Thursday, April 28, 2005

YOU Need to UPGRADE!

People, most of you are not using the patched Firefox. Please click on the little red arrow on the top of the window which means that there are important updates available (i.e. hackers want your computer). Or get the upgrade here! If you're not running Firefox (or Safari), you're lame and you like spyware....

iNcognito iPods

As many of you know, iPods are THE fashion accessory to have these days. Earings? Ok. Scarfs? Ok. iPods? Don't leave home without it. A key aspect of the iPod "look" is the trademark white wires leading from your ears down into the dark depths of your winter coat. Me? Of course I have an iPod - but it's important to point out that I was a trendsetter, since I've had mine for a few years. I personally prefer to go incognito with mine, however. Black headphones - that's correct. That's just because they sound badass. We'll they sounded badass. Last week, I was struck with grief when one of the headphones stopped working. Once home, I took out my geek toolkit and unassembled the damn thing, contemplating buying a soldering iron and everything. But it was hopeless - the Sonys had passed away :'( . I considered prying open a few floorboards and laying them to rest, but then I realized that my security deposit was the size of my rent and the frugal factor made me think the trash was a better place for them.

And so, there I was, stuck between Iraq and a hard place - do I change my commute and actually interact with people, or do I become a white sheep, so to speak, and dig up my standard (white) uncomfortable, lousy quality Apple headphones and join the masses in our own little melodic worlds? It was a tough decision, but I actually went with the white headphones. My commute to the North Bronx is just too long to handle. And as soon as I put them on, I felt totally self-conscience and uncomfortable. I hate it. I went to Best Buy the first day and checked out their selection of ear-bud headphones. All of them were in white! OMG. I was annoyed.

One of my coworkers actually works at Best Buy every once in a while, so he gets stellar discounts on stuff there. I sent him on a mission to investigate headphones and see if the store near him has ANY that are not white. I was stoked when he announced the good news: Sony headphones in black! Score! I can't wait to get them and ditch these lousy Apple headphones made by the lowest bidder, no doubt....

Speaking of iPods and the masses of people with them in the city, there's one thought that constantly crosses my mind: What the heck are you listening to? I'm seriously curious, especially since the type of people that have them are not just 20-somethings that no doubt have some kind of indi-rock or Top-40 music on. I really have no idea. I wish someone would do a study on that. Personally, my genre's include Alternative, Ambient, Blues, Classic Rock, Classical, Country, Electronica, Hip-Hop, House, Latin, Latin Pop, Musical, Pop, Rock, and Trance and I have almost 5,500 songs to choose from my PC (how cool am I? Yes, very cool). My choice of tunes is to turn this puppy onto random and let the computer decide my playlist. So it's funny when I hear a live trance mix from Paul Oakenfold followed by an Alan Jackson song about being a redneck followed by a song from Les Miserables. But that's how I like it!

Just finished importing a slew of new Hip Hop,
J. Riley.

P.S. You know I love fan mail (and comments!!!!), so thanks to the three of you that leave me comments and to the two of you that send me fan mail, it keeps me motivated!

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Wingman

Week two is half way over with my new personal responsibility overhaul. I've successfully woken up at 6:30am every single morning (during the work-week, anyway ;o) and have been regularly working my full eight hours and going to the gym several times a week (Passover caused me to miss yoga, but I should be able to survive). However....today I was hurting at 6:30am as a result of long distance internet telephony calls out of the country into the wee hours of the morning, about 12:30am. But I still made it up before 7:00am, so I'm still going strong.

FYI, I'm now in possession of round trip tickets to both Poland and Brazil for weddings later this year. I am 80% sure that I am going to have to pass on the trip to Argentina in September because the scheduling just isn't looking pretty for me and the clan that is going down there. It's too bad that I'm going to miss the opportunity to go with them, but I think it makes more sense for me to save that trip for a time when I can spend time with my friends in cities like Buenos Aires...

It's hard to find a good wingman these days. Case in point: I met up with my friend Sean and his girlfriend and a few of his coworkers downtown a few weeks back. If you've been following my blog, you'll know that Sean used to be my number one wingman in the past, back in his single days (like...last month). I had a good conversation with one of the coworkers and at the end of the night she told me I could get her phone number from Sean. OK, fair enough. So later that week, she goes and talks to Sean for like an hour about her dating life (or lack thereof) and asking if he has any single friends. Sean, being my wingman, totally drops the ball. Totally. Nope, he doesn't know of anyone he can set her up with. Hellllooooo?????

