very simple

My route to work (either walking or taking the bus), takes me past Lincoln Center every day.

For the past week, I’ve had the “joy” of getting to see David Blaine in his stupid plastic bubble (albeit briefly, as I certainly didn’t stop to stare). Other than the fact that the guy appeared on my regular route, I had no interest in his latest stunt, and didn’t even know that it was ending last night until I took the bus home and noticed that the crowd and the cameras were in much greater abundance than they had been earlier in the week. Still, I wasn’t planning on watching the finale. But then I finished watching something else I had tivo’d, and my TV automatically switched over to the last 20 minutes of his TV special, right as he was about to do the whole “hold his breath for 9 minutes” thing. So, of course I had to watch.

I don’t know what was funnier – the fact that he failed, or the fact that for all of his claims of being a magician or an illusionist, he’s clearly neither. Ooh, he’s going to have to free himself from chains of death…

…with a key!

Sitting in an oversized bathtub for a week (or a plastic box over the Thames), breathing through an oxygen tube, and doing nothing else of consequence may be something, but it’s certainly not magic.

An Illusion implies that your eyes are seeing something that’s not really (or can’t be) happening. Something that appears to defy natural law (like levitation, sawing someone in half, or making a bengal tiger “disappear”). If Blaine had made it appear that he wasn’t breathing oxygen through a tube for the week, that would have been an illusion. If he had made it appear that he was in the tank when he really wasn’t, that would have been an illusion. Heck, If we had all been distracted and Blaine had suddenly come walking out of the Metropolitan Opera while we all thought he was still in the tank, that might have been pretty cool.

My favorite quote, from the NY Times review:

In dreamy montages last night, Mr. Blaine explained that these exercises are all part of his “journey,” that they “make people think.” Magic, he said, “brings people together who might not come together.” Well, so does the airport.

Again, not magic. And I’m pretty sure that they “make people think” he’s an idiot. I can’t be the only one.

When I was younger, I got to see Penn and Teller in one of their off-broadway shows. I even got called up on stage for one of their tricks. I had to seal Teller inside a box, while Penn was talking to the audience. I was up close with the box. There were absolutely no trap doors that I could see. A few minutes later, Teller came walking out from the wings. Then we noticed that someone was banging on the inside on the box. When we let them out, it was Penn, who had somehow gotten inside the box. I’m sure it was cool from the audience perspective, but nothing can compare to being so close to a true illusion that you’re actually part of the act and still not seeing the strings. And lest you think there was something shoddy about the box-sealing, there were power drills involved. I’m sure it was just a very well-concealed hidden passageway, but that’s what an illusion is.

Blaine is just an attention whore. And that would be fine if he didn’t try to claim that what he did was something that requires more talent.

I’m normally of the opinion that the New York public transit system is one of the best inventions in the world. Go anywhere for $2 (or, if you’re me, “nothing”, because you have a yearly unlimited metrocard from work). Live in one of the only places in America where the majority of the population does not own a car. But then there are days like today.

I took a trip down to Soho to visit the Apple Store (a fairly regular occurrence), to attend a digital photo/photoshop presentation. Which was cool (although I realized that I probably needed the advanced class – yes, I know what a drop down menu is). That was pretty uneventful. Then, I had to come back home.

And the fun started.

I have to preface this by pointing out that I subscribe to the weekly MTA advisories, where the MTA e-mails you with all of the random service interruptions and changes that will be occurring on the weekends. I always check out what my local trains are doing, and this Friday was no different. Here’s what it said:

D

Uptown trains run local from 59 to 145 St
All times until 5 AM Fri, May 12

So, anyhow, To get back home I walk up to the D train station, and get on. Now, knowing that the train is running local, it means that it will stop at my normal station. When it runs express, it goes directly from Columbus Circle to 125th street with no stops in between.

Train stops at Rockefeller Center. Conductor makes an announcement that this train will be making all local stops.

Okay, good. Conductor just reaffirming what the advisory said, for those people who don’t get them.

Train stops at 7th Avenue. Conductor makes another announcement that he’ll be making all local stops.

Train gets to Columbus Circle. Conductor makes at least 3 more announcements while the train is held there, both that the train will be making all local stops and the next stop will be 72nd street (my stop). Now, if the train was running it’s normal route, this is where I would get off and wait for the C train (mind you, the reason the D is running local is that for some reason, the C is running express). But hey, I’ve heard at least 5 announcements at this point that the train will be going my way.

Doors close. I start gathering up my stuff. And we blow past 72nd Street. And 81st street. and 86th street. and 96th street. and 101st street. and Cathedral Parkway. and 116th street.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, that’s right, the friggin’ train ran express! And I even double checked with the two guys sitting near me that I wasn’t going crazy, and they’re all “you’re totally right, the conductor absolutely said the train was running local”. Argh.

