Manhattan moins cher

Change of address

2005-09-28T11:29:00.000-04:00

Please follow the continuing stories of Doctor Barnett at technically.us/doc.

Love
Doctor B.

iMac busted again

2005-09-19T17:29:00.000-04:00

Our troublesome iMac G5 failed once again last weekend. We’re still under warranty, whoop-tee-doo, but we’ve probably lost everything on the hard drive. Like most people, we have some backups but they’re incomplete and out of date.

I’m mad as hell at Apple all over again, mad enough to buy a PC in fact. I can hardly believe it myself, but the various PC parts are already on their way from Newegg for a grand total of $350. (I’m not putting Windows on it. Give me some credit.)

There’s more to it than anger, of course. My iMac G5 (like all others sold last year) is prone to overheating and generally runs at a temperature that increases the probability of component (hard drive) failure. It must be babied. I revile the idea of babying a computer, but there is nothing that I can (or Apple will) do about it.

More to come…

To Suck Ass

2005-09-10T00:26:00.000-04:00

To: TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov

Subject: Shoe off, shoe on, shoe up.

Dear Sir or Madam,
I wonder if you are aware of how poorly your administration’s policies are applied by its employees at airports across the United States (and territories). In the past year, I have been witness to violations of your “TSA Shoe Screening Policy” in the following airports: New York LaGuardia & JFK, San Juan P.R, San Francisco CA, and Raleigh N.C. The shoe policy has not changed over the past year, yet it is so consistently violated in such far-flung airports that I wonder if even management discreetly encourages its infringement.
To be clear, no one has merely “recommended” that I remove my shoes. In each of the airports I’ve cited, TSA employees have required that I remove my shoes regardless of their shape and lack of metallic content. In the early afternoon on Monday, September 5 at RDU I listened as a television video recommended that I remove my shoes — for what reason it recommended this I can not imagine. I prefer shoes, so I declined and passed through the metal detector without setting of its alarm. Nevertheless, the gentleman on the far side ordered me to go to back up and send my shoes through the x-ray, saying that it did not matter “if my shoes set off the alarm or not.” I later passed this information on to the overseeing TSA supervisor, who admitted the employee was in violation of the policy and said he would “speak with him.”
How is it possible that this employee and the half-dozen other violators I’ve encountered in the past year fail to understand a very simple policy? It says clearly on your website “You are not required to remove your shoes before you enter the walk-through metal detector.” Is it some kind of joke to them? Is it some kind of joke to you? I’m sick and tired of fighting with your employees, who must be frighteningly daft or are sadistically pleased in forcing everyone to march around barefoot. Either way, these are not people I want to be responsible for my protection, nor are their sloppy and permissive managers.
Each time I fly, I hope that the situation has resolved itself in some obvious way. Each time I am gravely disappointed. You have two options: 1) change the policy to suit the whims of your daft or sadistic employees, or, 2) get your employees in line! By failing to adapt to a simple procedural change in the course of over a year, you’ve proven your entire organization to be incompetent.
Please let me know when it’s safe to expect TSA employees to follow TSA policy.
Doctor Barnett

Why are NYC dentists scumbags?

2005-09-06T08:35:00.000-04:00

Surely everyone living here has wondered: how do educated and respected professionals become as dishonest as New York City dentists? I’ve seen three different dentists in the city and all of them have tried to rip me off in one way or another. The first performed unnecessary fillings and claimed not to have the standard filling material paid for by my insurance. The second repeatedly filed insurance claims incorrectly and would bill me for more than the difference. On my third dentist last week, I found the entire office running a scam to eek an extra seventy-five dollars out of soft-looking customers like myself. Have some decency people!

The problem, as well as I can tell, is that dentists in the city expect to be paid more than those outside the city. (Everybody expects this. Bums expect this, and I'm sure they get it too.) Either the insurance companies won’t pay city dentists extra, or the difference isn’t enough to make them happy. I suspect they’re greedy enough to try to bump up the price either way. They see an insured customer paying nothing out-of-pocket as easy prey, someone just asking to be billed a little extra.

