April Adieu Doo

April 2010 has been a month of sooo many changes... That's an understatement...

Much reorganization is being done on the job front, and the effects promise to be overwhelming to all involved... Only thing is nothing is definite... So all are on pins and needles... Stay tuned...

Re-joined the gym earlier this month, and have been getting back into the groove... Breaking a sweat, and weights, will help eradicate that bad cholesterol, I truly believe... And I hope so... because statins don't agree with me... Nor I with them...

I'm still adjusting to the new Android mobile device purchased during Spring Break... All in all, I like the Motorola Cliq immensely although it is still taking quite a bit of adjustment... I am avoiding all the Moto-Blur features as they seem to run together and violate my boundaries...

The biggest frustration for me as a former Sidekick user is the three lines of keys... So hitting the alt key and the caps key seem to put numbers, letters and caps in all the wrong places since I was conditioned to the Sidekick layout... Sounds small, but believe me, it's a hard habit to undo... Some PBS TV special might say this is quite good for the human brain... OK with me.

The last day of April brought in some afternoon heat which promises to take the mercury up to 90 for the first day of May, tomorrow... That's waay too hot, waay too soon in the season for this blogger...

Made a bunch of progress in the weight loss department... was 187.5 lbs when I checked at the gym last weekend... Quite happy about that...

Developed this nasty cold to drag into May... But hey, that's about the least of the health issues that "could be" going on...

Good bye, April...

(Image source Zahradka)

Celebrity Sighting: Peter Scolari

Spotted this afternoon on West 46th Street talking on his cel phone...

Peter Scolari starred in a sitcom with Tom Hanks called Bosom Buddies...

No, he wasn't in drag...

He was recently seen on a cast reunion of Bosum Buddies during the 2010 TVLand Awards.

Here's his Wikipedia entry...

Wednesday's Word: Fauxhemians

Fauxhemian, noun, a type or person.

Announcing the winner of Gawker’s competition to find a replacement for the term “hipster,” Hamilton Nolan wrote: “Hipsters are dead. Long(?) live Fauxhemians.”

Source: New York Times Blog

Site of the Week: Elgin Park

Visit Elgin Park

Here's an article in The New York Times about all of this...

Set the Tone Monday: The Courage to Act

"Have the courage to act instead of react." 

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sunday Snooze

Twas a low key rainy Sunday...

Weekend Conversations With Myself

There are 4.6 billion subscribers on mobile phones versus approx 1.2 billion landlines… Hell, I remember rotary dial phones... I miss them, actually...

Archie Comics to introduce a gay character in Veronica #202. Blonde, blue-eyed, and gay Kevin Keller... One guy Veronica won't be able to get...

Wanna buy a book? Baumann Rare Books ad in NYTimes: autographed 1st editions Cat in the Hat Comes Back $8K, Gone With The Wind $16K, and Robert Frost $20K.

Must avoid Phishing Attempts on Twitter & Facebook. Remain vigilant.

Is Joss Whedon the right choice to direct Avengers? WSJ thinks so.

I don't care for the state Arizona.

A jury on Friday ordered the homophobic Boy Scouts of America to pay $18.5M to a man sexually abused by a former asst Scoutmaster.

Rahm Emanuel is a hottie. He'd be welcome in my oval office anytime...

Not hungry after seeing the Village Voice's worst eats available around Times Square.

Today is the National Day of Puppetry... Brings back memories...

Ben Brantley's review of "Sondheim on Sondheim" in The New York Times sounds like a tacky multi-media kinda thing. Hope they do a PBS broadcast. Otherwise... Forget it!

I love sugar-free Popsicles...

Tony Robbins sez on Twitter: "procrastinate, procrastinate procrastinate... does it work? I'll tell ya later ;-)"

I vaguely remember Soupy Sales. Though that style of humor never appealed to me even as a kid...

If you really stop and look at the calorie counts on those desserts and breakfast foods at Starbucks, it's quite shocking... No more pumpkin bread for me...

187.5 lbs at the gym today. Down from 202.

I predict: FLOTUS will one day be POTUS. Mark my words...

Fa Fa Fa Friday

Happy Fa Fa Fa Friday, Folks!

