Oh, and I also came across this map, which is... like... the mother of all subway/rail maps for NYC.

Worth having.

I’m a big one for the arcane lore of New York. I have a fascination for all the bridges, tunnels and infrastructure making the city go. Lots of people use these structures every day but, they are amazing and often taken for granted.

I’ve been taking the Times Square shuttle train for years and I always wondered about the hint of a platform you could see from the southern most track (track 1) when you get off at Grand Central. What was it for? Is it something used for track maintenance? Did it ever service passengers?

I found the answer here.

Then, when I would take the train up from 14th Street station, I would always wonder about the strange mirrored windows alongside the local track. Were there rooms back there? Storage perhaps?

I found the answer to that here.

Bah! Humbug! (;>)

More on Christmas.

So, the weeks have really been flying by I’ve been trying to keep up with the crush of things that have to happen at the end of every year. There’s cards, shopping, all these odds and ends.

I’ve been out twice now (shopping that is) and I’ve found myself pretty lucky. I imagine it’s because of when I’ve been going but, I haven’t suffered through the horrid crush I dread in the stores each year.

Yesterday, I made a trek out to the local mega mall.

It was downright easy!

I couldn’t believe it. I even took the plunge and got a Christmas tree (not so much for me as for the 80 year old child). I had to stop off at Home Depot (which was eerily empty) when they made an announcement there was a sale on trees.

So, I went out to the garden center and walked among the specimens.

Like I said, Home Depot was strangely empty - even though it was only 5pm, it seemed as if it were very late at night as there weren’t any clerks around and the store didn’t have too many customers either.

So, I’m out in the chilly air in the garden center and there’s another person or two looking around at the trees also. Everyone has this bewildered look because there aren’t any clerks around to help them.

Were all eyeing the trees trying to figure out which ones are still worthy candidates (of which there seemed to be quite a few). It’s dark and the area is brightly lit but still deserted and fenced in from the parking lot. There’s still evidence of the last couple of snowstorms and you have to watch your footing.

So, it doesn’t look like anyone is going to come out soon.

I find a tree I like. Now, comes the hard part of getting the thing tied up and ready to get it crammed into my car (which really isn’t built for these kinds of things).

My choice has a knobby trunk, far too long to be of use. I can take it home like this but, really it’ll just be work having to get a jigsaw out of the garage and cut the thing down – never mind the mess. I’m lifting the thing over my head and as I bring it towards the shopping cart I’ve laden down with bags of rock salt (in preparation for our next blizzard), I spy a table with tools on it.

Yes, by god! There’s actually a working electric chainsaw, plugged in resting atop this table (there are times I’m happy I don’t have kids or have anyone else’s kids to keep an eye on). So, I lay my tree on the table and make short work of the offending trunk with the convenient saw.

I’ve always been slightly intimidated by these things (chainsaws) but, the saw moves through the tree like a hot knife through warm butter. After I finish the cut, I push the tree through the cylinder with the mesh plastic netting and I’ve got this nice bundled up tree ready for my car trunk.

There’s a customer or two that comes out into the garden center and can’t figure out if I work there or not and is too intimidated to ask (I guess it’s the chainsaw).

The whole thing was a bit odd though. I never expected to find a self serve chainsaw at a Home Depot.

So, Christmas is less than a week away...

Yesterday as I was driving through town, I passed this manger thing they have set up off on the side of a busy intersection (in front of a school). It was the usual plastic (I think) statues of the Baybee Jesus (yes, there’s a musical cadence for that phrase hence the intentional misspelling), various livestock, a wise man or two and the happy couple (I’ll probably burn in hell for describing the thing in such a heretic fashion, one more sin to atone for on the big pile) all happy to be in the stall.

So, as I drove by it the thought occurred to me, how would this affect me if I were Jewish? Muslim? Buddhist? Hindu?

It was on city property... it wasn’t something a church had up.

I’m a little numb to the whole thing — I mean they put up damn Christmas lights right after Halloween now — I find it somewhat innocuous but, there is supposed to be a separation of church and state in this country and there isn’t supposed to be any kind of “state religion.”

So, the thought was how would I feel if I weren’t a member of the group celebrating this festival. Would I feel like an outsider? Would I be alienated? Would I find it offensive to have to confront this everywhere I turned?

I couldn’t answer the question.