J.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Moving on Up(stairs)?

I ran into my superindendent (figuratively, not literally) on Saturday and he asked if I was moving out soon. Uhhh.....not that I know of. Unless my landlord has it in for me. While we were on the subject, I asked him if there were any other studios available in the building. As much as I enjoy watching people walk by, the street noise on my second floor apartment is really bad, especially at noon on Saturdays when the garbage truck rumbles up and wakes my ass up waaaay too early. Turns out there's a studio that's exactly the same as mine available on the sixth floor. Wohh.....sweet. All the other buildings around me are about five floors high, so it has an amazing view and has tons and tons of daylight. And considerably less noise. Stupid garbage trucks....Anyway, I am going to find out how much more that spot is and, if it's reasonable, I might be utilizing the elevator a bit more than I do now.

Speaking of apartment prices, Time Out New York had an apartment special in this weeks magazine and they said that most people spend about 30% of their salary on rent here in the city. Yikes!! I'm throwing about 20% into my pad as it is, I can't imagine throwing another 10% of my salary down the drain. Crazy! Maybe I won't be moving into a SoHo or East Village closet anytime soon afterall!

As all of you know very well, I tend to eat at a slow pace. Though most people find it healthy, I find it annoying to have to eat half my dinner cold most of the time. I once analyzed my eating habits to figure out what was taking so much time and I realized that I usually wait until the taste leaves my mouth before taking the next bite of my food. I went out with this occupational therapist on Friday night and she brought up an interesting hypothesis about this. She wondered if I was physically more sensitive than most people. Naturally, being a man, I brushed this off at first (I mean, Sean's the one who gets the facials and pedicures, not me). But as I thought about it, I realized that it might actually be true. (I'm trying to think of an example other than my palette and I can't think of any right now). Interesting. Maybe I'll have to over-analyze that one some more....

Other than that, it was a very quiet, mellow, cold, and wet weekend....

J. Riley

P.S. Someone from Sc Johnson Commercial Markets went to town on my blog last week. Any ideas?

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Yoga, Pilates, and Cardi-o My!

I've recognized recently that I have way too much on my plate and way too many things I am hoping to accomplish in the near future than I have time for. So, with that in mind, I have decided to add some more to my plate - a rigorous, nearly-religious workout schedule of going to the gym three days a week. That's not a whole lot, but compared with going to one introductory yoga class per week (on a good week), it's not bad. I am planning on one Yoga, one Pilates, and one cardio class, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Time to get this body in shape!

In addition to that, my evenings are filled of dreams of studying for a certification test, continuing my mastering of the Spanish language - or should I say re-starting my mastering of the Spanish language, and be true to my social life. I really need to start being more effective and efficient with my evenings. Easier said than done, as I sit here type-type-typing away on my keyboard....

J.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Tequila Sunrise

According to maps in the taxi cabs in town, I live in Spanish Harlem. For this and other reasons, I consider my street a bit sketchy, and this is further evidenced by the fact that there are always (slight exaggeration) fights outside my window. I first experienced the ringside seats inside my house a few weeks back at like 4:30am. Then, a few weeks later, there was another fight (the main event again featuring a man and woman), but it was as action packed because they were just yelling and screaming at each other. Comon, if you're gonna do that and wake up the neighborhood, you might as well throw some fists to make it interesting for those of us still awake. Then a peaceful Friday evening became interesting when some suit-wearing guy started yelling and screaming to the cop that just wrote him a parking ticket. This was quite exciting because the guy was irrate at the cop and threw out the standard "I pay your salary...blah blah blah...I was here for 20 seconds...blah blah blah". It was causing quite a commotion and Officer TicketWriter called for reinforcements, but that didn't stop Mr. Jeep Wrangler from telling her about the source of her salary as well. Unfortunately, no fists were thrown, and therefore no handcuffs were displayed to me and my neighbors. That would have been worth paying for...

After the main event, I met up with Alan and Andrea for dinner at a Mexican restaurant of questionable authenticity and quality, but solid margaritas. There was a whole slew of options on the back of the menu that I was going to choose from, though I was careful because I knew I'd have to be up at tequila sunrise the next morning for the day's events, which I will document below. After careful consideration, I chose the drink that apparently had four shots of Tequila in it. I found it interesting that the waitress said "do you want anything else with that?" Ummm....no, I just like margaritas on there own, thanks. Being blonde, it didn't occur to me that I just ordered four shots of tequila before we even got food. Luckly I was able to pawn off two of them to Andrea and Alan and had a margarita to soften the blow, so it was tolerable.