Never mind that many people pay a portion of their dental premiums themselves, and even if they don’t it’s lifted from their potential salary. When I walk into a dentist expecting a free cleaning, it’s because I’ve already paid for it over the past half year. If I were going to pay anything for the cleaning, I wouldn’t have insurance in the first place. You have no right to perform some outrageous-sounding procedure when I ask for a cleaning, then tell me that at my insurance rate it would cost over $400 dollars but that you’ll only bill me $75 because you’re nice. You’re like a character from a 1980s movie about New York. You’re a scumbag. Go back to Russia.

(I didn’t pay. Thanks for the free periodontal scaling, fuckers.)

Patches

2005-08-28T13:57:00.000-04:00

Our munkarp futon mattress, $145 from ikea, developed a hole after only a few months of use. The futon frame has poorly designed cast-iron legs that poked right through it. We tried nylon tape, and of course duct tape, but neither stopped the hole from growing to a gash.

We’re always finding foam chunks from the mattress around the apartment, making it seem like the whole stupid sofa/bed/futon was kaput after less than a year. I know ikea furniture is disposable, but come on, this is nuts.

As I proposed actually sewing a patch over the cut (which would have been a sitcom-worthy disaster) Mrlittlepants had the bright idea of using an iron-on patch. Of course! And K-mart would have that, if they have anything.

K-mart employees don’t think the store stocks iron-on patches — in fact they’re amused by the idea of it. Well they do have them, among other sewing merchandise oddly placed at check-out aisle 12 (go get ’em!). If it holds, feel free to call me Patches. (If it doesn’t hold, you’d best shut your mouth.)

Apple makes nice. I make mean.

2005-08-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

Our quirky iMac G5 had a little smoking problem back in April. It took weeks to fix, and I did my best to pressure the company into some kind of compensation but was briskly rebuffed.

Thousands of smoking iMacs later, Apple has come to their senses and is offering a partially extended warranty (it only covers the most poorly designed components). I’m thrilled about the protection, but even more exciting is the opportunity to get my revenge on a certain pencil pusher:

August 20, 2005

Patrick Ekstrand
Corporate Executive Relations
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014

Dear Mr. Ekstrand,

I am delighted to learn of the “iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues.” As my own iMac G5 had an overheating and smoking problem in March — a “power issue” you could say — I am relieved to see that repairs will be covered if the problem returns in the next year and two months.

Such a repair extension is exactly what I was asking for when I contacted you via the Better Business Bureau last April. In my opinion (though I am only a software programmer), a computer that has overheated to the point of visible smoke has a greater future risk of failure from partially damaged components. Furthermore, it is exceedingly rare for desktop computers to overheat. Such a serious malfunction suggests that multiple components were poorly designed and may prove faulty later.

(Please see attached copy of your response.)

Following your refusal of any compensation, I was particularly troubled by your last remark, “Apple considers this matter closed.” What callous arrogance! I suppose you can consider any matter you want closed, but if you sell enough people smoking computers, those matters have a way of opening themselves up again.

Thanks for the repair extension, and good luck closing other matters that cross your desk.

The Smug Doctor Barnett

S.F. : Safe for homophobes

2005-08-17T19:57:00.000-04:00

Waiting for Song 2022, I was lucky to overhear this snippet from the gentleman pictured, on the left:

I was expecting to see a lot of gay shit, you know, the gay boys, but it wasn’t too bad.

From the jumble of announcements I understood the next flight to be destined for Salt Lake. (The people had just arrived, and, well, plainly weren’t from New York.)

Great, a bunch of fat mormons literally talking shit about gays on their way out of San Francisco of all places. Why come? Why leave the trailer? Why come to tour a city when you hate city life? I should have given them a last-minute drag performance, but instead I snapped this photo and plotted weblog vengeance.

As I boarded the plane later I noticed the next flight was in fact for Atlanta, in my home state. Ahh, Georgie, you’re often on my mind. Each time I thank gay god I live so far from your borders.