Thursday in Paradise

"Awareness is everything. Not just part of it. Not
some aspect of it. Awareness is everything.

"Look, therefore, to your awareness, not to your thoughts.
Your thoughts about things can betray you -- and often
do -- because they can be colored by emotions. Your
awareness cannot.

Just observe what is so. Then observe what you think
about what is so. Then ask yourself, 'Why am I thinking
that?' And, more important, 'What would happen if I
thought something else?'"

- Neale Donald Walsch

This Just In: Building Workers Avert Strike

WNBC is reporting the following:

While most of historic Hell's Kitchen is thought of to be composed of old walk-up tenement buildings, it does have more than it's fair share of new construction Doormen buildings as well...

So the good news is:

"A deal was reached early Wednesday morning to avoid a strike by NYC's building workers.

"The four year agreement calls for a ten-percent wage increase over the next four years for workers. In turn, the union agrees to 70 million dollars in annual health care savings. It would not mean changes in contribution to health plans by workers, but simply that the union would encourage efficiencies to save money.

"'Through many days of hard work, the Realty Advisory Board and Local 32BJ have reached a fair and reasonable agreement that serves the industry, its workers, residents of more than 3,000 rental- co-op and condo apartment buildings, and the entire city of New York,' said Howard Rothschild, President of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations.

"The pension would remain the same for workers.

"The wage increases would break down as follows: $15 a week in the first year of the contract, $15 a week in the second year, $22 a week in the third year and $23 a week in the fourth year.

"The decision comes after extensive overnight negotiations between the Realty Advisory Board, a management organization, and Local 32BJ at the Sheraton New York hotel.

"The union represents 30,000 doormen, handymen and porters who authorized a strike.

"If workers had walked off the jobs, it would have been the first residential building workers strike in NYC in 19 years. Negotiations in 2006, 2003, 1997 and 1994 all resulted in settlements at the bargaining table without labor unrest.

"Managers at thousands of affected buildings in every borough except The Bronx (which is covered by a separate contract) had been preparing for residents to volunteer as temporary replacements at concierge desks, sorting mail and taking out garbage.

"Building workers make about $40,000 a year, plus whatever they get in tips and holiday gifts from residents, which can add up to several thousand dollars.

"'It's a victory for building owners, employees and residents. Given these difficult economic times, it is an agreement we can all be proud of. I want to thank the RAB and the Local 32BJ negotiating committees, the union leadership, and everyone involved for their hard work and commitment to the process,' Rothschild told nbcnewyork.com."

Sammy the Snake

Here's something to divert some midweek angst: Carol Channing and Sammy the Snake... The G version, on Sesame Street...

Set the Tone Monday: Change

"Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life" 
-- Alvin Toffler

Site of the Week: GigaOM

GigaOm is really cool independent blog network... Here's one great bit of business...

10 Simple Google Search Tricks
By Simon Mackie of GigaOm
Published: April 2, 2010

I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google search. Here are 10 of my favorites.

1. Use the “site:” operator to limit searches to a particular site. I use this one all the time, and it’s particularly handy because many site’s built-in search tools don’t return the results you’re looking for (and some sites don’t even have a search feature). If I’m looking for WWD posts about GTD, for example, I could try this search: GTD site:webworkerdaily.com.

2. Use Google as a spelling aid. As Rob Hacker — the WWD reader I profiled last week — pointed out, entering a word into Google is a quick way to see if you have the right spelling. If it’s incorrect, Google will suggest the correct spelling instead. Additionally, if you want to get a definition of a word, you can use the “define:” operator to return definitions from various dictionaries (for example, define: parasympathetic).

3. Use Google as a calculator. Google has a built-in calculator — try entering a calculation like 110 * (654/8 + 3). Yes, your computer also has a calculator, but if you spend most of your day inside a browser, typing your calculation into the browser’s search box is quicker than firing up your calculator app.

