I'm sorry, but I think this is hilarious.  :)  Now I hope it snows all the time!

I wrote this on the car parked behind me after I got a spot on the right side... yet again.  Its quite a streak I'm on. 

Back to the Gita again, which I’m still reading… I’m a terribly inconsistent reader. I pick up a book for like three pages at a time, in between two stops on the 6 train or for ten minutes right before bed. I think the only book I’ve ever really been hooked on to the point where I’d sit and read for hours on end was the Fountainhead.

Ok, so I’m sitting in DTUT at the moment and I can’t help but be distracted by one “open mike night” performer. I’m not sure if I can really explain the kind of… well… it’s a bit like a car accident. I don’t really want to keep looking, but I’m inexplicably drawn to it. This froggy looking dude has a deathgrip on his guitar and he’s bouncing back and forth between grindspitting his words through his mouth and lightly whispering. The material is touching a wide variety of areas, from violence to corporations. Its very uncomfortable to watch. The girl who runs it doesn’t seem like she’s exactly sure to take this, but I’m sure she’s hoping he doesn’t attempt to just go on forever. I wonder what would happen if he just continued singing this chopping corporate song all night. I’m pretty sure there are no bouncers at DTUT. Now the next guy is up, singing about “Maggots in the Eye of Love.” Oh brother. What ever happened to fuzzy pink bunnies?

Anyway… the Gita. The Bhagavhad Gita talks about two forces in your lives: “the upward thrust of evolution and the downward pull of our evolutionary past.” I agree with that and I’ll take it one step further by putting forth a derivative of that idea: We spend every moment of our lives either making more of ourselves or bringing ourselves down. What did you do today? Did you become something more by taking part in today, or are you less than you were for having experienced it?

DTUT ran out of green tea… in both of the brands that they carry. I didn’t know what else to choose. I picked oolong. Its garbage. I am a creature of habit, but my habits are thoughtfully chosen and they make me happy.

This is the fifth verse of the sixth chapter:

“Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self.”

Basically, your life is what you make of it. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that the major influences on the outcome of my life were beyond my control. I believe in our ability to “reshape” ourselves out of sheer force of will. Without the ability to impact our lives in meaningful ways—for our own will to be the most meaningful influence in our lives, then we are just adrift. I don’t like the idea of being adrift.

Bob Lutz is now a blogger, and to celebrate my GM design pride, I'm posting my wheels proudly on my blog.  :)   

Now if I could only afford to keep the car AND buy a one bedroom apartment in the city.  The car was well priced... the apartments... not so much.  :(

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Ok, so anyone who has ever been to DTUT and tried to connect to their free wireless has probably undergone the same issues, especially if you are set to automatically obtain an IP address when you connect. 

However, this random guy clued me in to how to fix it and I've been connect all night, busy working hard on my new Success Blogging site.  You have to set your network connection to connect to a specific IP address...   

Go to your Internet Protocal (TCP/IP) properties...

Instead of "Obtain an IP address automatically" click both options to use specific addresses. 

Type in the following:

IP Address:  198_168_1_xxx     Instead of xxx, I used 156, but you can't all use the same one, so try 155, 157, 158 or something.

Subnet mask:   255_255 _255_0     Why do they call this a mask?  No idea, but this pops up automatically for me.

Default gateway: 192_168_1_254

DNS info:

Preferred DNS server:  151_202_0_84    

Alternate DNS server:    151_203_0_84

Hopefully, this works for you.  Now you don't have to bother the cool counter people, like the kid with "C A $ H" tattooed on his fist.  I'm sure they could use one or two less moochers asking them to reset the connection.  Leave them alone and buy a brownie.

I snapped this in the morning...

You know what's awesome about snow?

No alternate side.

_______________________________

Perhaps I should start my Christmas shopping now.

I was a little overzealous with the plastic utensils at lunch today, causing my fork to break and slice my finger. 

Now we have to reset that sign:

General Motors Asset Management:  0  days without an onsite injury.

