Election Something on the Way

November 6th, 2008

I’ll have something to say on the election, I just don’t know quite what it is yet, something along the lines of On Being a Millennial. Also, It seems that my North Carolina prediction is on the cusp of coming true, if they ever call that darn state. But really, my prediction was that Ohio would continue to fail and that North Carolina was way around that problem. Which, is not what happened, and for that I offer big Thank You to Ohio and to all my friends and family there. Also, Indiana, I really, I just didn’t know you had it in you, you’ve blown my mind (and it was good). While I write an actual response to the election I ofter you this image, from digg, described as the “Saddest Picture You’ll See All Day:”

.

Update:
North Carolina has finally been called, for Obama, as predicted! Also, I was thinking, whichever Gilmore Girls writer decided to have Rory follow Obama on the campaign trail as her fictional post college job, good show.

Halloween Inspired Dream

November 6th, 2008

I don’t tend to remember my dreams very often, so when I do I get excited and write them down as quickly as possible. Then I decided it might be fun to let my subconscious lose on the net. Anyways, this may be a fun story, but um don’t try to read too much into it:

We were at some sort of huge mall complex. So huge that it has a green line like, light rail in the parking lot, that sort of just goes around to all the different buildings. It circles the parking, not the building, there are multiple buildings, but all around the central parking. It is night. I am on the train. I am not headed anywhere in particular. I have some friends with me as I am not alone, but they do not feature prominently. I am wearing my Halloween costume, it may be Halloween, I’m not sure, but it is perfectly normal for me to be wearing it. Other people may, or may not be in costume. I am on the train when costume attacks the attention of a blogger girl who is clearly a hybrid between iJustine, and this girl who was dressed as sexy Darth Vadar at the party I was at last night, but she is not wearing the Darth Vadar mask, or the over sized sunglasses iJustine often wears. She has a fancy bound notebook which reinforces the blogger thing, which is not a costume. She writes her blogs/ takes notes in it. We talk over many stops, this mall place must be huge because we don’t go around in a circle, and it’s a long time. Now waking the conversation escapes me, but its engaging and eventually she’s snuggling me like a cat which feels great in her silk costume. (Ok clearly I thought this girl had a great costume)

Shortly after a large frat boy type, clearly not yet a man, gets on and sits down. In the train car there are doors that can section off different parts (unlike the green line). The doors must be left open (and tucked into the walls) at all times so the driver can see the whole train car and watch for misconduct. The frat boy’s costume or whatever involved showing off his boxers way too much, and makes it problematic for him to keep his pants on, but while hes sitting it’s not a problem, and while crude it is not out of place. He has a friend who sits across from him who does not feature prominently. After a few stops he starts to fiddle around with some things. He does so discreetly, the driver can’t see, but I can. I am sitting closer to the front of the train and the driver than he is. He is on the other side of one of the doors. At the next stop he pulls one of the doors half out and begins rolling a joint behind it, possibly out of view of the driver. This is ballsy, in my mind, and stupid, but befitting his character. (I guess maybe this is on my mind due to the decriminalization of marijuana ballot questions coming up, who knows, there was not any pot at the party, that’s for sure.) He gets pretty far along with his joint rolling, possibly done, and may have handed it clear across the aisle to his friend, but he makes a lot of motion getting to the materials to make another one in his mostly not on pants. He begins rolling, but at this point we’re at a stop and the driver notices. He comes rushing back to put a stop to the illegal activity and takes the two boys off the train and to the mall police immediately. Leaving the rest of us on the train, with nothing to do.

This is the end of the line. The track stops, sort of, it just goes under some legally parked cars. It does eventually stop beyond them, without looping. The driver failed to properly park the train, so it begins to roll forward. Slowly at first, but then fast enough that we notice. The train has emptied more now but my friends and the blogger are still on it now wondering what to do. First how to stop it for our own sake. I take charge since I’m wearing my Redline costume with a T logo, and this is essentially the green line, its certainly operated by the T, and the costume makes me most qualified. We’re futzing around in the divers area, we find the throttle, but its all the way off. We can’t figure out what you have to do to put it into reverse. We try pulling backwards, but it won’t budge. We need to also hold a button or something. We’re getting closer to the cars, about one car length back it dawns on me. Break peddle! I lean over to look for one, it is there, and I begin to push it with my hands. It is really hard to push with my hands, but we’re maybe starting to slow down. We plow into the first of the parallel parked cars, leaving a large dent on the bumper. It in turn hits the next one and a chain of bangs is heard, but we’re slowing. Possibly due to the collision or maybe my breaking efforts. Eventually a occupied parked car moves to avoid being part of the fender bender and the bangs stop. The train is literally going like 3 miles an hour or less here, so its all in slow motion, not intentionally slow, actually slow due to the speed involved. Before hitting anything else we come to a stop.

Having witnessed the crash (the train is perfectly unharmed) some of the observers come running over to help. Most of them are gawkers. One of them is a girl who apparently works for the train line. She is most helpful. She knows how to operate the train and make it go backwards. She backs up the train back to the last stop, which is maybe 100 feet back on the track. She applies the parking break. She is emotionally wrought. Apparently it is her job to take care of the trains at the end of the line, but she was goofing off and now there is property damage. This is a bad night for her now, but she keeps a light spirit. With her, we leave the train, we head to her boss to make a report. He is in a kiosk sort of back around the last curve before the stop. Maybe 200 yards away, but his view of the last stop is hidden by a mall building. There is grass over by the kiosk. We must have made the report, and we’re all milling about in the grass, keeping the T girl happy, and generally having a fine little time. She is not losing her job, she thinks me the hero, I bring up how incapable I was at actually stopping the train. I cite how long it took me to think of a break peddle and then my inability to actuate it for some time. Despite my objections she has described me as the hero to her boss, who later comes out with some sort of rewards sheet where you circle the reward you’d like. It has a bunch of logos and names of famous people you can meet and other sponsors who’ll give you free stuff, none of which I’ve heard of at all. Eventually I notice in the right side middle of the page is the American League Baseball logo. Its a free trip to an AL game, which somehow guarantees that it is a Red Sox game, despite that their logo is not present. It’s unclear if they will be good seats, but I select that. At this point I wake up and the dream is over.

And that’s the story. I definitely want to goto a sox game, I didn’t make it again this year, so free tickets qualify as a happy ending

Halloween 2008

November 4th, 2008

This year’s Halloween was a lot of fun. I went to a party hosted by Mary, a new friends of mine whom I met through another new friend of mine, Sparky. They were both on the hike in the blue hills a few weeks back. After Paul told me about his awesome Dr. Horrible costume I decided that I needed to get creative this year. My old stand by priest outfit never did me much good, and it is definitely lame. After some significant brainstorming on the way to a Wednesday Night Dinner at Pho Pasteur in Chinatown I came up with my idea. I would go as the Red Line (the subway line serving Cambridge). I dressed in all black, the priest outfit actually, and pinned a red ribbon from my feet along my legs and back, over my shoulder and onto my arm for the line. I marked and labled each spot. I think it came out pretty good.

I was greeted at the party by an Obama pumpkin, and a scary Sarah Palin pumpkin, among many others. I didn’t carve a pumpkin this year. I went upstairs and found a room full of good costumes. Mary was a tropical bird, which after a short demo I was able to guess; apparently, I was the only one to guess right all night. There was also a girl with a green double ended triangle over her head which I deduced, after some pause as being from The Sims. There was Able Lincoln and his girlfriend sexy Darth Vadar (in combat boots). There was a Mormon (with biblical flash cards), a fairy godfather, Colonel Sanders, and Whitney made a convincing butterfly, even if she doesn’t think so. The best costume at the party was a guy who came with a home made KISS costume, including home made 6 inch platform boots. The party was fun, the highlight of my night was schooling Mary in Wii Tennis, Bowling, and Golf before she came back and beat me by a slim margin in golf.


Biking to Get Somewhere

November 4th, 2008

Last Wednesday I took my bike out for it’s first real trip. One where biking was being used a transportation, not a Sunday morning jaunt. It felt good, until I got home and my legs were like mush. The stops on the trip are Wednesday night dinner at Midwest Grill in Inman Square and then Government Center. The ride to Inman wasn’t too bad, which is good because its hard to get to Inman any other way, but next time I need to go to government center I’m just going to lock up the bike and hop the T both ways. Here’s the map of my travels that night:


View Larger Map

Dinner at the Midwest Grill was expensive. It was $31 after tax and tip, which is the most I’ve ever paid for a Wednesday Night Dinner. We do try to keep things on the inexpensive side. The Midwest Grill does not offer midwest type food, but rather is apparently a Brazilian BBQ type place. Brazillian BBQ is similar to Mongolian in that there is only one thing on the menu and it is all you can eat. The difference is that instead of concocting bowls of yummy goodness, you load up a plate with sides. Once you’ve got your plate you sit down and waiters come around to your table with various types of meat on two foot long skewers. They cut you off a piece and you enjoy while waiting for the next waiter to come by with something else. It was an interesting experience. I would go back, if there was any chance in hell that I’d ever be able to eat enough that my $31 would seem like a good deal. Of course, I paid $35 for dinner on Friday, and ate less, so I don’t know why I feel like I got such a bad deal, but I do. Part of that may have been the service. We had a table of six men, but on every single item a nearby table of 4 with two women got first dibs and larger better cuts, we always got seconds. It seemed unfair, but there was little we seemed to be able to do about it.

Sunday Bike Ride

October 30th, 2008

After living in Boston for more than two years without managing to ride a bike once I finally went for a ride this weekend. About two weeks ago I helped Andreas, one of my room mates, fix up one of the many bikes we found in our basement. Alas, when we got done fixing it up it was already dark outside, which is not the best time to give a new bike a try. The bike is a pretty old school road bike, and I’m not really used to the placement of the breaks on the overly curved handle bars or the placement of the shifters on the frame, below the top bar. I imagine I’ll get used to these things. I’m just glad that we found a bike that fits me lying around asking to be used, as I was not excited about the chances of finding something good on craig’s list.

I wanted to wait for a nice day when I could ride it in the light some to get used to things. I very much wanted to try it twice earlier in the week, but those were ruined by rain and by darkness. To make sure that didn’t happen again I started working on the bike first thing Sunday morning. Despite fixing it up I still had some work to do on it. First I had to attach the bike lock mount, and then I had to fix the tail light. The bike has a little wheel rim generator on it to power two lights. The wire for the tail light wasn’t connected to the generator, but it was pretty easy to take the connecting piece apart and twist the tail light’s wire in with the headlight. There is only one wire for each light, so the return path must be the bike frame itself. That seems pretty neat, if unnecessary. After doing all that and testing my helmet on the low ceiling in the basement I was off. I planned to do the fresh pond loop, and I didn’t want to spend much time on actual roads, but my downstairs neighbor, Karen, suggested I ride along Memorial Drive which is closed to cars on Sunday mornings for recreational use.


View Larger Map

Indiana, I Didn’t Know

October 23rd, 2008

Look at that map. That map looks very, excitedly strange! It all due to the “Big Ten Battleground Poll,” a poll conducted by the University of Illinois, the University of Iowa, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin over October 19-22. The results are somewhat unbelievable. They give Obama a 10 point lead in Indiana, which is a huge swing. It is enough of a swing to turn the average of polls (which is what the above map is based on) for Indiana in to the tossup category. The Ohio numbers (Obama +12) move the avergae to Obama+6, which is into the leaning category. The detailed results, which I had to take a look at are here. Obama may well need to revise his plan to throw some of that September $150millon at Georgia, South Carolina, North Dakota and Arizona to include Indiana.

I’ve pretty much had it with voters in Ohio, so I was and may continue to still write off Ohio as a lost cause. I think the more sure path to an Obama victory lies through Virgina and North Carolina. While this poll does not update the numbers for those two states, any chance of a swing in Indiana bodes very well for demographically the more Obama friendly North Carolina, which is my big call, based more on hope than on numbers at this point.

50 States Party

October 21st, 2008

Last Friday I attended a 50 states party, an attempt to better educate ourselves about the 50 states during this election season. In reality it was just a party, with some pretty tame costumes. There were about 25 people there, but not quite 25 states as many people just assumed no one else would dress as California. I went as Kentucky (pictured) and was pretty happy with how my costume turned out. Actually, the cheap Kentucky bourbon was not mine, but it fit the theme. The chicken doubled as dinner and a costume, so I think that’s worth extra points. A few of the other states and the costumes that I remember being there.