4. Find out what time it is anywhere in the world. This one’s really handy if you want to make sure that you’re not phoning someone in the middle of the night. Just search for “time” and then the name of the city. For example, try: time San Francisco

5. Get quick currency conversions. Google can also do currency conversion, for example: 100 pounds in dollars. It only has the more mainstream currencies, though — if you’re trying to see how many Peruvian nuevos soles your dollars might buy, you’ll be out of luck. If you would like to convert minor currencies, be sure to be specific about the country. So, if you want to find out how many nuevos soles your dollars might buy, you could try: 100 dollars in Peruvian nuevos soles.

6. Use the OR operator. This can be useful if you’re looking at researching a topic but you’re not sure which keywords will return the information you need. It can be particularly handy in conjunction with the “site:” operator. For example, you could try this search: GTD OR “getting things done” site:webworkerdaily.com

7. Exclude specific terms with the – operator. You can narrow your searches using this operator. For example, if you’re looking for information about American Idol but don’t want anything about Simon Cowell, you could try: “american idol” -cowell

8. Search for specific document types. Google can search the web for specific types of files using the “filetype:” operator. If you’re looking for PowerPoint files about GTD, for example, you could try: GTD filetype:ppt

9. Search within numerical ranges using the .. operator. Say, for example, you want to look for information about Olympic events that took place in the 1950’s, you could use this search: Olympics 1950..1960

10. Area code lookup. Need to know where a phone number is located? Google will let you know where it is, and show you a map of the area, too. For example: 415

They also did a nice feature on the new Google Docs

New York Magazine Rated Hell's Kitchen

In their recent cover story on neighborhoods, New York Magazine points that Midtown West, Chelsea and Flatiron share the distinction of the highest percentage of single men in NYC...

They also wrote when they ranked Midtown West as #34, "More cultural cachet than Midtown East, but much grittier, with modestly high crime rates (especially around the Port Authority) and a high incidence of air, asbestos, and noise complaints..."

Meanwhile, Park Slope (where I once lived for many years in Brooklyn) was rated #1.

No thanks on going back to all the baby strollers, even if they do have trees...

Mucho Macho Saturday

Damn, if I didn't miss a blog post yesterday... How did this happen? A lot on my mind...

Lots of changes being thrust forth at work... And am not even sure what the changes/options are at this point...  So change is a-coming...

Might very well be months before all the dust is settled... It's a day at a time... And gossip and speculation is fruitless... So, there we are...

Meanwhile... Looks like the last bastion of free speech adult businesses on Hell's Kitchen's Eighth Avenue might be coming to a judicial end as the city scores a big sex shop win.... If they do win out, it will make New York City one of the most sterile cities in America. Bloomberg seems to think that's good for tourism? LOL...

Bloomberg's regime is also busy hustling artists away from the Parks... Charming...

Meanwhile, you can't even walk down Ninth Avenue unencumbered by all the newly licensed sidewalk cafe's that force pedestrians off the curb and into the street... Some local businesses have a wait, especially for Sunday Brunch, so marauding gangs of yuppies are overflowing and blocking foot traffic... More Bloomberg brilliance...

New York Magazine's recent article on neighborhoods showed this interesting statistic... The highest concentration of single men?? Chelsea, Midtown West, and Flatiron... well, it seems I'm in the right neighborhood for that...

Doormen are planning to strike... Well, that should shake things up... Remind me not to order anything on Amazon til the contract is settled...

I'm sooo glad I don't travel anymore for work... Would be just like me to be stuck in an airport in Europe right now with trunks and suitcases as a bedpost...

A first: I just changed my own light switch in the bathroom... Quick, put Macho Man on YouTube...

Now, where's that gym bag?...

Site of the Week: Call of the Small

If you are looking to update your home furnishings with your IRS Tax Refund today...

...This woman, Christine Ferrara, does fabulous modernism home decoration...

But, it's ALL in miniature...

Talk about a dollhouse...

Check out: Call of the Small

Wednesday's Word: Gotterdammerung

Gotterdammerung, noun

PRONUNCIATION:
(got-uhr-DAM-uh-roong, -rung)

MEANING:
noun: Complete destruction of an institution, regime, order, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
From German Götterdämmerung (twilight of the gods), from Götter, plural of Gott (god) + Dämmerung (twilight). Götterdämmerung was the name of the last of Richard Wagner's four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The German word Götterdämmerung is a translation of the Old Norse Ragnarök which in Scandinavian mythology refers to the destruction of the gods in a battle with evil, resulting in the end of the world. The term Ragnarök is from regin (gods) + rok (fate, course) confused by some with Ragnarökkr (literally, twilight of the gods).

