Technology & MSG

This weekend’s snowfall gave me plenty of time to relax.
I’ve been enjoying First Stint, a free 22 track album released by Ben Youngs. Well-composed soundscapes dominate the album, with a few remixes thrown in for variety. A few remixed Fools & Horses tracks are included, as is a really addictive track by Kaitlin Sweeney.
The last [...]

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I found Tom Clancy’s Battle Ready to be an interesting portrait of USMC General Tony Zinni (now retired) and how he progressed in his career through some rather tumultuous engagements.
A lot of the book is set in Zinni’s own words, with minimal narration and filling in by Clancy. This is a good thing, since Zinni’s [...]

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I ran out of books. I found myself rereading a paperback that I’ve had for a decade. So on Saturday afternoon I went out with a few friends and picked out some new books to read. It’s a sizable but eclectic list: fiction, nonfiction, humor, mystery, etc. I probably won’t have all of them read [...]

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The Kite Runner glossed over the immigration issues and the bulk of the extrication issues, themes that were prevalent in the book. It also glossed over the suicide attempt, which I thought was important to the story.
If I had to guess, I’d say were chopped for time. I would hate to be an editor with [...]

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I was reading Scott Smith’s novel A Simple Plan. It’s a dark tale about a trio who come across a large sum of money. It’s more about the sick and twisted acts that greed can inspire in people. It left me feeling very uncomfortable, such that I was having work on it. I can’t remember [...]

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I’ve been reading a lot lately.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is the fascinating account of one journalist’s one year stint as a correctional officer in a maximum security prison. Effectively undercover and unknown to the state (which wouldn’t grant this sort of access), he really immerses himself to get a taste of what goes on behind [...]

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I got my DTV coupons in the mail and headed over to Amazon and what do you know, most of them are sold out. Figures.
I discovered that my front door isn’t snug against the frame and it is letting a cold draft in. The entryway has always been a colder than the rest of the [...]

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Can you believe it’s 2009 already?
I rang in the new year with a small group of 80’s themed dressed individuals at Gallery Imperato in South Baltimore. I went as Danny Noonan from Caddyshack. In addition to enjoying the change of scenery — the gallery is located in an old historic foundry — we got to [...]

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Over the past week or two I read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).
Why the other lane always seems faster, why we suck as drivers, how our eyes and minds betray us on the road, issues of congestion, why dangerous roads are safer, among other topics. The [...]

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I like books. I like reading. My grandmother would be proud of me. She owned a lot of books. Tens of thousands of them. They filled an entire room, spilling over onto the stairs in her New Jersey home. She would routinely give books as presents as I was growing up. For decades she bought [...]

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No picture today, just a lot that’s been in the back of my mind lately.
I’ve been going to the gym again. It was one of those things I kept putting off (for close to six months) so I feel pretty good about it. I’m only going twice a week, but I feel healthier. I’d been [...]

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Proper kudos to the public library, I just finished reading Spook Country. While the book flap reviewer from the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle praises William Gibson’s ability to “craft sentences of uncanny beauty”, it makes for a convoluted mess of a read. I’m a fairly educated man who loves to read, but I [...]

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Amazon.com WidgetsI just finished reading Freakonomics, subtitled A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Very neat, clean, and approachable, this is not your typical economics book. But then again, Steven Levitt doesn’t appear to be a typical economist. The man attempts to answer simple questions using economic datasets. Such as (quoted [...]

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After a long time waiting and listening to coworkers’ ravings, I saw Knocked Up. It did have a good mix of cheap and more insightful quotes, but the two kids stole the screen.
The two daughters are the actual daughters of writer/director Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann (who plays Debbie). The movie is supposedly a [...]

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It’s actually been a month since I started my office cleaning project. It is only the second weekend that I’ve put any real time into it. It looked like it was going to be hot and humid out this afternoon so I decided to take another couple hours at it. I’m proud to say that [...]

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