of my sharable favorites. There are a few which I love more, but I can't really post here. If you know me, you know which ones they are anyway. So...

"I don't think my ego has ever been more bruised. Imagine, being mocked by developers. Shouldn't I be taking your lunch money?" --A non-technical good friend, circa 2001ish

"Correct. The first set of numbers is an order id. Walk softly over the rice paper Grasshopper." --Alan

"The Fantastic Four is such a rip off of The Incredibles!" --Jonathan

Jon: "So this is SOL?" James: "Give or take."

John: "Let's reinvent the wheel." Jon: "Our wheels have to be upside down."

"Good morning Japan!" --David, 3:24 PM JST

"Let's replace the working software with Folgers Crystals!" --Scott

(after my friend's dog, Bandon, ran away...) "Thanks for all who helped look for Bandon. FWIW, he was where we suspected: smoking a cigarette, playing poker in the basement of the parking garage." --Greg

books

One of the things that I want to do when I get back to NJ is to ask my grandpa the name of the ship that he was on during WWII. Kicked off by finally reading a few more of my books on Bletchley Park (I've been mildly obsessed with it since college), I've been tearing through a bunch of WWII history books. In the last few days I've finished An Army at Dawn, The Liberation of Paris, Enigma: Battle for the Code, Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, Codebreaker's Victory and Finest Hour. The Liberation of Paris I turned up in a used bookstore up on Capitol Hill, and read a few pages of it standing in the stacks. It's a very quick read- I think it took me all of 4 hours, with breaks, to go through it.

I also have Combined Fleet Decoded here, it's next on my list (and From Fish to Colussus on my amazon wishlist, which I might end up buying myself). Out of all of these, An Army at Dawn and The Liberation of Paris have been my favorites. An Army at Dawn has its own website and is supposed to be the first of three books on WWII campaigns. Hopefully the next two will be as engaging. The website just says they "will be published in the coming years".