Singing

2005-08-16T09:32:00.000-04:00

I think that Song is the future of air travel, at least for common people. We flew them to s.f. last weekend. Somehow we ended up with $200 (tax included) round-trip tickets. That’s not typical even for Song — thanks though!

I’ve never flown JetBlue. They’re one of those “cheap” airlines that always seems to be underpriced by a traditional airline. Every time I fly one of their routes I can find a ticket on Delta or American conspicuously priced $20 less. For this trip, at least I was able to try out the JetBlue-inspired Delta division.

Song is the happy ending, the barely missed catastrophe in deregulated air travel’s long degradation in service. Over the past few decades, and particularly after September 2001, we’ve watched as tickets became cheaper, meals sparser, and flight attendants bitchier. (Can you believe it? At some point it becomes theater.)

Nobody’s been very happy in coach class for at least a decade. The consolation is a cheap ticket, the fact that you’re taking a trip you wouldn’t have been able to afford in the old days. Air travel had become a painful but necessary stress-test on wings. Mentally, you had to shut down for the duration and think about Buddha (or your deity of choice).

Coach class used to feel like welfare. You’d sit around, trying to be patient, waiting for First Class’s proper service to terminate so airline employees could toss some pretzels at you. The handout wasn’t much, but dammit, you were entitled to it!

Song is proof that, in the sky too, capitalism is better than its alternatives. Nobody’s entitled to nuthin’ except television, a quiz game, and beverages. (They say this, in similarly careless language, as you’re preparing for takeoff.) Flight Attendants, for the first time in years, are forced to be convincingly cheerful beyond row 10 in order to sell snacks and meals. They hand out menus, hawk “food items” as they walk by, and you start to hate them a little less just because they’re trying. Up front, there isn’t even a first class section to resent. Suddenly, the plane just feels lighter.

Beyond à la carte food (quelle idée), it’s nice to see some useless old customs rightfully abandoned. Much of the language you hear over Song’s loud (no, really, LOUD) speakers has been updated for the 21st century. They’re still reading from a script, but the script is so cheeky and unprofessional that it’s obvious to everyone — yes, even flight attendants — that a little improvisation will not bring the plane down in flames. Tray tables in your “upright and locked position,” may you rest in peace.

I didn’t buy anything in either direction on the trip. We took p.b. sandwiches with us on the way out, and coming home I had eaten a big french toast breakfast to sustain me. Most people on the plane didn’t buy anything. The nice thing is, it’s up to you. If you think airline food is lousy (or, Buddha help us, you have a special diet) you can silently meditate the $7 you saved instead of complaining to everyone about it.

Mrlittlepants, incidentally, has different ideas about Song. (He returned one day prior and suffered weather delays.) He’s right about what happened to him, but mark my words: all hoi polloi air travel is going to look more and more like Song, and this polloi is glad for it.

Face it, tipping sucks

2005-08-10T10:08:00.000-04:00

Thanks to A. K. Brown (a.k.a. Pragmatist) for drawing my attention to this story. Pragmatist doesn’t support my anti-tipping jihad but was kind enough to send it anyway. I hate to be a francosnob, but consider the alternative to tipping:

The best service in the Western world is at the Michelin three-star restaurants of Europe, where a service charge replaces tipping. As a customer, it’s certainly pleasant to dine in France, where the menu prices are “service compris,” representing actual totals, including the price of food, taxes and service.

You're damn right it's pleasant. Well, ok, I can’t really afford three-star, but all restaurants in the hex operate that way. This is one thing they do right and we do wrong. (Unlike, say, personal finance.)

Coming soon: extreme cheap living

2005-08-09T22:36:00.000-04:00

Mrlittlepants has left his fancy PR job for something quite a bit more interesting on Broadway between Broome and Grand. Welcome to the neighborhood! Of course this will mean diving even further into moins cher living, if that’s possible. What’s early married life though, without being able to bore everyone a decade later with endless references to “pancakes for dinner?”

