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Whoops.
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Apr. 21st, 2008 @ 01:23 pm
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I saw an interesting article in NYTimes today:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/travel/20rome.html?em&ex=1208923200&en=ff22ef2e83fcb6e0&ei=5087%0A
However, it does contains this doozy:
"floodlit columns of the Octavian Gate, which stood there a century and a half before Christ was born."
Octavian was the name for Augustus, Rome's first Caesar. He died shortly after Christ was born. Either he lived to be over 150 years old, or the times is a bit off in their date.
This BBC article clarifies:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1186394.stm |
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Schlag! Schlag!
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Dec. 3rd, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
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Finally made it to Peter Luger's. Stella has been talking about pretty much since I met her. For those of you not dating a foodie, Peter Luger's has a reputation for being the best steak house in New York. Some restaurateurs, including Morimoto, claim that it is the best restaurant in the city. It's known for great steak, but also for a certain amount of stubbornness. It's in Williamsburg, which is not the easiest place to get to for Manhattanites (actually for pretty much everyone except Williamsburgers). It doesn't accept credit cards, except for the very practical Peter Luger's card, which I am told is so old-fashioned that it doesn't even sport a magnetic strip. The menu is really one item with a few role players. There is a rumor that one can order the lamb chops, but the staff reserves the right to openly mock you.
Despite these eccentricities and the difficulty in obtaining a reservation, I was surprised to find out that Luger's is not at all snooty. It's really an throwback German enclave complete with four foot steins adorning the tudor decor. Also, despite the fact that one must reserve a table exactly thirty days ahead of time, the service is fast and casually attentive. Once you are seated, you can order and have appetizers on the table in minutes. The menu is short, even when the sides are included. The waiters have the menus memorized and only ask if you want a menu as an afterthought.
Getting to the food, the potatoes were decent, the tomatoes and onions appetizers was a testament to the ingredients. Really, none of the sides are much without the steak sauce, which appears in a gravy yacht. All these are just opening acts for the star; the porterhouse steak for two (we ordered four). It really is an amazing steak and a notch above even the best steaks I've had in the city. The center reminded me of a rare slice of ahi tuna. Something about that steak turned me into a steam shovel. I'm not sure how many pieces of 1" x 1" x 3" steak the others. Stella did say she had gorged four, which makes my nine strip take seem truly glutinous. As everyone else panted and claimed they were about to die, I started peaking around for the last remaining prize cuts.
As if 96 oz of red meat weren't enough to bring out the barbarian, the desserts certainly complete the transformation. The waiters bring out a tub of whipped cream before you've even officially ordered dessert (isn't that just a little cocky?). The key lime pie is Steve's Famous, which is sold out of the back of a truck during the Atlantic Antic. It was even more delicious with real whipped cream, which we were informed is called schlag in Germany. The waiter suggested we add some schlag to our kaffes. At first we timidly dropped bits of whipped cream into our coffee. However, with our senses of moderation dwindling to nothing, we quickly began scooping mounds off schlag into our coffees until they looked like ice cream servings. Lou capped the evening by flinging a fist-size ball into his coffee and muttering "more schlag!" in true caveman style. |
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Disgusting
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Dec. 3rd, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
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MNF was just awful. That last touchdown by the Pats was a gift from the zebras. Since when did the NFL become junior high girl's flag football? That pass interference call was a phantom hold. Brady is a good QB, but I bet any third stringer could score if he's given thirty chances at the end zone with that creative officiating. Part of the fault goes on the Ravens who made too many mental mistakes (you get an INT and run 30 yards, maybe try hanging on to it at the end??). Now we have another week of hearing how great Tom Brady is when a second stringer named Boller outplayed him by a substantial margin.
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CavPag
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Nov. 3rd, 2007 @ 01:11 am
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Haven't posted in a very long time. There isn't really time to post at work both because I'm so busy and because it's an open cubicle setup. What's happened lately? Had a Halloween party with the Objectivists + a few of Lou and Nancy's friends. Actually enjoyed dressing up for once. I wanted to do a Roman toga. Thought I would try to invent a whole back story and such, but I guess I was indiscriminate Roman student or senator (I think those were the ones that wore the toga pura). I tried my best to rebuke the chants of "Toga, Toga, Toga" by exclaiming "Laudate Romanos!" One interesting lady asked the group of us what we were celebrating. I dead-panned "Christmas!" What does one say to such a question (on October 28th)?