USAGE: Each time Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein close or re-organize a school, they are performing a Gotterdammerung to try and destroy public education and to privatize it wholly into a profit making industry.

Source: WordSmith.org

One Toke Over the Line

Lawrence Welk???



NOTE: See comments for much more information on the story behind this unlikely song...

Set the Tone Monday: Focus

"Don't let ultimately meaningless things eat up your day. Keep your attention focused on the powerful, the beautiful and the holy".

-- Marianne Williamson

Rest in Peace: Meinhardt Raabe

'As Coroner I must aver,
I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead,
She's really most sincerely dead'.

Sad to hear of the passing on Friday of the great Munchkin coroner from The Wizard of Oz...

Meinhardt Raabe, 1915-2010.

He was 94.

And he had a great 19 seconds of uncreditted fame to become a four foot tall world class pop culture icon...

Saturday Wrap-Up: Chilly and Gray

Chilly and gray.... Matches my disposition and my ever-increasing hair color! In that order! Ha! "Perfect!"


Blogger's automatic save feature seems to interfere with my writing more that I'd like... Is there a way to re-set that?? Hm...

Up to his usual paternalistic tricks: Bloomberg trying to manipulate the whole charter review process to skew HIS way... Bloomberg is a creep...

11 more weeks til summer vacation...

Welcome Keith Olbermann to Twitter.  26,666 followers when I just checked... No doubt a warning to the Tea Bagging right wing conspirators... LOL

"Sleep deprivation can elevate your mood even if you are not depressed, and can induce euphoria. This throws a new light on insomnia". sez The New York Times Opinionator.

Back to the regular routine of a weekend that consists mostly of chores, errands, and rest... As opposed to recreation...

Off to the gym now...

TGIF

TGIF...

Yup, that's all you get today...

Have a great weekend!

Have a Disco Chicken Kinda Day

Thanks to Sturdy Soapbox

Wednesday's Word: Understandment

understandment

def: The combination of understanding and agreement. Used when talking about informal commitment.

Usage: We had a deal, an understandment, as it were.

Source: Urban Dictionary

Another Spring Break is (Almost) Over

Another Spring Break is over.

Well, almost...

This one was far more productive than it was recreational. That's ok though... Really. I get a satisfaction from de-cluttering and streamlining my life... I do.

There are still a pile of clippings on my desk that need to be re-handled... Although scooping them all off into the paper recycling bin (un-reviewed) is still very much an option... ("What one doesn't know can't hurt one?")

My own Operation Motorola Cliq is moving along slowly... Very slowly. But I'm building it to be a great streamlined tool... Am relying heavily on the cloud, and Google to get this done... And that's a bit discomforting since the great Sidekick debacle of many months ago...

At least I have the basics in place to have a working tool at my hip for the next twelve weeks til the next break, and the chance to spend huge blocks of time in tweaking...

Twelve weeks til the next break??? Did I just say that??? Frackin A!

OMG... That'll be a loong stretch of five day work weeks... A marathon...

But TODAY is still a day off and another chance to accomplish things, and do it all on my own terms. It's still Spring Break, Godsdamnit!

Another good (almost) twelve hours left to enjoy fully til bedtime...

Living in the moment. It's something I need to learn to do more...

Set the Tone Monday: On Being Normal

"Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from".

~Jodie Foster

Happy Easter 2010

Happy Easter!! *If* you celebrate... (I take nothing for granted).

I'll be having dinner tonight with a Born Again Christian! (Lord help me! But, it was the only date we could make work during my Spring Break)

She'll, no doubt, be making a BIG deal that it's her *Easter dinner*...

I'm going in shorts and flip-flops (Exaggeration: I don't own any flip-flops! And I'll prolly wear long jeans, anyway)

Now, it's off to the gym...

Was gonna do a movie matinee, but the films I wanna see might be over-burdened with Easter kiddies in matinees...