Skype is ready for normal people

2005-08-03T11:24:00.000-04:00

News flash: It’s become slightly easier to make phone calls with Skype and an iMac than it was for E.T. to beam a Speak ’n’ Spell message to outer space. This is a good thing, since I moved my cellphone to prepay and we don’t have a landline. (Come on Verizon, $35 a month minimum for a dumb phone line? $50 install? Who are you kidding?)

I’ve been trying to use Skype on the Mac for a year now and I remember the thankless reception early versions had for not making use of OS X’s built-in Bluetooth. (Or so we thought... turns plenty of bugs were built in to OS X Bluetooth as well.) At some point bt support was added to Skype, but it didn’t work consistently. After a few more months of updates to both Skype and OS X, thinks work pretty smoothly.

Mrlittlepants has a Motorola Bluetooth headset that he uses with his V600. Some time ago we paired it with the iMac and told Skype to use it, back in the day when nothing worked. But now, when we want to make a call, we disable the V600’s Bluetooth, make sure the headset is on, and dial. It works every time. 2 cents a minute! Pretty damn cool, if you ask me. Call quality is better than a cell phone but with a worse delay; all in all, it’s good enough.

Funny that now that the Skype and Bluetoooth hype has died down, the technologies are actually useful.

Redistribute the wealth: Eat out in NYC!

2005-07-27T09:03:00.000-04:00

It's frustrating to me, the “tip” situation. It's bad enough shopping in the U.S., with advertised prices jumping 5-8% at the register thanks to sales tax. And it’s bad enough eating outside of New York, adding in taxes and then another 15% for tip. (Why does everything have to be a damn accounting exercise?) But in the city you had better allocate 20% for the tip… at least that’s what I thought.

Last night I was generously offerred dinner with Mrlittlepant's office-folk at a middlebrow steakhouse. His company was even more generous towards the restaurant staff: they tipped $400. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Dinner for 12 came to $1,100, which is already la-la-land considering the food. But seriously, an over 35% tip? The service wasn’t even good, whatever that’s supposed to mean. People just came around and put down (rather ugly) plates, usually involving arms in my face, shoulders, or back. There were some free drinks involved, though there couldn’t have been that many considering the bill. (Again, all this ridiculous accounting. Waiter, bring me a green visor pronto!)

In trying to explain tip amounts in New York, people claim that most New Yorkers have been waiters at some point. I have no idea if this is true; I was a waiter once, but somehow I didn’t get the big tip bug. I waited tables as a teenager at a country club in Georgia, and that doesn't seem to have much to do with grown-up waiters making thousands in a night at New York restaurants.

I have an alternate explanation for big city tip inflation: business meals. It’s awfully easy to be generous with the working class when it’s not your money. I guess you get to feel like you’re sticking it to the man a little bit, teaming up with the cool characters serving you drinks. Meanwhile, the whole wait staff is cutting-up in the kitchen, making fun of your pompous attitude. Sounds like fun!

I’m asking all of you big spenders of other people’s money to cut it out. You’re driving up the cost of food, drinks, and (most obscenely) tips. You’ve pretty much priced me out of the market. We hardly eat out, Mrlittlepants and I. We can’t afford it. The waiter from last night probably can. Why did I bother with college, anyway?

Message to corporate wannabe marxists: put away your platinum cards, for the love of God!

The Rager

2005-07-23T18:05:00.000-04:00

Mrlittlepants and I are getting ready for our party, one we hope Marissa Cooper would call a “rager.” We’re serving sangria that’s been mellowing in the fridge since yesterday, and tequila based drinks, and everything else really. M.J. videos are playing in the makeout room… if the party has a theme, it’s potpourri. We’re setting out these cute little tags advertising our web site, Daydrinking, that we hope people will take home and rediscover tomorrow. We haven’t told many people about the site yet so this is pretty exciting, sort of a coming out party for our baby.

STILL paying $50 a month for your mobile phone?

2005-07-21T12:46:00.000-04:00

Everything is going as I have foreseen.