But my friends were worn out from the long week, so I bid them farewell and called Sean, who was downtown celebrating a birthday for a friend of his that I used to work with as well. So I joined them at Manhatta down in Alphabet City. The bouncers wouldn't let me in because I wasn't on a "list", which was totally lame, since my friends were right there smoking cancer sticks. The bouncer said "we don't like it when people lie to us", which was interesting because I was not sure what I could have lied about during my one minute discussion with them. Whatever pretenscious bouncer. After a few pleas and batted-eyelashes from Sean's cute girlfriend, the bouncers agreed that I did actually know them and let me in....

I got home somewhat late that night, but I had to wake up bright and early for New York Cares Day 2005, which involves cleaning up parks around the city by a few thousand of NewYork's generous citizens. Hopefully I'll get some pictures to show you the area we cleaned up, which was Ft. Washington Park in Washington Heights. The park was strewn with litter (several hundred bags worth in a very small area), needles, drug paraphanelia, and other fun items. I even found someone's bank account register that had entries dating from 1969 to 1973. I'm not sure how that got there. Needless to say, this park was trashed. It took the 70 volunteers about 3 or 4 hours of hard, manual labor to get this place back into decent shape. I was amazed, and the neighbors of the area were very thankful for the help.

After finishing up, a small group of us decided to walk towards downtown before our after-cleanup party. We got a mini tour of the area from some people that knew about it and checked out Columbia University as well. But the best part was chatting with the other volunteers and getting to know them better. Most of us went to the party, which had a live band, some food, and some beverages for everyone. It was a really good, positive atmosphere and our little group plans on getting together again sometime soon.

Last night, I went out with some people to my favorite place, the Lower East Side. After navigating Clinton St looking for something we could all eat and some place where we didn't have to wait two hours to get seated, we settled on Alias, which is a place I've wanted to try for a while. And, oh boy, were we not disappointed! I woke up this morning (well, more like this afternoon) and was still full, even though the proportions were not Olive Garden-like. Very creative food, including the vegetarian Lasagna with a bunch of things that I hadn't heard of, the mint ice-cream sandwhiches, and the root-beer float dessert drink (Vanilla Stoli, Maple Syrup, Cream, etc.).

After dinner, I headed over to Guernica to meet up with Alan and Andrea. I am beginning to realize that you don't need to pay a $30 cover charge and buy a $500 bottle of liquor to find cool dance clubs and bars in New York. It's just a matter of finding these places! East Village is jam packed with these places, but they are still dark doors that are hard to find. Very easy to walk past them without noticing it. And I'm not that observant, anyway....

J. Riley

Saturday, April 16, 2005

My wallet just fell from

My wallet just fell from my lap to the bus floor. Lucky me, someone came over and told me, or I would've lost it. Again

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Manic Week

I'm home! This morning, at 9:15am, I waltzed back into my apartment after a crazy week in San Diego. It was quite manic, to say the least. Let's step back a few days and catch up....

First of all, I love public transit. Ever since NYC has opened up the AirTrain, which lets me take the subway to a train that goes to the terminals at the aeropuerto, I have been their number one customer. Last week was no different: carry-on luggage in tow, I headed to the subway. I was in a bit of a rush thanks to a difficult and unsuccessful Linux installation on my lappy-top. Just to make sure that I'm sweating amply, the subway decided to break on the way to the airport, leading to a nice 15 minute delay. Then the AirTrain wasn't running as normal, so we'll tack on another 15 minute delay there. Annoying. When I walked up the gate, sweating profusely (sucked to be my neighbor ;o), I went directly on the plane and began to relax....

Fast forward 6 hours later: My wallet is on my lap. I had bought one of those ridiculously overpriced, over-calorized, and over-chemicalized "meals" (since they don't give them free anymore) before playing a few hundred games of solitaire and watching Alexander (lacking, lacking....). Having earned a reputation as someone who always loses things (I really don't understand why I'm stuck with that), I told myself to remember to put my wallet in my backpack. No problem, that's standard for my "prepare for arrival and cross-check" checklist, along with raising my seat-back and stowing my carry-on items securley in the seat in front of me. Laptop? Check. Power Cord? Check. Book? Check. Extra bag of semi-edible pretzels? Check. Wallet? ......