So, needless to say I was a bit pissed off.

Got off the train at 125th, hiked up and down the stairs with my packages to get to the other platform and catch the downtown C train, which is running local (the signs point out that the uptown is running express), get on the train after about a 15 minute wait, and…

yup. The downtown C ran express. So. After 45 minutes of traveling underground, I’m back at Columbus Circle.

At which point I get the hell out of the subway and find the damn bus.

Now, I’m sure every tourist has a story about how they got on the wrong train and “accidentally” ended up in Harlem. This usually occurs when they’re waiting for the B (to go somewhere like the Museum of Natural History) and accidentally get on a D, which runs on the same track. Common error. But one that I’m generally proud to say, as a local, that I generally don’t make. But this? This was sabotage.

Why on earth would the conductor make at least five separate announcements and then immediately do the exact opposite? It just makes no sense.

I find that some of the more, let’s say, confrontational, experiences that I have living in NYC involve riding on public transportation. Most of my anecdotes about "crazy" new yorkers usually involve the bus. Like Thursday.

Decided to take the bus home from work, and it seemed like it would be an uneventful ride. Got a good seat, and it’s only 20 blocks to home.

Then, the fighting of the old biddies started. Two women who were sitting in the "elerly and disabled" seats at the front of the bus (neither of them looking particularly elderly or disabled, but that’s not really the point of the story), almost came to blows over the third seat.

First, I should probably describe these seats for those of you who don’t spend your lives memorizing MTA routes. At the front of the bus, behind the driver, are a set of seats designated for the elderly and disabled. These seats line the sides of the bus, a bench of three on each side, and face each other. Once you get past these seats, the rest of the seats, until you get to the back, face forward. I am in the very first forward-facing seat. Sitting on the front bench on my side of the bus are two women (the aforementioned old biddies), seated next to each other, with the one in the middle seat having piled up a bunch of bags in the "empty" seat directly behind the driver. Across the way, there are also two women, who have sat leaving the middle seat empty.

So, next stop.

Elderly stooped man with a cane gets onto the bus. Moves (slowly) towards the empty middle seat on the opposite side. This is when the biddy closest to me starts chastising the other one that she should move her bags so that the old man can sit down, because she’s taking up two seats. This then degenerates into a screaming match, with the middle biddy pointing out that the guy is already sitting down somewhere else, and then insulting the other one by saying that it’s not her bags that are the problem, it’s the fact that the first biddy is so fat that she’s taking up too much space (never mind that objectively, the first biddy, while heavy, is obviously only taking up one seat, and the middle biddy has 18 plastic bags filling a legitimately empty seat). So now we all know that the middle biddy is a bitch as well as a seat hog (even if she started out kind of right, in that giving up the spare seat wasn’t absolutely necessary).

I of course, sitting right next to these people, start wishing desperately that I had remembered my new issue of the The New Yorker so that I could ignore all of these people even more pointedly than I already am.

But the best part is that at the very next stop, a very pregnant woman gets on, looks at the seat with all of the bags, and just says, "move those, I want to sit down." So middle biddy of course makes a big show of how much effort it is to move the bags, with this look on her face like this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her (and now, of course, she’s also completely embarrassed because she had made such a big stink about not moving the bags only two minutes earlier), and the other biddy has the biggest, self-satisfied grin on her face and starts silently mouthing "see! see!" to everyone in the back of the bus.

At this point, I got off the bus.

Of course, none of this compares to the time back when I was a summer associate when the bus driver had to actually call the police to force a crazy woman off of the bus. That one will always remain the best. I’ll have to actually write about it one of these days.

My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…

Unfortunately, my plane doesn’t leave for another 16 or so hours. I say unfortunately because I’ve officially reached the point in my vacation (as I do with all good vacations), where I’m just ready to go home. I’ve done enough diving, enough visiting, enough getting sunburnt and eaten by bugs that I’m ready to sit in my air conditioned apartment, watch all the crap that is hopefully stored on my TiVo, and sleep in my own, posturpedic bed with my good isotonic pillows.

Did I mention that I woke up yesterday morning with a crazy pinched nerve in my shoulder that is making it extremely painful to sit up, stand, lie down, sleep, raise my right arm, or move my head? So that’s fun. It’s also making me dread the thought (more than normal) of sitting in a coach seat for 24 straight hours. It’s feeling a bit better today than it did yesterday, but that’s not saying much. I could also be getting used to the pain, so who the hell knows. Needless to say that the overwhelmingly wicker furniture at the resort is not exactly designed for such circumstances.

Right now I’m enjoying the last few hours of air conditioning my room has to offer (I have to check out a 2 p.m., and then go to the airport at about midnight!).