Right now I'm listening to a Pavoratti CD. Who's is it or when did I get this? No idea. I was thinking the other day, "Boy it would be nice to have a greatest hits of Pavoratti". A few days later I double clicked accidentally in Explorer and I was in the Greatest Hits CD I had wished for. Again neither Stella nor I remember purchasing, much less ripping said CD. I can't even find the physical CD anywhere. It must be the Opera Gnomes.
Anywho, I've listened to Pavarotti's (just realized I've been spelling it wrong) rendition of Pagliacci's "Recitar!" What a great bit of music. Not having much musical training I tend to gravitate toward good music that tells a story. I might not be able to hear Bach invert one measure after another, but even I can tell when a known theme is expressed well in music. The Recitar expreses Pagliacci's anger and sense of betrayal so well you can actually hear when the music sobs. It's just amazing to me that a composer was able to figure out a way to communicate that both clearly and poetically. Despite such naturalistic expression, the song never stops being a great melody.
The reason that I was looking into Pavarotti (and telekenetically materialized the mp3s onto my network drive) is that Stella and I saw CavPag (Caviellara Rustanica followed by Pagliacci, for the uninitiated - e.g. me two weeks ago). Caviellera has one of my favorite pieces of music; its Intermezzo. It also has some great arias, but over all it's an extremely simple theme. It's little more than a revenge theme, with some aspirations toward naturalism. Ultimately, it fails to portray a realistic "slice of life", but then again one could easily argue that opera simply can't lower itself to naturalism (I have yet to meet anyone that sings arias while navel gazing).
Pagliacci is a different matter. Although it is also a revenge theme, it is a densely layered story. It also has naturalistic aspirations, but it asserts them in such a comic manner it's impossible to take them seriously.
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Uh, go Rockies!?
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Oct. 23rd, 2007 @ 10:01 am
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| » Funny |
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Great reference to the Indians in the Sun today:
The Mets traded for Guillermo Mota when he had a 6.21 ERA for Cleveland last year and watched him give up two runs in 18 innings down the stretch, which is a bit like Warren Buffett picking a homeless guy's pocket and finding a $50 bill. That's how it's gone for the Indians.
Mar. 21st, 2007 @ 01:16 pm
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| » 300 |
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I have no intention of seeing the new movie "300", but I've enjoyed reading a few of the reviews. NY Sun's was great, especially for this line: "For the most part its visual style is an unhappy mix of Leni Riefenstahl and Iron Maiden, a ridiculous combination better imagined than seen."
By the way, if anyone is interested in the story, watch the 1962 "The 300 Spartans".
Mar. 9th, 2007 @ 10:29 am
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| » Global Warming Comment |
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This is a post I made on the NYU website about last night's Global Warming Panel:
This comment is another example of what is wrong with the current debate on global warming. This issue should be a scientific discussion based on analysis of observable facts. Instead, it has been reduced to petty ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with science.
When NYU students learn about gravity do they go around taking surveys and investigating Ptolemy's associations with olive oil companies? Or do they actually think for themselves and compare theory with observation? I have not seen much of the latter from the proponents of global warming theory.
Willie Soon's brief presentation was clear and informative to anyone who actually paid attention to the science. The picture of swimwear was a jibe at commentators who assume any correlation implies causation. This was nothing more than a way of capping his observation that the temperature actually leads the CO2 curve in Mr. Gore's famous graph.
Unfortunately, it is the proponents of global warming theory that are making a mockery of science. Mr. Gore has shown that graph countless times and commanded the audience to see the "obvious" (yes, I can use scare-quotes too) correlation. As Dr. Soon pointed out, if this is all we are going to do with data, then why bother pursuing science at all. We might as well just look at any two lines and declare a correlation.
The arguments against Dr. Soon's position has amounted to little more than appeals to emotion. The single audience member who took issue with Dr. Soon's presentation asked one simple question before loudly accusing him of ties to Exxon and storming out before Dr. Soon had a chance to further explain the science. Dr. Soon did not "cause" this gentleman to storm out, it was his own inability to carry on a scientific discussion without resorting to petty attacks. Unfortunately, this post illustartes that his attitude is not unique.
Original post:
This comment is another example of what is wrong with the current debate on global warming.
[QUOTE id="28264aa6-279e-4bb6-8834-a2278be4b991"]I was expecting an objective discussion of the issues related to global warming, being that this was a panel put on by the Objectivist Club. Sadly this was not the case.