This isn't my car.  My car didn't have snow on it because I had just used it, so I scraped this into the car in front of me.  :)

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Link: CNN.com - Marine sacrifices finger to save wedding ring - Dec 12, 2004.

I can't believe this story...  this guy chooses losing a finger so they can save his wedding ring, and then the doctors go and LOSE THE RING!!

If I were him, I'd make sure I gave the doctor the finger after that.

I support the interesting.  I also support the thoughtful, and those who challenge others as much as they challenge themselves.  I couldn't really care less what color, shape, gender, sexual persuasion, etc., etc., etc. that they come in.  Therefore, I'm tracking back and linking to this post.  I could have just left a comment, but I feel like if you're really going to be supportive of someone, you'll publicly identify with someone.  So, this post is my really boring straight guy attempt at support for this really fascinating woman.

Link: woot_detail.

You know... when I was young, we had to pedal our own Big Wheels!   No motor!  I had to pedal six miles uphill down my street and then six miles uphill back...  and we didn't have wheels either...   just two frisbees and a brick.

Posted on the Fordham Alumni website:

"Dear Alumni,

Due to a clerical error Annemarie Germano DiCola, FCO '80 was mistakenly listed as deceased in the Fall issue of Fordham Magazine. Please know that Annemarie is alive and well, living in New York. If you would like to contact Annemarie we would be happy to forward any correspondence to her through our office. Please accept our sincere apologies for any upset or confusion this incorrect information may have caused."

Link: CNN.com - Record 'Jeopardy' run ends - Dec 1, 2004.

Well, its about time.  Now I can go back to watching Jeopardy without having to watch this goofball anymore.  I'm sure Trebeck is relieved, as well. 

Ken Jennings, your 15 minutes of fame is up. 

I'll tell you one thing.  If it was me who beat him, I definately would have been obnoxious.  I would have probably jumped up on the podium and screamed, "In your face, Kenny boy.   Wooooooooooooooooo."   Then, I would have sung a little "Sha na-na na...."

Link: Worst drivers: Teens, doctors, lawyers - Nov. 18, 2004.

This is really interesting, because if you combine the data from speeding tickets and accidents, the result is that politicians are the best drivers.  They are one of the least likely professions to get in an accident, but one of the most likely to get a speeding ticket.  Therefore, they're driving really fast, but avoiding crashes. 

They're building a 24 story hi-rise right down the street from me on 83rd and York.  They leveled 4 or 5 walkups that were abandoned when I first moved in 2001 and now they're finally starting construction.  I think these big cranes are wild.  These are the ones that climb alongside the building as it goes up.  It just looks so out of place at the end of this block before the building is visable.  Check out the big hole in the ground for the foundation, though. 

I'm in the newspaper!  (I'm not sure if that link will always work, but the article is written by Patricia Kitchen and its in today's Newsday.)

The article is about young people and their careers.  Here's my part:

"New York, especially, can be a breeding ground for a who's-in-the-lead mentality, says Charlie O'Donnell, 24, an analyst in a New York City private equity group. A graduate of Fordham University, he's set up a young alumni mentoring program there for students and finds that some are "very focused on getting a job as opposed to getting the best job for them," which would call for slowing down and doing some self-assessment.

Young people also can "pay too much attention to what they perceive as the pace around them. Others get jobs and move up and it's easy to feel like you're falling behind."

While he's no advocate of staying stuck in a going-nowhere situation, he does say there's value to finding some kind of fulfillment in the job you're in for as long as you're there. He addresses such career issues on his Web site www.findmypath.com."

Ok, how cool is that?!  The story behind it is funny.  I e-mailed her months and months ago when I was trying to generate interest in my book, and she literally just called me last Monday for this article.  She even featured the Find My Path site!  haha... wooooo   I'm going to get to work on advertising the site more now that its been featured in a major newspaper.  wooooooo

Ugly Sign Misses the Mark in NYC Subway

Leave it to idiocy to bring out idiotic comments from people.  So someone hacked into the transit message system in the subway and made the signs say, "Pretty Girls Don't Ride the Subway". 