Overall though, the vacation was great – I did some awesome diving, got to hang out with my brother, and generally relaxed. Met a bunch of neat folks thanks to the diving, and drank lots of margaritas. Also spent a decent amount of time making fun of the Noni juice people (although, as my brother pointed out, we laugh now, but they’re all 350 years old).

Anyway, I’m going to take one more nap before I have to give up the room (and before you make too much fun, remember that I was up at 4 this morning thanks to the shoulder).

See y’all back on the other side of the world.

This seriously felt like the longest week ever.

Work was crazy, to the point where I was having crazy stress dreams that woke me up hours before I needed to be awake (my favorite? the one on Tuesday, where my dream that my blackberry was going off actually woke me up because I thought I needed to check the damn thing). All leading up to last night, when I was at work past midnight.

But now? Now I’m officially on vacation. One would think that this would indicate to my subconscious that I could sleep in (my plane leaves overnight tonight). One would be wrong. I fell asleep at about 2 in the morning, and woke up at…six. No alarm clock, no pressing need to do work. Just me and my lovely new insomnia. So now it seven, and I’m doing laundry so that I can at least pretend to be productive.

Anyway, all of these crazy long days made this week seem like it took just forever to get done. I’m sure part of it is the fact that there was a big shiny prize at the end of the week being, you know, not have to go to work for two weeks.

Just to give you an idea of how nuts I was this week, here’s an approximation of the conversation that I had with a friend at work yesterday:

ME: I’m going crazy! I’ve got too much to do before I leave! I’m going to be here all night!

FRIEND: [says something about wanting to go to the 32nd floor]

ME: why? what’s on the 32nd floor?

FRIEND: you didn’t see the e-mail?

ME: what e-mail?

FRIEND: the one labeled "Film Production"

ME: No – It was clearly not related to the crazy work I’ve been doing, so I ignored it.

FRIEND: [shows me the email]

Contents of said e-mail? A notification that sections of our offices will be unavailable for the next week and a half, while [extremely attractive, academy award-winning, awesomely liberal actor/writer/director (but not a blogger!)] will be filming a movie!

There goes my fantasy that the only thing keeping us apart was that I had no chance of meeting him, ever. No. Apparently it’s my inability to read a friggin’ e-mail.

I love when the New York Times thinks it’s discovered a new trend or phenomenon.

This time, it’s the overwhelming tidiness of The Container Store and the obsessions that it can provoke, coinciding with the opening of a new store at 58th and Lex.

Nevermind that these same “phenomena” have existing at least as long as the other container store has been open (you know, the one downtown?). Or, um, since the advent of Hold Everything, which was a bit more upscale (and which my mother was somewhat obsessed with), and is now being run over by its cheaper competitors (as in, the competitors have been around long enough to drive another store out of business)?

As for the author’s fascination with Go Shop, the “scan the bar codes and let someone else deal with the heavy lifting” service? I was using it a year ago when I was making daily trips to the downtown store for packing supplies.

And this made me laugh:

At 6:30 a pleasant-sounding man called to tell me that not all of my items were in stock. Would I like to wait two weeks until my entire order could be completed? Despite an extra charge for a second delivery, I told him to send my order that evening.

This woman’s entire job is to write about shopping and trends for the “most important” newspaper in the country! She’s not smart enough to get free delivery when they can’t complete her order as promised? I actually had this problem once when I used GoShop, and the store didn’t even suggest that I pay a second delivery fee. Heh. I guess she’s such a sucker that they could read it over the phone.

My absolutely favorite part, though?

The name of the column is “critical shopper“.

I don’t know whether this is a Microsoft problem or an Apple problem, but this sucks. You all know how I got my new G5 this summer to replace the utterly, completely, totally dead and buried G4. Well, on that G4 I happened to have Microsoft Virtual PC. I don’t often have a need for Windows, but since my office runs on it, Virtual PC can sometimes be a useful add on when I need to spend a lot of time networked into my job. With the renovating and moving and spending most of the fall in Europe, I never got around to reinstalling VPC on my new machine…until tonight.

But…then there’s this…

Virtual PC for Mac Is Not Compatible with the Apple Power Mac G5 Processor

SYMPTOMS
When you try to run Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 on an Apple Power Mac G5 you will receive an error message that informs you that Virtual PC does not support the CPU in your Macintosh computer.

CAUSE
Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1 and earlier use a feature that is present in the PowerPC G3 and the PowerPC G4 named "pseudo little-endian mode". Virtual PC for Mac uses pseudo little-endian mode for increased performance when it emulates a Pentium processor. Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 must use pseudo little-endian mode to function.