It just made me think about all the other holidays other religions celebrate and wonder why they don’t get the same play. There’s a lot of lip service about equality and political correctness in our country but, then you see a manger on city property and you realize not everything is quite the way it’s made out to be.

You move out of your house and then years later you drive by to look at what has become of it after you’ve left and find yourself shocked.

About five years ago, I was living among the future millionaires.

Yep.

Hard to believe but, I hob-knobbed with the Future Ugly Cash-rich Kids of the new millennium. Lots of money, lots of brilliant ideas, the future was happening all around us, time to get in on the ground floor and make tons of cash and be set for the rest of your life.

Well, that’s what they would’ve had you believe.

So, blue-collar me is at this place where the visionaries have looked down the road and they see the future is the internet. Overnight (seemingly) this quiet, kinda nice place that was dedicated to doing things really, really well, grew. Lots of new people, big expansion, new name for the company, all these resources focused into this bold new direction.

Money wasn’t the object, new furniture, stationery, do dads with the company logo, more offices, more people... more, more, more. Everything had to happen fast!

Big contest to name the new beast, lots of resources devoted to branding the new company, lots of buzzwords being thrown around.

I’d been there a fairly long time at this point, always as a freelancer but, predating all but a few people. I also kept a fairly low profile, I knew who was in charge and as long as my bill got paid and the flow of work coming my way was steady, there was no reason to complain.

Sure, there was attitude you had to deal with. The future millionaires were usually under 30, generally they viewed the department I worked in as unnecessary (even archaic) and the contempt they held for “print” was easy to see. Theirs was a bold new world! Interactivity! The online experience! Thousands! Nay, millions, treading the hallways of their electronic domain, a virtual world where they were the kings!

Well, it was in that spirit they decided to walk away from the things they had done so well for so long. The things that made the company successful to begin with. They looked at “the old way” of doing things and figured it was going the way of the dinosaur. They shut down the “print” area of the company and a year later...

...they were out of business (or fairly close to it).

What happened to the electronic castles that they built?

In each instance someone else moved into the ruins, I guess it’s just the final irony of the whole fiasco.

Look here (nuforia)...

and here (bma)

All those millions and no one cared about the retaining the domains.

“The Cubs fans’ sorrow is worth more than the Red Sox fans’ sorrow.”

The saga of the Bartman and the agony of Cubs fans over their team’s loss in the playoffs comes to a close, another one of those stories sure to become part of the mystique that is baseball lore.

Awhile back (around Thanksgiving I think), I was going to write about the holidays. Holidays don’t seem as important anymore as they once were to me.

I don’t mean to sound Grinch-like.

What I’m trying to say is that as an adult, the biggest thing to note about the holidays is time off from work. You are able to enjoy an extended period away from work instead of the all too brief punctuation a weekend usually brings.

Right around the time you’re starting to feel good again, it’s time to go back to work.

Since I’ve been freelancing the last couple of years, the impact of the holidays has lessened considerable, being a freelancer is akin to operating your own business in the sense you never really have a day off — more a day you’re not working and bringing in income.

There are times when you are insanely busy and times when it seems you’ll never work again — everyone who has derived their income from freelancing will know what I’m talking about, the desperation of not knowing how long the next gig will last or when it will come and trying to drum up as much business as you can when it is slow.

It used to be, people who choose to take a staff job would do it because they were opting for more security but, talking to the people I know in staff positions they seem just as desperate, never knowing when the axe will fall and they’ll be downsized out of their current job.

Maybe it’s just me but, it doesn’t seem to be more secure being on staff than it is freelancing anymore and at least being a freelancer you know where you stand.

IBM had informed its managers in mid-October of the plan to replace workers at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut; Poughkeepsie, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; and Boulder, Colorado...Some workers would be informed by the end of January, after which they would be expected to train a foreign replacement in the United States for several weeks, the Wall Street Journal said.

In conversations with friends lamenting on the current state of the American worker, I have repeatedly observed that two decades ago, a time in which manufacturing was moving out of the Northeast, workers found themselves in competition with cheaper laborers in other parts of the US (mainly the south - Tennessee or Texas).

NAFTA put Americans in competition with cheaper labor in Mexico (this was the underlying story to Michael Moore’s first documentary, Roger and Me).

Today, we (Americans and ironically, Mexicans) are now in competition with cheaper labor in Asia (China and India).

The question is of course, how low can you go?

Also, without good paying jobs, who will buy all these goods and services? The dilemma of capitalism in the new millennium.