After a week of unexplained bureaucratic delays, I’m all set up with t-mobile pre-pay. Sweet! As ghetto as it sounds, this is the bomb. Once your regular t-mobile contract expires, you can convert it to a pre-pay/pay-as-you-go/to-go/whatever-they-call-it-this-week account. That’s a pretty good deal, since you would normally have to pay for a SIM card even if you already have an unlocked GSM phone.

The rate per minute depends on how many you buy at a time, the best value being 1000 minutes (anytime, of course) for $100. Oops, forgot about tax. $108. That’s right, it’s exactly the sales tax. No more of that $40 contract somehow costing you $50 a month. I feel better already!

This has got to be a more sane way to pay for service. You don’t have to worry about the time of the day, week, or month that it is, or whether or not you’re even going to use your phone very much a particular month. No strings!

Of course, if you talk on your phone very much the savings evaporate pretty quickly. But who’s talking anymore? Blackberries have invaded, for the rest of us, New Yorkers have finally discovered text messaging. How many months can I go with my one thousand minutes? I’ll let you know…

Beer Aid

2005-07-14T20:53:00.000-04:00

Continuing my alcoholic theme… you must be crazy if you buy beer in Manhattan anywhere besides Rite Aid. They always have some kind of special going on. Mrlittlepants and I are now on our third case of budweizers, 18 bottles for $11! The weird part is that it’s bottles for the same price as cans. Rite Aid, you’ve earned my unending loyalty. Food Emporium, you’re now almost completely useless. Of course, if you’re too good to drink the same branded beer they might be chugging in the midwest (for example), there’s not much I can do for you.

Where to get wine

2005-07-08T19:42:00.000-04:00

If you like drinking wine regularly (or a little too regularly), Warehouse Wines & Spirits has the best prices in the city, and possibly the whole eastern seaboard. (It’s not France, but it’s as close you’re going to get.) They excel in other areas as well: being complete jerks. Mrlittlepants and I do our best to laugh it off, but the truth is that both of us hate to walk in the store. The salesmen inside are pushy, large, old white men (you know the type) and they always try to upsell. — Customer: Is this a dry wine? — You don’t want that one. Try this one. — Is it dry? — It’s a better quality wine. — Uhh… thanks. They may not know anything about wine, but they’re pros at engaging customers who don’t want to be bothered and directing them towards the more expensive wines, eager to condescend if you don’t follow their recommendations. Our advice: wear headphones and ignore them completely. Eventually they will walk away, befuddled. You may think you’re home free once you’ve got a bottle in hand, but don't underestimate the rudeness potential of the crazed check-out staff. At this point you should remove your headphones, do as you’re told, and scowl at them so you don’t feel like a complete flunkey. It will be over soon, then you can go home and pop out that cork. (Or better yet, unscrew that top!)

Metro North does hiking

2005-07-05T20:19:00.000-04:00

Scouring the metro north map for an upstate stop that might have cheap and convenient car rentals, I decided to figure out what the Appalachian Trail stop is all about. It’s not a town near the trail as I first supposed; it's actually a stop just for hikers. Leland and I took the train up on the Sunday before July 4th and had a nice 12 mile hike to Nuclear Lake (weird name!) and back. Taking the train to a trail is sweet. All you need to do is get to Grand Central with a book to read during the almost 2 hour trip and you can have a day on the A.T. To avoid missing the stop, you have to barge into the conductor’s party shack at the very back of the train (even if the back window is duct-taped, as ours was, and the conductor is a real jerk.) My next thought is to use this for a one way backpacking trip that ends at a different train stop. It’s like taking SNCF into the Pyrenees, except it’s actually a train and not a bus. Fun!