So a reporter goes around asking people about this, as if this is real news that we should be wasting brain cells on. 

The responses?

"It's a vicious lie," said Rachel Russell, 37, an East Village arts-program coordinator, mostly in jest. "I think someone is trying to be clever."  (Someone... not you, but someone...)

Another woman...

"That's horrible," she said of the sign. "I'm pretty, and I take the subway every day."

(Horrible?  Horrible is a curious puppy getting his nose snipped off by a weed wacker.  This falls slightly short of horrible, ma'am.)

Nick Bello, 57, a technical representative from Brooklyn, said he has seen proof that the message is wrong. "It's very strange," he said. "I see a lot of pretty girls on the subway."   

(Good to know that 57 year old Nick is ogling pretty girls on the subway on his way home.  I'm sure his wife will have something to say about that.)

Actress Katharyn Bond, 33, of the upper West Side, who was wearing a little black dress with heels and a pink shawl, was taking the subway to a theater to see a play. "Pretty women," she said, "take the subway so we can go spend money on more important things - like alcohol."

(Clearly she already had a few in her when she gave the reporter the spelling of her name.)

So after I walked out of the Starbucks this morning, I walked down this street with a sign to "Coit Tower".  There was a long set of steep stairs up this hill and a spire at the top of the hill... looked like an interesting place to go, plus I wondered with the view might look like from up there.

The sun kind of washed out the second and third level of stairs above this....  its such a curious setup, right up from the end of this side street.

At the top of this set of stairs, halfway up the hill, there's a really great view.  PS... this post is now a race against my laptop battery.  Can't find a plug in this Starbucks.

Odd pink castle up the hill...

You gotta be kiddin' me...   

"Hey, where do these stairs go?

They go up..."   

- Ghostbusters  (One of the most well written comedies ever.)

Who says people in California are strange?  This woman appears to be completely normal.  Of course, I'm not sure I can say the same thing for the owner of this house.

Well, maybe I do have some photographic talent.  Although, a untrained monkey probably could have taken a good shot from this spot given this fantastic scenery.  Obviously, that's the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.  Perhaps New York should start painting some of its bridges.  How about painting the Verrazano bridge yellow?

I'm here.... literally.  The little black asterisk on the top left of the map marks my spot...   but I'm also right there in the reflection.  Cool, no?  My tat my reflect my inner badass, but this picture definately reflects the inner dork.  Check out the panorama of photos at the top of this hill by the Coit Tower below...

Sweet.

You know what, I'm not even going to include a picture of the tower itself, because its not nearly as cool as the view.

But you know what is cool?  This guy's door...

I took that on the walk back down the hill.

The rest of the day I spent mostly driving.  I drove down to Palo Alto to have lunch with Valarie from CM Capital at Zibbibo.  I had a puttenesca pizza... good stuff. 

I did visit Stanford, but I didn't take any pictures.  I don't want to jinx it, because then I'll feel like a goofball.  After Stanford, I drove around University Avenue...  there are some great houses down on the other end.  I love looking at houses.  I took an architecture course in Regis and every time I look at an interesting design, I mentally add it to the list of stuff I'd like in my own house one day.  I think it would be great to design my own house--with someone special of course. 

A really special architect.  ;)

Oh, Holian will appreciate this.  On the drive back into the city, I snapped off a quick photo on the highway..

   How sweet is that Vette?  Its like a '70 or so.  I also saw a new Mustang at Stanford.  I can't decide whether or not I want a new Mustang or an older car like this.  I guess it depends on whether or not I'll be driving to Greenwich everyday.

I wish more people would post comments on my blog.  It would be nice if it was a bit more interactive.

I just got a visit from the Spot Fairy. I was walking up my block and I noticed a spot on the right side of the street for tomorrow. I had planned on waking up a 1/2 hour earlier to park the car in Queens by Deirg's house, as per the usual game of musical cars I play. Now, I get an extra 1/2 hour of sleep, b/c the car is legally parked right across the street from my apartment.

Thank you, Spot Fairy.