The new Power Mac G5 processor does not support pseudo little-endian mode. Therefore, the current versions of the Virtual PC for Mac program do not run on the Power Mac G5.

MORE INFORMATION The following versions of Virtual PC for Mac do not run on an Apple Power Mac G5 computer:

• Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1
• Connectix Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.0.x
• Connectix Virtual PC for Mac Version 5.0.x
• Connectix Virtual PC for Mac Version 4.x.x

Because the Macintosh G5 processor does not support pseudo little-endian mode, Microsoft is rewriting and carefully testing portions of Virtual PC for Mac. Microsoft expects to deliver G5 compatibility in the next full version of Virtual PC for Mac. Microsoft will announce the timing of that release later. For more information about Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 system requirements, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/howtobuy.aspx?pid=sysreq#vpc

So this sucks. It’s one thing to upgrade an operating system and discover that certain software isn’t forward-compatible. but it’s the same damn OS. Now I have to go out and spend money on software that I already own.

Ladies and Gentlemen – I present to you the stupidest article on the transit strike that could possibly have been written this week:

"A Sense of Fashion is Lost in Transit"

That’s right. Because when someone leaves their house in Brooklyn or Queens at four in the morning to spend several hours walking in below-freezing temperatures to try to make it to their jobs on time, what they should be focusing on is whether their scarves and hats are coordinated. Otherwise, they may end up as a fashion "don’t" in the Thursday Styles section.

A while ago, I did a sideblog post on the RCA docking station, and how I wanted one, since I wasn’t getting a real landline in my new place. At the time, it wasn’t more than a thought in the back of my head, because I had a completely incompatible cellphone. But a few weeks ago, I finally decide to upgrade to a new Motorola (and no, I ultimately didn’t get the RAZR – I actually found it to be a tad bit uncomfortable against my ear).

Unfortunately, my phone wasn’t on the list of supported phones, which doesn’t appear to have been updated since the site was launched.

However.

The Motorola V710 is on the list. And my phone is a Motorola E815. Which is essentially the same phone, right down to taking all of the same accessories (including chargers). Since I think that the docking system connects through the charger, I think, hey! maybe my phone is compatible.

So a few weeks ago, I call the customer service number at the RCA website, where the following conversation ensues…

Customer Service Rep (CSR): Hello, may I have your model and serial number?
Me: I’m sorry, I don’t have a model and serial number – I’m calling because I’m interested in purchasing the cell docking system, but I have a question.
CSR: (Long pause, I’m on hold)…I’m sorry, but I need a serial number before I can help you
Me: But I haven’t purchased a product – I’m trying to determine whether I can purchase this product
CSR: (another long wait on hold)…Well then you’ll need to go to our website (gives name of website)
Me: Yes thank you, but I’ve already been to your website, which is where I got this phone number
CSR: I’m sorry, but I can’t help you unless you have a serial number.
Me: Umm. OK. I guess I can’t give you money then?

I mean, I was just trying to find out how the phone hooks up to the docking system, because if it’s the way I think it works (which isn’t detailed anywhere on the website), then I’d be able to hook my shiny new phone up to it. But I’m certainly not going to drop several hundred dollars on a phone system when I can’t get a clear answer on whether it’ll even work…

You’d think that customer service people would be trained to not actually hinder potential customers from purchasing their products, but apparently not…

And then, about two weeks ago, I wander into The Sharper Image near my office. Where they’re selling the things – I think, "hey, maybe I can get someone to open the box, or maybe they have an updated list!". So I wander around trying to get someone to help me for a while, and finally, a salesgirl appears. Unfortunately, the list on the back of this box is even shorter than the RCA website. But again, I point out the similarity between my phone…blah blah blah. She won’t open the box, or do anything to help my buy this product.

But she does point out in this horribly annoying chirpy way while perusing the list that her cellphone is compatible. And I just look at her, and actually say "how exactly is that going to help me?" Because that’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from a person who I’m trying to buy several hundred dollars of electronics equipment from! Oh, well sucks for you that you don’t have the right phone, but I can use it to my heart’s content!?

Seriously.

But in the tried and true tradition of good things coming to those who wait, I get my weekly NYTimes Circuits e-mail today, with a big, fat, centrally placed ad from Motorola for this. That’s right. Motorola has come up with a fully compatible, motorola specific, much nicer looking, and much less expensive version of the same thing. Which I’m obviously buying.

Heh. I guess that sucks for RCA. Maybe they should train their salespeople that when someone calls up, practically begging to spend money on their products, they should really try to not actually turn that person away.

One of the benefits of moving to my new apartment is that my newspaper no longer gets stolen in the morning. The Times Jake Mooney profiles his vain attempts (or really, attempts at attempts) to catch a newspaper thief, and it brought back misty memories of my old habitat.

OK. Not so misty.