The "scientific expert" Willie Soon apparently thought it was enough to simply reduce the position of mainstream science (which I am not saying is to be believed unquestioningly, phrenology was once "mainstream science") to absurdities involving a graph of swimwear and jibes directed at the size of Al Gore's "big chart". I fail to see how heavily peer reviewed scientific journals would be guilty of the gross oversight he attributed to them in the evidence he did discuss. I was also very disappointed when Soon answered a pointed question about his financial connections to big oil with PR talking points, causing the person who asked the question to storm out.
Steven Milloy, lobbyist and Fox News dynamo, was insufferable. His record of lobbying for tobacco, oil and chemical companies made me wonder about what exactly was the point of his being on the panel. He sort of reminded me of Nick Naylor from Thank You for Smoking, except not nearly as entertaining or half as convincing.
Peter Schwartz, of the Ayn Rand Institute, at least had a consistent position, although one that I find dangerously shortsighted and incredibly naive. I was a bit struck by his comparison of environmentalists to creationists. I don't believe that creationists have a wide ranging consensus of scientists backing up their claims. I always find unintended irony to be especially funny.[/QUOTE]
Mar. 7th, 2007 @ 02:37 pm
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| » Seatools to the rescue.... very slowly. |
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I never realizd this before but Windows is really lousy when it comes to switching out a primary hard drive. My workstation started slowing to a crawl and a chkdsk reported bad sectors on the main drive. After a trip to Worst Buy, I thought I'd have the whole thing fixed in an hour or two. I made another backup of my primary drive once I'd attached it as a slave in a second computer, then I restored to the new drive. Although this is poorly documented, I anticipated that the Windows backup routine may have failed to backup the MBR of the drive. Maybe there is some obscure command to backup everything (the backup utility uses the rather cryptic option "Backup everything on my computer" - does that mean files + current state + MBR?? and what happens when I just want to backup the hd image of a second drive??), but at any rate the new drive with the restored backup was not bootable.
I figured I could use MS Recovery Console to write a clean MBR and possibly a new boot sector to the new hard drive. If I have learned anything in the last week, it's that Recovery Console's fixmbr and fixboot commands are pretty much worthless and should only be used if you've tried everything else. As my friend Jason pointed out, Microsoft has basically left hard-drive maintenance to third-parties (I mean come on - we've been using essentially the same two programs to maintain disks under windows: chkdsk and defrag for the last 10-15 years and they still haven't noticably improved).
Frustrated with the Windows "tools" for handling this problem I took the drastic step of reading the manual that came with the hard drive. Surprisingly, Seagate included a utility that is supposed to copy everything from one drive to another even if the drive is the primary drive running Windows (this is much better than using Windows copy and paste, which will always terminate with file-in-use errors). The only hitch, which was undocumented, is that it took an extraordinarily long time to copy the drive. Windows backup, which I never considered a speedy utility, took two hours to back up the drive. The Seagate copy tool took over seven hours. You'd think Seagate might want to mention that a drive of any reasonable size (this one was only 30GB, imagine what would happen with one of those 300GB monsters) will basically take up the entire workday and maybe more. Anyway, at least the drive is working now. If anyone a.) reads this entry and b.) knows of a good utility for quickly copying an entire hard drive image, let me know. Even better would be a tool that can correctly add the boot sector after the files have been restored (i.e. a fixmbr command that actually works).
Jan. 12th, 2007 @ 10:55 am
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| » Disgusting |
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First read about this in the nysun.
This link is probably more likely to stay alive:
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=8&aid=63201
Unfortunately, this is nothing out of the ordinary for Columbia, in particular the ISO. I am just glad that someone took a video of it. Maybe more people will better understand the thuggish reality behind the left's pretentions toward "fairness" and "equality".
What is even more disgusting is comparing the treatment Iran's current and former dictators have received from Ivy League schools (Harvard hosted Khatami and Columbia briefly invited Ahmadinejad).
Oct. 5th, 2006 @ 02:43 pm
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| » Giant ToDo List |
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I've been meaning to write a brief review of the books I've read this year. Since I haven't written a single one, I thought I'd at least make a list of the books I've read (or at least can remember reading) this year.
Pride and Prejudice (thanks stella)
Predator's Ball
Payback (another book about Michael Milken)
Freakonomics (I read it so fast I forgot to add it to this list originally)
Tuxedo Park
Pit Bull by Mary Schwartz
The Predictors
Sparrowhawk 1-5
The Clouds / Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Cyrano de Bergerac
Calumet K
The Count Of Monte Cristo (thanks again Stella)
Right now, I am totally hooked on the last one. I read the abridged abridged version when I was a kid (actually maybe that should be abridged ^ 4). It was one of my favorite books. It's impressive how Dumas can keep adding more and more mystery to the book, without frustrating the reader. It seems like he prefers to unravel them in a FILO method.