I found this interesting treatise on capitalism, it’s downloadable as an e-book in pdf form and worth reading just to see if you don’t agree with a lot of what its author writes.

Back in ’95 I was a Yankee fan, a pretty big one (ask my friends). George had been banned from baseball for a couple of years (thank you Howie Spira) and Gene Michael and Buck Showalter were free to do their jobs to the best of their ability and as a result, the Yankees actually got better, had a bunch of home grown stars and wound up in the playoffs that year (for the first time in a long time).

Well, George came back, Don Mattingly was unceremoniously shown the door, Buck Showalter was let go (pointedly), Randy Velarde left, Mike Stanley left, it was frustrating, a step backwards to the days when George would meddle and make it hard to be a Yankee fan.

Gene Michael had done his work though and with a core of Paul O’Neil, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez (who I never really liked for replacing Mattingly) the Yankees became winners.

George is one of those grass is always greener guys, the other teams’ players always look better to him (that’s why the Yankees went out and got Tino Martinez after Seattle came from behind to beat them in the playoffs). Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter are Yankees through and through.

So was Andy Petite.

As I said in an earlier post, I had salivated over the Mets possibly getting Petite. He’s been a good pitcher throughout his career and he’s still a young guy (only 31). He keeps his mouth shut, works hard and at the end of the season always puts up some respectable numbers. You really couldn’t ask for more out of a pitcher and if I were a GM I wouldn’t mind having a staff of guys like that - I don’t need crybaby millionaires bemoaning their lot in life.

Well, Dandy Andy is gone now and nobody looks worse than old meddling George. Kevin Brown is 8 years older, right handed and gets $15 million per year for what has proven to be a very fragile body.

Makes me glad to be a Mets fan.

The only thing that could possibly make it worse would be if Andy can convince his pal (the despicable) Roger to pitch for the hometown team. All of a sudden the Astros wind up with a deep rotation.

Thanks George.

Wow, you look up and a whole week has gone by. I guess that’s a good sign.

So, this week I taught again.

What?!?! (you say)

Yes, last week and this week I was the substitute teacher for my friend Paul who has been teaching at a high school over on the West Side. Paul recovering from back surgery (and doing nicely, thank you very much) asked if I would take his place during his convalescence.

Know what?

It was a lot of fun! Although I would never have imagined me being responsible for the development of young minds — kind of a scary thought! (:>)

Well, I set a new personal best.

I got the driveway done in just under 3 hours. Considering how much snow there was, this was no small feat. After dealing with the driveway for over a decade now, I have a system (which will make the people who know me smile to themselves) – I start at the bottom and work my way up.

The house is on a street with a double yellow and we get lots more traffic than we probably should, shoveling down at the bottom is always dangerous because of all the idiots driving SUVs who believe four wheel drive will somehow compensate for slippery driving conditions. It’s amazing to see people whizzing by.

Anyway, since the street is a busy one, we are fortunate in that the plows go by regularly and the street was clean and passable today (if somewhat narrower). The flip side to this is we get plowed a lot. Bad because the driveway is wide and all the repeated plowing becomes a densely packed mixture of snow, slush and ice. It’s the really heavy stuff that you’ve got to work to get through.

I would’ve held off until tomorrow to shovel, it’s supposed to get warmer and hopefully by the end of the week most of the snow will be gone on its own, I just wanted to put a stop to the annoying ringing of the doorbell by the groups of shovelers roaming the streets looking for Xmas cash. It wasn’t even noon and the doorbell had been rung twice, nevermind the snow was still coming down lightly this morning.

I didn’t have to be anywhere and it was a Sunday anyway so, I figured I’d get around to clearing the driveway... eventually. Then, the more I thought about it, I realized people were desperate to get out there.

It just struck me odd everyone would be in a rush to go out - holiday shopping and the like I guess.

Then I got to thinking about how it was a commentary on the pace people live their lives nowadays - in that people always have to be on the go, go, go. When I was a kid, if we had a snowstorm like this, it would’ve shut things down for a few days. Now, with Doppler Radar, Computer Modeling and Satellite Photography they do a much better job of predicting where, when and how much snow we’ll get.

It gives one a great deal of respect for Tiros 1.

I didn’t want to let this slide by without notice...



Oh, how they must have teased Jeffrey. Tall and gangly, with the last name of Hyman, you know he had to get more than his fair share of teasing all through school.