So much for the “citi”

2005-06-22T08:33:00.000-04:00

Without much fuss I was able to close my Citibank account this morning. I’ve had it since I first moved into New York, over four years ago. I thought that after such a long relationship the breakup would be messy, but c.b. stayed calm and didn’t make any last-minute declarations of love or, “I promise, it’s going to be different this time.” So, here’s to a clean break. Though I’d been considering ending things for a while, particularly during the lengthy trek to their nearest ATM, it was unexpected non-Citibank ATM charges that brought things to a head. After my trip to Barbados with mrlittlepants, I noticed a $4.50 charge from my bank for using other banks’ ATMs three times. I know this isn’t unheard of, but it is new to my account. In France I used my card dozens of times over the course of 9-months and certainly would have noticed such a charge. I had stuck with Citi because it was one of the few banks that didn’t have a weirdo charge for using bank cards abroad (WaMu, Chase, tsk-tsk). This kind of change, which applies inside the U.S. too, is even worse! When I called Citi for an explanation, I was told that “EZ Checking” accounts opened in New York City always have always had this fee. My insistence that I had not paid it when I lived in France was met with the claim that records older than 3 months were unavailable to the citi-skeptic on the line. I offered that, perhaps, the fee was lifted during the time that my account address was outside of the city. “No.” I asked for an alternative explanation, and got none. Apparently, I was just lying. I requested a statement online to use as evidence, and three days later I had my proof. Indeed, I had not paid those fees. I wanted to print up the statement and shove it in the face the disbelieving account representative, but that would have required a trip to the Indian subcontinent. I decided it wouldn't be satisfying to even call the Indian-skeptic hotline a second time; instead I would just find another bank. First Republic, if anyone’s interested, has free worldwide ATMs. Not only do they not charge you, but they refund any fees you incur. American Express had a checking account like this a few years ago, but it was limited to uselessly few transactions. This one is unlimited. The caveat is that the average minimum balance is high ($2,500 OMG$$$!), but like most banks these days the balance is ignored if you have direct deposit. (That charitably applies even for my paltry salary.) If you live in New York, California, or Las Vegas (what?), you may as well switch to this bank. Then you can stop wondering the streets looking for your bank’s ATM and just use any old machine with a slot and keypad. (By the way, the list of things that are better in France just lost an item! Things are getting pretty lopsided at least in the banking department, Pierre.)

Keep your cars off our island, please.

2005-06-12T13:18:00.000-04:00

So what’s the big idea? What should New York City ask of the rest of the country?

I walk to work every day. I walk almost everywhere. I take the subway about once a week, and taxis less often than that. I have had enough of being bullied by automobiles of every shape and size, from all corners of the country, as I cross the street.

It amazes me that out-of-towners have no respect for human life. Perhaps they’re unfamiliar with pedestrians. Or — not that it should make any difference when bearing down a two-ton colossus on a human being — they’re not used to American citizens on foot, just a scurrying underclass. In any case, I refuse to scurry, and I won’t be surprised if I’m run over for it some day.

Does any tourist need an automobile? Surely they don’t need cars more than the millions of New Yorkers who do without. I don’t think that it it’s a stretch to say that, if we arrange for ample and reasonably-priced parking at train stations on all corners of Manhattan, we’d be doing them a favor by requiring that they check their Durangos at the door.

Like everyone else, I’ve also been run down by taxis and drivers who, unfortunately, reside in the city limits. But on the whole, out of state cars have a corner on the Manhattanite terrorizing market. They’re plain ignorant on city driving, and disrespectful when they should be grateful for the privilege to drive here. (I know you don’t honk your horn in the South — I’m from there! — so what makes you think you can do it here? Shut the hell UP!)

Though taxis seem to be driven by speed-crazed maniacs, there’s a consistency (and therefore predictability) to their antics. They rarely intrude into crosswalks during red lights, and they know to look for hapless walkers when they make right and left turns. (Praise God!) I hate taxis, but given they choice, I’d take them over lost John Deere drivers any day.

So who, exactly, would I permit to drive a vehicle into Manhattan?

Anyone whose drivers’ license address lies in New York City.
Anyone driving a commercial vehicle registered for business in the city (taxis, shipping vehicles, etc.).

Everyone else can just suck it. The lives saved from the reduced traffic volume would be justification enough, compounded by the worst-of-the pack status of the driver’s we’d eliminate.