The reality is I can still use another gazillion hours tending to Motorola Cliq organization... And can enjoy some time outdoors, as it looks like another gorgeous afternoon in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, USA...

Set the Tone: Have Fun

"I've lived just about the most perfect life. I've had the best time. If I wanted to do something, I did it... I've had fun. What else can you ask in life?"
-- Elaine Kaufman 1929-2010.

Sickicked to the Curb

Well, I finally couldn't take it anymore... My Sidekick LX 2009 wasn't even a full year old, but Microsoft really decimated it's OS and reputation when it botched that takeover of Danger a few months back... T-Mobile, as the carrier, did their best to cope, I guess... That's why I'm sticking with them...

And so now I have the Motorola Cliq. This is an Android system (Google driven) phone that looks essentially Sidekickish... With a Slideout keyboard and all... But it's waaaay different...

Soooo different, in fact, that I have spent most of the last three days trying to set it up, and to re-organize my whole online life around it...

My entire Internet life has been compartmentalized by design... An email for personal stuff, an email for catalogs and order, another email for political activism, two anonymous ones for blogging and extra curricular activities, FaceBook and Twitter sit there for days til i get in the mood to look over my feeds...

It sounds crazy to some, but to me, it's perfect... When I'm in the mood for whatever, I go in and work on stuff and all the ancilliary emails and info are served up in each place, and they wait til I'm ready. I'm not being bombarded by them in my lone inbox constantly...

Sounds logical... And the Sidekick allowed me to do it... Every app was separate and distinct....

But this Motorola Cliq cel smartphone has something they call MotoBlur...

For an adult with Attention Deficit Disorder tendencies (if not certifiably ADD) this blurring of the lines was a nightmare...

Upon set-up, I followed their welcoming instructions to install my FaceBook, Twitter, and all my email accounts.... Sounded comforting that all would be available in one place.... Not!

Then when it got going.... Oh.My.God. It was a nightmare... The alert notifications were going off at a great rate. It would alert to every single Twitter tweet with the same ferocity as a pending voice mail or text message...

Then, when I sent an email from one of my anonymous accounts to another of my accounts as a test... It automatically attached my real full name to the accounts, that were originally written with a pen name for a reason...

Then it wouldn't let me install the anonymous Google account...


So I had to spend another two hours on the phone with Tech Support last night to do a full Quick Restore or Soft Reset to factory settings and then had to start all over from scratch this morning making new settings and adding carefully selected accounts...

This time, I'm only letting it have a few things. Things that I need on a mobile... And so, I'm carefully sculpting it into a tool that will eventually work well for me... And clearly not the social networking blur that it thinks I would want...

Actually, I think it'll be perfect eventually... But all the settings and the pre-thinking and planning are time-consuming and intense... (OCD, too?)

Glad I have a vacation from work to tackle much of this...

I see now why some people still have AOL accounts from the dark ages... Because it's A LOT OF WORK to make change-overs properly...

Stay tuned...

The Artist is Present

Nothing much sexy or attractive about a nude woman laying under a skeleton and staring at you...Not to me anyway...

Art? Um. ...Maybe.

Ew... Don't look at me, look away or close your eyes or something...

The two nudes blocking the doorway are at least looking at each other... I can't imagine anyone would dare try to brush past them, though... Plus you'd have to hit the appendage of naked guy as the one I saw was quite, er protruding, as it were, into the aisle...

And the surly museum guards standing nearby are obviously there to protect more than illegal forbidden photography... No tweaking allowed, or grabbing... That's obvious.

The other art?? The real art? I noticed absolutely nothing in this exhibition... All I noticed were these humans... And especially those naked ones...

If you like this kind of performance art thing, then make your way over to MoMA to see The Artist is Present...

It's not for everybody...

Here's a better explanation of Marina Ambramovic: The Artist is Present in the New York Times...

ImaginOcean

I saw John Tartaglia's ImaginOcean the other today.

Clearly, the finest Black Light Theater family puppet thing I EVER did see. (And I've seen a slew!)

Expertly manipulated, technically flawless, fast paced, and great fun...

I highly recommend it...

This NYC venue is PERFECT for this... Congrats!

The Cast: