My Thesis - Wordle

Decided to plug that thesis into Wordle, and see what came out. It's a hundred pages long.

A lot of talk about weather risk, apparently.

My New Toy

My jog on the Garmin Forerunner 305

This video...

... was seared into my memory in the early 90s.. good to see it again...



As part of Cracked magazine's feature, 9 Corporate Attempts At "Edgy" That Failed (Hilariously)

$1100 for playing softball?

Seriously, who has that kind of money? For playing in a softball league? This city is insane...

http://www.centralparksoftball.com/

Oops

Oh crap, forgot to post link to the Kolb Cup...

http://thekolbcup.blogspot.com

The Kolb Cup

Kind of a random, dumb idea... that I had a lot of fun with...

Our fantasy baseball league has had the same guys in it for like 5 years, and we don't play for money, so someone had the idea of a trophy-like thing that would go to the winner. Well, I did the next best thing and created a trophy itself.

I wanted to put a baseball on the top. Since everyone would never agree to one good player that we could all respect (and the fact that baseball heroes have been strangely unreliable in their substance use the last few years), it's much better to go with a player that we can all make fun of.

Genesis of the story is that in our first year, this guy Dan Kolb was supposed to be awesome, but stank it up pretty good and was pretty much out of the league within a year or two. And it wasn't just that he was bad, but he'd wait until the very last minute, the last game on Sunday night, to ruin your entire week. And this happened to enough people that a phrase was born - "Kolbed".

Anyway, it's dorky and funny, and I don't feel as if I get to creat things often. (Material things anyway, I'm a programmer!) So I'm looking for the next project, etc. This art thing is fun!

Roommates

I'm in this weird living situation. When I moved here to Manhattan, I definitely wanted to get a one-bedroom or a studio, having learned the lesson countless times before that random roommates are a pure gamble. And that's the case - I don't ever want to share space with anyone ever again that I'm not already good friends with. Not that I consider myself tough to live with, but rather the opposite... I think that I tend to be considerate and respectful, and other people usually aren't.

Unfortunately, I was in for a little bit of sticker shock while searching for apartments in Manhattan - not only were they overpriced and tiny, but the real estate agent would often require a fee of 10% of the yearly rent. It's enough to make a $1200/month apartment go for something like $1400/month. (And strangely enough, by their pricing scheme and my income they calculated that I could afford a $1200/month apartment. Apparently they don't know about my student loans!)

Yeah so I got a place off of Craigslist close to the university, where I catch the shuttle every morning. It's a sweaty little box of a room, barely big enough for a queen-size bed. It's 4 figures, but barely so.

Yeah and I've got one of those random roommates that turns out to be inconsiderate, go figure. Case in point: he moved two cats in the apartment without telling the landlord. And now his girlfriend is sort of moved in? Come on, it's cramped already! And other things, like going through a room full of belongings that don't belong to him. One of these MBA types, taught to be aggressive from day one, and probably a little spoiled to boot.

Well, I just got off the phone with the person who is renting us the apartment, and she's not too happy about the arrangement at all. She's actually coming tomorrow to check things out for the first time since I moved in 2.5 months ago. Should be interesting.

Thought I'll end on: kind of sucks to tell someone to be more considerate.