From a New Yorker’s perspective, you’d stand to benefit greatly whether you’re a driver or not. Drivers would know that their precious automobiles are safer from being “totaled” on the streets, and walkers would know that their precious bodies are safer from being “crushed” by the next Hummer from Hackettstown. The only New Yorkers who lose big are parking garage owners, whose current embarrassingly high prices would have to come down to attract more city folk to use their services, or their real estate freed up for some more useful enterprise.

Can we do this? I would expect immediate protest and bureaucratic road-blocks from state and national government. We need to fight for it, but we can win. This city has suffered the gravest terrorist attack in the history of the world for Christ’s sake: we have to look after our safety!

So long as we let any licensed driver from anywhere in the world drive a vehicle into Manhattan, we’re leaving a tempting hole open for the next attack. As our police force has informed us, a suicide bombing van in front of the mythical freedom towers (or the less mythical Chrysler and Empire State buildings) could bring them down. We can not count on every licensing authority in the country to flag terrorists; we can only hope that our own can.

Terrorism is not my greatest concern, to be completely honest. What can I say, I’m scared to death of glitzy, boat-sized vehicles driven by similarly overgrown and misplaced nihilists-on-wheels. These people must be stopped, for a host of reasons, and the sooner the better.

Das (political) Kapital

2005-06-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

Remember from four years ago our regretfully earned terrorist “political capital?” The federal government went on a middle-eastern shopping spree with it, buying some things that New Yorkers found tasteless without even bothering to consult us. (Conquering Baghdad is so B.C.)

Perhaps things would have been different if these purchases hadn’t been overseen by Republican mayors. Proper leadership, despite party affiliations, would have reminded the country and the world that the greatest victim of the attack, New York City, did not support much of the retaliation taken in its defense. It is our city and our safety at stake, isn’t it? Surely, that gives us a claim on the defensive strategy.

Unfortunately, that claim was preempted by a very hasty transfer of victimization after the September 11^th attacks. At the time it seemed generous enough, if useless, that the entire country declared itself a victim of the “Attack on America.” It was quaint to see magnetic American flags stuck to SUVs from Omaha to Austin. Sure, they weren’t attacked and won’t likely ever be, but it’s nice to see them fired up about New York’s safety, right?

My oh my, look what came of that. Seeing as everyone was invited to the victim-party, they took it upon themselves to plan their revenge, and with characteristic subtlety. Like a bad boyfriend, America has gone and beaten up anyone that even gave its darling a funny look. (Of course, most Americans hate that darling, but I’m already waist-deep in cynicism so let’s leave that part alone.)

It’s a done deed: Texas made off with New York’s political capital, spent it all, and then kept going without looking back. Nobody likes the U.S. now. Guys – I’m talking to you, cowboys! – you owe us big time.

We’ll never get that global political capital back (and the last thing we want is a fresh deposit) but there’s a different currency that, oddly, we haven’t touched: national political capital. I’m not talking about begging for federal money here. We’ve seen Heimatland defense dollars go places they’re not needed, sometimes hilariously, and we never really got the entire 9-11 handout that the feds promised us. But it’s time to let all that go. Let’s think politically. Let’s think about something that, as a city, we’d love to do, but we need national support for. Boy, do I have some ideas…

More Quicktime fun

2005-05-21T11:53:00.000-04:00

The newest version of the Eye TV software, 1.8, has a H.264 preset. The starting quality settings are too high, but I found that if I dial it down enough it can do the encoding in a fairly reasonable time and it looks darn good. I’m using 1024 x 576 resolution, 2000 kbits/sec, and 29.97 fps. A 40 minute t.v. show comes out just over 600 MB. Sweet!