Fast forward 12 hours later. It's break-time after an intense morning session and I reach in to grab my wallet from my backpack. Gone. Missing. Stolen. Or was it....? I start making frantic calls to my brother's house - it's not there. American Airlines lost and found in San Diego - it's not there. Check the car - it's not there. I wasn't so worried about my credit cards and I didn't have any cash in there (I'm cheap), but I was terrified at the prospects of flying back the following week without ID. And what about buying lunch every day? And what about paying for parking every day? And and and and.... => stress. Not good. So I pillaged the snack tables during the break and took like three bagels, some fruit, a few extra drinks, some cream cheese, and some butter. If I did this every day, I wouldn't have to pay for lunch. Sweet.

At lunch time, I wandered outside of my room to take a break before starting to devour my plain bagel(s) and fruit. What do you know? I run into a former co-worker of mine who I was friends with! Sa-weeet! I gave him my sob story and he offered to pick up my lunch. I thought about the yummy bagel(s) waiting for me, free of charge, in my backpack in my windowless conference room. But, in the end I decided to go for the barbeque in the sunshine next to the marina instead. Decisions, decisions....

At the end of the day, I put in another call to American Airlines to start tracking down my plane and see if it ended up somewhere else. They traced it back to New York, so I called the NY American Lost and Found and also called the SD airport Lost and Found and left messages with both of them. Then, my phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket and it began to illuminate with light rays (cut to angelic-sound: "aaaaahhhhhhhh"). They'd found it in the SD airport, which was conveniently right across the street from the hotel where my training was. Wow. So I grabbed one of my new "friends" from my former employer, haggled him for $10 in exchange for a ride home so I could pay for parking, and then we headed across the street to the airport, where my wallet, credit cards, and cash were all waiting for me. WHEW! Enough of the stress!!

The rest of the week went by pretty well. I was quite busy learning how to detect hackers on corporate networks and learning about the intricacies of (geek speak warning) IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc. etc. etc. Intrusion Detection, baby. Snort, TCPDump, Windump, XProbe, etc. etc. etc. (/geek speak). It was AWESOME!

I got to hang out with some of my old SoCal gang a few of the nights, including Sandy & Daniel, Graham Hufford, and my old high school buddy Russell Tanner, and of course got to spend a few quality nights hanging out with my brother, sister, sister-in-law, and my unborn niece/nephew. Jamal Haines? I think that has a nice ring to it ;o) .

On my only off-day, Wednesday, my brother treated my sister and I to a race and lunch at the local indoor, environmentally friendly go-kart track. These things hauled arse and got wickedly sidewise and fishtailed around turns on the rubbery track surface. It was totally fun showing everyone how to drive....at least until I decided to do a donut on one of the turns. Oops, there goes my lead.

To cap an otherwise good trip, I did a little shopping before my red-eye flight and decided to help my sister upgrade her computer's hard drive (you know, the thing that makes noise). Being an IT professional who can decode hex datagrams in binary, I can add new peripherals like a hard drive with my eyes closed. After about an hour of fiddling with the damn thing, I decided to RTFM (Read The Funny Manual) and actually installed the software that came with it. After following the detailed instructions, I found out that her computer was so old that it wouldn't support the drive, so I followed the instructions to get it to work. Sure enough, it totally foo-barred her computer, leaving it totally useless. About 15 minutes before I had to leave for the airport. DAMNIT!

$400 later, there's a new Dell on the way to her house....

To cap the week, I thought I'd give Super Shuttle a try for a ride home since my bag was full of really heavy books from my training. $20, not a bad deal, really. This morning, when I arrived at 5:45, I called them and let them know I was there. They said to wait for the guy who was coming for me. A half hour later, I called them back and asked (in nicer terms) what the hell was going on, where was the dude. "Please Hold". They hung up on me. An hour and a half after I arrived, they arrived. Now, it takes me an hour and half to get home on the subway, so you can see where this is going. And now, since it was 7:15 in the morning, we were heading to Manhattan during rush hour. Wonderful. 3.5 hours after I arrived, I got home. Justin was not a happy camper. That's the last time I neglect my duty to ride mass transit.

A very manic week, indeed!

J. , up too late tonight

Monday, April 11, 2005

San Diego

I'm busy in San Diego learning about hacking and I have very little internet connectivity or time, so don't expect anything until Thursday or Friday. But, to keep you on the edge of your seat, I've got a wallet-losing story to tell. Thankfully, it does have a happy ending :-x....

J.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

'Geek speak' confuses net users

For all of my non-techie subscribers, some good terms about computer security are explained: BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Geek speak' confuses net users

Monday, April 04, 2005

Road Trip: Manhattan Style

Yesterday I "discoverd" a new part of Manhattan that I am anxioius to explore in more depth in the near future. I had signed up for brunch with Alan and Andrea yesterday morning to hit up a local place for some early-afternoon grubbin', but then they changed their mind about the location and decided that we should go to a place called The Spotted Pig down on Greenwhich Ave. Alan, notorious for prefering the high-rises of the Upper East/West Side to the Bohemian streets of downtown, made a comment about it being a "road-trip" to go all the way down to the West Village. Poor Alan, his mind has been warped during his tenure here in the city. As far as I can remember, I don't think that the phrase "road trip" have ever been appropriate on an island that is 12 miles long and 3 miles wide ;o)

Last Friday I was scheduled to have my eye(lids) operated on...again - finally! So I mentally prepare myself all week to go under the knife and visualize myself walking home with a patch over each eye and scaring the kids on Saturday with two black eyes (I was supposed to go on an art treasure hunt at the Met with my kidz). Well, Saturday's trip got postponed, which made Friday an even better day to have this thing done and over with. I even carved out Friday night as a recovery night. All set and ready to go...I get to the doctor and he looks at me and says he isn't going to do it afterall. He decided that he doesn't want to touch them because he'd rather have a specialist surgeon take care of them because of their location. Ok. This is the third time I've been to this doctor in the last month. I scheduled the surgery two weeks ago. Why the hell didn't he figure this out beforehand so that I didn't have to waste half an afternoon of work, the mental stress, preparation, and scheduling of my precious time? Trust => 0. I forsee myself now scheduling another surgery for two or three weeks from now (since I'm going to training this week in San Diego) and I also forsee myself not returning to this doctor.

Saturday morning I went to an awesome brunch to Sarah Beth's with Sean and Lauren. Isn't it funny how the body works at lunchtime? I mean, I ate two servings of oatmeal at 11:00 that morning, and by the time we got seated (12:30ish), I was ready for another meal. It's like no matter when I eat breakfast, I am starving by lunchtime. This theorum is further supported by the story of Sean and I stopping at In 'n Out Burger on our way to Lake Tahoe at 9:30am (12:30 NY time) because we were starving, even though we ate at a full breakfast at 7:00 that morning. Maybe it's mental. Or maybe I'm mental :o) !

After brunch on Sunday, Alan, Andrea, and I went and saw Born Into Brothels, an independant film about children living with their prostitute parents in the red light district of Calcutta. The English lady in the documentary teaches the kids how to use cameras to capture their lives and eventually helps get some of them enrolled in boarding schools in the hope that they can escape the lifestyle they were born into. It was actually quite a film, though of course depressing. I enjoyed the fact that it put a face and personality on such an epidimec, making it a bit more personal and affecting the viewer more than a ficticious film would. It, of course, begs the question of what can we do to help a life or two of people in vicious cycles such as this? The reality is that from our comfortable homes, it's almost impossible to have a significant impact. One of the great things about living in a cultural epicenter like NY is that there is the possibility of being exposed to something like a photography exhibit that would sponsor a child's boarding school education. Whether or not we embrace these opportunities is a different story altogether....

A few notable blog facts:

1.) Summer's blog gets far fewer hits than mine, even though she's funnier than me. I encourage you to read it ("Foody's Blog", linked on the right hand side of this page).
2.) I've added a link to Lemuel Park's blog on the right. He's no longer working for "the man" and is working at a non-profit in the African country of Mauritania. He has an active blog about his life over there.
3.) There are some people in New York and Connecticut that have cable modems and read my blog, but I don't know who they are. Post a comment below if you wish to no longer remain anonymous.
4.) My blog is now being read by Peruvians. I wonder if they're worried about what I'm writing about them ;o)
5.) I customized my blog to do cool things with comments now. Write me comments! I thrive off of them, anyway. Click on the "Comments" link below to see the new trick!

Time for racquetball (however that's spelled),
J.