  • Kansas – John Deer Tractor Driver
  • New Jersey – Indian Gas Station Attendant
  • Louisiana – Make Levees, not War
  • District of Columbia – Beltway
  • Ohio – Joe the Plumber
  • Hawaii – Hula Girl
  • Maine – Lobster
  • California
  • Alabama
  • Missouri
  • Maryland
  • North Carolina
  • Pennsylvania
  • Texas

That’s about all I can remember as far as the represented states go.

Apple Picking

October 19th, 2008

I spent my Columbus Day holiday trying something new. I went apple picking at Honey-Pot Hill Orchard in Stow, MA. It was a date, but due to a policy similar the Bush Administration’s policy against discussing ongoing investigations that’s all I have to say on that. The orchard opened at 10pm and we got there soon after, which was a good thing. The place filled up fast, the parking lot was full by the time we doubled back around to it ~45 minutes later.

It was the last day of the season at this Orchard. We had heard that the pickings were slim at two other orchards that friends had gone to on Saturday, so we were surprised to find a wealth of Red Delicious apples immediately on the right side of the entrance. The pickings were great there, and we threw two in the bag and each had one. Eating on the spot is how one reduces the cost of apple picking down to near the cost of buying apples in the store, since you can only carry out what will fit in the bag and the bags aren’t cheap. Although, given apples’ status as not even my third favorite fruit (Pears, Peaches, and Strawberries all certainly top apples), a full bag would be too many. But it was still a good deal; there was some sort of $4 discount because it was the last day of the season and pickings were slim. We didn’t know what they were talking about, as there seemed to be plenty of apples.

Then we found out, as we moved beyond the close grove of Red Delicious into a grove of Macintosh Apples. The pickings there were much more slim. There weren’t any at arm reach. I got a few by jumping, and one or two by climbing the tree, which was fun. I really should climb trees more often. Perhaps that is what I should do from now on when there is a nice day without enough wind to fly the kite. We later found that there were some more plentiful Macintosh trees on the other side of the Orchard. There were also many Empire apples in another area. Empires, I think, are the quintessential apple for the teacher type. All in all I think we got six or seven different varieties.

Done with apple picking we tried out the hedge maze, which was amazingly enough actually tall enough for us. The tops of the hedges were maybe two feet above my head. However, the hedges were a little thin at times, and it cost $3 a person. I felt a little like one of the patrons at a Roller Coaster Tycoon park, being charged for everything. The cost of the hedge maze was offset by the $0.70 apple cider doughnuts. They were good, but would have been better had we opted for the cinnamon and sugar topping. By now it was almost noon and the place was packed, to the point of it being more than a bit difficult to walk around without running over some small child. Having, more apples in our bag than I’ve eaten in the past year we decided that was enough.

Better than the Daily Show

October 19th, 2008

These videos from the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner have been making their rounds, and I think they are better than the daily show. There has been some debate as to which, the Obama or McCain, speech is better. I think the Obama speech is better, but don’t judge the McCain speech until you get to the end.

My Third Geohash

October 15th, 2008

Last Saturday, October 11, 2008 I went on my third geohash expedition. Geohashing has been dead in Boston for about two months now, but we decided to go anyways. The hash was in Canton, MA near where my friend Sparky, whom I met at the first geohash meetup in Hopedale, grew up. It was also near the Blue Hills reservation, which has an abundance of hiking trails and a great view of Boston from the top. The plan was to go to the hash around 2pm, go hiking, and then get some dinner. Sparky and I joined our usual Thursday Night Social Gaming compatriots Mary and Whitney for the expedition. At the hash we met a xkcd forum user, Greg, who was also at the hash where I met Sparky. The hash was in front of a suburban home, and the residents of that home were there, outside, so were not able to get closer than about 120 feet to the hash, which was well into their yard.

The hiking was more successful. It was a popular activity in the nice weather, so much so; that the parking lots were full. But the trails were not. The hike up the hill was very rocky, as in walking on large slabs of rock making up the hillside. Whitney pointed out that it was decidedly different from hiking in Michigan, where the rocks live under the ground and there aren’t any hills. The hike up didn’t seem to cover all that much elevation, but the view from the tower at the top was worth the hike. The hike down took much longer, but took a more circuitous, less rocky route. All and all it was a great use of a beautiful October day. For more info on the trip, check the meetup page.