EyeTV 500

2005-05-08T13:38:00.000-04:00

MrLittlePants and I jumped on the EyeTV bandwagon last week, deciding that we need to see Alias just as soon as anyone else. If you’re entering the HDTV world for the first time, be prepared for some orientation — it's not as simple as you’d like. The highest quality resolution is enormously huge, with more horizontal pixels than a 20-inch iMac has. Furthermore, it takes a surprising amount of processing power just to display that many pixels in motion; again, more than the iMac has. The HD broadcasts that we’re getting aren’t that big. They’re 1280x720. Even so, the EyeTV software drops half the pixels to make sure it can display the stream smoothly. I think this is unnecessary, at least with the increased effeciency of Quicktime 7, and I hope that future EyeTV software upgrades allow me to watch MPEG-2 streams at that resolution in full quality. Until then, here’s a trick to get that quality without even having to buy the Quicktime MPEG-2 decoder:

Export the recording from EyeTV.
Choose Quicktime as the format.
In the Quicktime options, verify that MPEG-4 is the codec and change key frames to automatic.
Export that ho.

I wish that H.264 didn't take so long to encode. I tried using that and gave up after 24 hours. Yikes. That's so strangely long, I feel like something is just broken. But with these settings, it encodes in about 3 times the playback time. The size, unfortunately, is only a little smaller than the original MPEG-2 stream. I tried 3ivx and it didn't look as good. Anyway, we got the hardware. Now we’re just waiting for ever smoother software from Elgato and Apple.

Book spam

2005-04-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

On pages 57-56 of Tapestry in Action:

Tapestry’s HTML template parser … can handle the kind of HTML you’ll find in the wild: unquoted attribute values, mixed uppercase and lowercase, single or double quotes, unquoted attribute values, and lots of additional whitespace. [Emphasis mine.]

My, oh my. I’ve always cynically suspected that popular software programming books are written to be intentionally bulky and, as if that were justification for it, expensive. This one is over five hundred pages and costs $44.95. How do you overlook a mistake like the one above? Intentionally.

I love Tapestry by the way. And I’m happy to see its creator make some money off a book. But please – hold the pulp! (And those ridiculous cover illustrations too, Manning.)

Barbados photos up

2005-04-23T11:52:00.000-04:00

It's taken two weeks to pick out the best photos and clean them up with the latest iPhoto. I hardly need Photoshop anymore, which I'm thinking of renaming “remove unwanted objects with the amazing patch tool… shop.”

Rotten apple

2005-04-17T12:14:00.000-04:00

We’ve been pretty distracted by our iMac troubles over here, even though the computer is working ok now. (The burnt plastic smell diminishes a little each day). To calm ourselves down and bring an end to this unfortunate chapter of our mac-lives, we’ve issued the following complaint to the Better Business Bureau: On March 26, 2005 my 5-month-old computer began to smell of burnt plastic and eventually emitted smoke. I unplugged it, called Apple and eventually spoke with Brandon who acknowledged the gravity of the problem and, after running through a legal questionnaire, referred me to local repair centers. I dropped off the computer the following Monday. A week later, I learned that they were waiting on a power supply from Apple with “no estimated ship date.” During this time, I was without a computer that I depend on greatly. I called AppleCare on April 6th for more information on the power supply. I waited on hold numerous times, ranging from 5 to 20 minutes each time, speaking to several employees. Each one said that there was "no ship date" for the part. By the time I spoke with Andrew Creswell, I was frustrated. Mr. Creswell made it all worse. He was argumentative and did not sympathize with me at all, as though the problem were perfectly normal. He compared my broken computer to a broken automobile. After 10 minutes with Mr. Creswell, I asked to speak with his manager. He replied that call center managers handle “day-to-day” affairs and do not speak with customers. This must be the company's policy, since he was clearly reading from a script. I asked to file a complaint about him, and he claimed to do so, giving me the reference number 47153395. I continued to request some kind of compensation. A defective computer that overheats and smokes, less than half way through its one year warranty, merits a warranty extension to cover other potentially scorched parts. He offered to sell me this extension at the normal rate, and nothing else. April 11th, my computer was finally ready for pickup. I'm sure that the hour I endured on the phone with Apple shortened this time, but I am not at all satisfied with the treatment I received, nor the outcome. My attempts to complain further with the company have been thwarted: the company has no complaint or customer service form on their Web site.