Ok, I think this review has become sufficiently geeky. Time to end transmission.
Sep. 6th, 2006 @ 02:20 pm
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| » Come back, Saigon Grill! |
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Now three of the eateries that I visit weekly are under renovation. It started with the Starbucks closest to Stella's place. That's not too big a deal, since there are plenty of places to get coffee in her neighborhood. But now the Hot & Crusty and the Saigon Grill are under renovation. I really hope that they open soon.
Saigon Grill is the place where I get delicious Ga Satay (L19 on the lunch special). Of course, now that they've been closed for over two weeks I can't stop thinking about that peanut sauce.
On Monday I literally almost walked into the construction site where Hot & Crusty's counter used to be. I can find most of what they serve elsewhere, but their renovation means that the line for Dunkin Donuts one door down is twice its normal length.
So I pose a question to any economics-minded readers (Note: I'll pretend for a moment that anyone actually reads this). Firstly, has anyone else noticed a lot of restaurants closing to renovate recently? If we assume for a moment that there is a higher rate of renovations, what does that mean for the economy? Typically if one sees an increase in construction it's because the builders expect the economy to improve.
But what can one deduce from renovations? This seems like a slightly different problem because the owner is temporarily closing an existing business in the hopes of attracting more business in the future. Does this mean that business is so good that the owner figures he has to spend excess cash now to continue to be competitive in the future? or does it mean that business has sharply declined and the only way to be profitable is to revamp the business?
The question becomes further complicated by the fact that interests rate are at a four year high. While we expect them to decline, the current rate of borrowing for renovation projects ought to be distasteful.
There is probably a simple explanation for this, but the whole idea of closing an established business for a month seems to be pretty odd to me considering the cost of NYC real estate.
Aug. 30th, 2006 @ 12:17 pm
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| » Good article |
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I must have missed this when it was first posted on capmag.com:
article
I periodically search for "Michael Milken" on google news and it usually turns up some interesting articles.
Jul. 17th, 2006 @ 05:28 pm
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| » Today I have made ice cream and a macintosh |
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Clearly that title requires an explanation. After playing around with Damn Small Linux (DSL), I thought I should give installing Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) on one of the G3s (yes I have two of them) a shot. Apparently there is no OS on the harddrive at all. Instead of the traditional BIOS warning "No Operating System Found...", a G3 has a smirking folder flashing with a question mark over it. How cute. Anyway, I tried to install YDL, but I kept getting the message "Not enough RAM for Yellow Dog Linux". I opened up the computer and indeed there was only a single 32MB stick (hey, I got it for free). Luckily, a rather stupid but timely idea came to me. I wonder if that RAM I bought a couple of months ago will work.
To fully appreciate why this was such a stupid idea requires some back-story. Back when I couldn't decide if I wanted to upgrade my existing computer or just buy a new one (come to think of it, I did neither, I kept the existing one and bought a laptop) I bought 512MB of PC133 RAM from someone on craigslist. The transaction was a bit seedy. I met the seller at a Starbucks in the village. The guy brought the Dimms in a plastic baggy (not the anti-static kind, mind you, that may have lent too much legitimacy to the scene). I, of course, have to check out the Dimms as if to sample the wares. Anyway, once I brought the stuff back to my place, I spent hours trying to install the Dimms in my old Dell. It never recognized anything but a few MB of the RAM. Something was clearly wrong. I tried it on Stell's machine too, but no such luck.
So that brings us to my G3 RAM problem. I figured that there isn't much harm in sticking these mysterious Dimms in the G3, since neither the RAM nor the G3 seem to be working. The speed was relatively close and the G3 is supposed to accept up to 256MB per slot, so why not? Amazingly, the mysterious RAM seems to be holding up. I'm installing YDL as I type this. I may have just incremented the number of working computers by one. Sweet.
So that explains half of the strange title. I met Stella in the village for dessert since I was feeling pretty good about restoring one of the data servers. Side note: try the Kebab house that's across from Kati roll. Awesome. For $5 you get a surprisingly delicious Doner Kebab. For $2 you get a surprisingly large falafel sandwich. Pretty sweet. After consuming both a kebab and a falafel, I met up with Stella. She introduced me to her favorite NYC ice cream parlor Mary's Dairy. Good stuff. However, I was so full that I just had a coffee instead of any ice cream. Stella's cone, which I tasted, was wonderful though. By the time I got back to Newark, I started feeling less full and began thinking about that ice cream. Since every store in Newark closes far too early, I decided to play Chef MacGyver and make my own ice cream. This was truly, A-Team worthy considering I have no ice cream maker and I only have about a cup and a half of milk. After about two hours of stirring it every 15 minutes, its actually a fairly thick consistency. It's no Mary's Dairy, but it'll satisfy the 2:02AM munchies.