It never stopped him though. He died at a young age and a few weeks back they finally got around to memorializing him by naming a street here in Manhattan after him.

It’s enough to make a mom proud.

So, as a consequence of the blizzard I’m stuck in the house. I could’ve been in the city this weekend but, truthfully if I had it probably wouldn’t have been good for the 80 year old I babysit.

I’m still working very hard on removing the mess around this place - think of it as my own personal urban renewal project.

Yesterday, I finally pulled the bum drive out of the laptop and put the new one in. I also was determined to take the plunge and install Jaguar onto the laptop.

Now, there’s one more thing I hate besides snow.

I got the thing formatted and partitioned, got OS X installed (after only one scary false start) and now I can’t seem to get my external drives to come up (which of course is where I had backed up everything before the previous internal had crashed).

OS X has a nice chess program, a great screen saver and lots of other cool little bells and whistles in the finder but, I’m more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy (more and more of one with each passing year if you get my meaning) and right now I’m just frustrated to hell by it.

It didn’t help that all the original Powerbook discs only had 9.0 on them and OS X won’t run classic before 9.1. I’m downloaded an 82mb updater right now - a charming seven hour download.

At least now I have the time now to shovel the driveway.

Did I say how much I hated the snow?

I’ll say it again... I hate the f**king snow!

"What happens if it's actually grandma or little Timmy's computer sending out the spam?"

You’ve really got to love people who reference “Grandma” or “little Timmy” when they’re talking about something. I figure if “little Timmy” gets caught up in the anti spam dragnet, Lassie will come to the rescue and save him.

I hate the cold.

It’s not like I go out a lot and it’s not like I would go out more in warmer weather (but I would probably). I just hate the cold.

We got the first snow of the season around here yesterday. It wasn’t anything bad, just a bit of a dusting — kind of a portent of things to come. Living in the ’burbs or the country you have a decidedly different view of winter than city folk. City folk live in apartments (or condos or coops) so when it snows, they get their galoshes out and maybe grumble about trudging through the mini lakes that form at every street corner.

But... they don’t shovel.

“Oh, the snow is so pretty!”

“Oh, isn’t winter nice!”

F**k that.

Every year winter comes and I’m faced with the reminder of how out of shape I’ve gotten as I labor getting the driveway clear of the stuff. Our driveway is sunken, meaning there is a 3 foot wall on either side of it so, shoveling becomes one of these things where you aren’t just pushing snow out of the way as much as you’re digging a ditch about 30' wide by 60' long.

If it’s only an inch or two it’s about a half hour. Anything above four inches and you’re talking a serious workout. Last winter there were a couple of times where we got about 8 inches – that’s between four and five hours worth of shoveling. You can’t really have someone come and plow the driveway because of the way it’s set up and having someone come and shovel it is just as much a pain because you’d still have to wait for them to get to you.

The old guy is 80 and when it snows just figures he isn’t going to sit in the house and wait for things to clear up no, let’s get out there and go driving. Anyway, you can’t leave it in case he does need to get out so, it has to be done. Before work, before anything really. Everytime it snows, the driveway just has to be cleared.

Last year I was working most of the winter and a couple of times I just wasn’t really up for shoveling for four hours and then hopping on a train for another two just to get in and sit at a desk when I could just as well telecommute.

You remember telecommuting? It’s that thing that was supposed to cut down on rush hour traffic and make things so much easier for everyone. Never really seemed to take in quite the big way people were predicting, did it?

Nope, nothing kind of beats having the boss be able to stare at you all day just to make sure you’re working, does it now?

I digress.

So, we got snow and there was wind and it was cold and I didn’t go out for the day (except to bring down the garbage and bring in the paper). All day long I kept wishing I could close my eyes and it would be late March or April.

Okay, I’ll admit I’m hooked. I watched the first ten minutes of Celebrity Poker Showdown, that’s all it took (this from the guy who looks forward to the family Poker games on the holidays).

I caught this on MTV while I was flipping channels. I hope it’s a parody because if it isn’t, it’s probably one of the worst videos done in a long time - it could rival Spinal Tap.

Why China is stopping the manufacture of these cars:

"That's just the way it is," said Liu, who wouldn't give his full name. "These cars sell at too low a price to be profitable. There's a lot of cost involved in making them, since they require a lot of hand work."

Another marker of my youth vanishing into the mists of memory.