Jul. 4th, 2006 @ 01:35 am
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| » Waiting is the hardest part... |
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I've been fantasizing about the notebook I just bought at compusa:
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=337640&pfp=hpf1
I hope Stella isn't jealous of the new mistress.
May. 31st, 2006 @ 02:06 pm
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| » Toussaint's Going to Jail!! |
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The union president who called an illegal strike that halted New York City's subways and buses in December should be jailed for 10 days and fined $1,000 for criminal contempt, a judge ruled Monday.
He has 30 days to appeal, but it sounds like it might stick. Awesome!
Apr. 10th, 2006 @ 07:48 pm
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| » cracks me up |
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Apparently, Duchamp's urinal "sculpture" was vandalized. Can you count how many ridiculous statements are made in the following news report:
The urinal, considered a seminal piece to come from the early 19th-century Dada movement, is valued at some three million euros (3.5 million dollars).
It was made in 1917 by Duchamp and was on display as part of a wider Dada exhibition set to close at the end of this week after drawing in 350,000 visitors.
Police said it was the second time the old man had brutalized "Fountain". In 1993, he attacked it while it was part of an exhibition in Nimes, southern France.
Jan. 6th, 2006 @ 03:06 pm
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| » Toussaint's head on a fucking stick! |
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title says it all.
Dec. 20th, 2005 @ 11:35 am
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| » KGB is evil! |
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Throughout the years of playing SNES games, I have come to one inexorable conclusion: games cheat! The SNES system seems to be particularly prone to this problem. This was one of the first systems that had sufficiently powerful grapics which allowed the player to see what exactly was going on with his on-screen character. By contrast, the original Nintendo system featured graphics that were so primitive that a player needed to abstract what he was visually perceiving. In SNES, the player actually perceives sprites as entities that are clearly modeled on real entities. For example, a baseball player really looks like a baseball player. Due to this visual perception, we expect said baseball player to act like a baseball player. So when this sprite behaves the way the players in Ken Griffey's Baseball behave, the player is confronted with clear deviations from any sort of realism. For example:
1.) Infielders can jump incredibly high to catch fly balls. The manner in which they make these grabs reminds me of the curmudgeon sports caster from Major League 2. As a fly ball goes over the head of an outfielder, the sportscaster observes "He'll need a rocket up his ass to catch that one!" KGB players (at least the ones on the computer's team) seem to suffer from this condition with alarming regularity.
2.) It is apparently impossible to throw a pitch that is unhittable. There is no such thing as an intentional walk. I have come to this conclusion, because I consistently try to throw as far away from the plate as possible. Apparently, the computer's players can virtually walk across the plate and smack a home run. Yes, a home run off a pitch that is supposed to be an intentional ball. Fucking shit.
3.) Since manually fielding is a total crap shoot and virtually every thing hit into play becomes an extra base hit if not a in-the-park home run, I usually leave fielding up to the computer. Usually this is a good bet. Nonetheless, sometimes the automatic fielding the computer provides is less than exemplary. For example, in a recent game I played, my first baseman loaded the bases by throwing to third instead of taking one step and tagging first base. Maybe a more sympathetic manager would admire his bravado for attempting (unsuccessfully) to throw out the runner at third. However, I tend to think that the wiser move would have been to tag first base when there are two outs, regardless of whether or not there is a runner on second. That's just me.
Thus, in conclusion, Ken Griffey's baseball fucking cheats. Grrr!
Dec. 10th, 2005 @ 03:21 pm
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| » This sounds awesome! |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051207/bs_nm/food_cokeblak_dc
Cofee and coke. What could be better?
Sounds similar to a variety of coffee sodas that are sold in Manhattan. Coke black should enjoy a distinct advantage in that those sodas usually cost $2 to $3 per bottle. Maybe I'll switch my coffee-and-a-coke-a-day habit to a two-coke-black-a-day habit.
The things that pisses me off about the article are:
1.) It's envisioned as a "mid-calorie" product. I hate diet sodas. Blah. Hopefully the coffee infusion will make it taste better.
2.) It's launching in France! Why does France deserve coke black? I hate France almost as much as I hate diet soda. Blah.
Dec. 7th, 2005 @ 01:48 pm
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