Skwerl Chronicles
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
go rutgers
yeah so the NIT tournament is coming to an end, and somehow or another we actually made it to the championship game! amazing.
the semi finals were last night and man, i can barely think straight today...
anyway it was good to finally see us chalk up a win although i fear the game tomorrow will be a blowout.
nonetheless, i shall purchase a ticket and participate because damn it, it's the garden and i like it there.
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004
falling asleep in meetings
is it really so bad?
i mean, sure, your boss loses all respect for you as an employee and is personally offended, but really, how long are you supposed to sit there and listen to charisma-less imbeciles drone and stutter through their personal opinions of office policy and the path to the future?
if i'm not actually at my desk and working then at least let me grab a much needed 40 winks while your stroke your ego by talking longer than anyone else...
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Chashama rooftop pics
whats really intersting about this work is that it is literally steps from Times Square, yet i'm pretty confident that only some of the people in my building are even aware of it, not to mention the thousands that pass by on the street every day.
please bear in mind that this was all done overnight, this is not a compilation of years' work.
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Friday, March 12, 2004
subway secrets
ok i know i shouldn't be giving this away, but i don't think anyone is actually reading this blog anyway... ;-)
so every day when i'm riding the subway i see people sticking their heads out onto the track to see if a train is coming or not. i mean they really cran their necks to get a good look, like it's gonna make the train come faster or something. now i have many pet peeves, but this ranks right up there with people who stop at the top of the escalator because they don't know which way to go...
in the hopes of helping to alleviate this problem, here is my subway trick:
(caveat: these are for NYC lines only, i don't know if other cities have the same equipment)
don't look where the train is coming from, look in the direction it is going.
-two trains will never occupy one platform at the same time. until the previous train has entirely cleared the station the next train is not allowed to arrive. how can you tell when a train is clear? look for the traffic lights which face an oncoming train. they work just like regular traffic lights (red yellow green) and a train is not allowed to cross a red light.
when you see the light turn to yellow, then green, you know the next train can now arrive.
this also works to determine when a train is leaving the station. i always see folk sprinting to get on a train which is waiting at the station, while a quick glance at the signal light at the front of the train will tell you if it is ready to leave or not.
i usually travel during morning and afternoon rush hours through times square where there are tons of trains and tons of people jockeying to get on. this advice will probably not make a difference if you are waiting at a slow station at a slow time. but for those rush hour main lines, it can make the difference between looking like a fool and keeping your cool.
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Tuesday, March 09, 2004
mental rental
what the hell is it about moving that drives folk insane?
i took one of those magazine quizes once, 'determine your life expectancy' and it instructed me to deduct one year for every time i had moved.
by my reckoning i should have been dead 6 years ago but hey who's counting...
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Monday, March 08, 2004
Dancing Stan
i'm going to do a couple of follow ups on the Chashama events until there is enough sun for me to take decent pictures out of my window.
see, as the good folks at Chashama were leaving, they made their way up to the rooftops and created quite an elaborate display with what i'm assuming is leftover paint.
it must have went on all night because from the time i left work around 6:30 until the next morning, there was quite a significant amount of additional 'work' that went on there.
anyway it is foolish to talk about it without the pictures to describe it, so suffice it to say they were quite active.
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Friday, March 05, 2004
the end of an era [chashama]
so i've been working here in times square for a couple of years, and next door to our 48 story sparkling skyscraper at
4x² is a series of smaller older buildings, including chashama.
now it appears that the entire block has been purchased and all the buildings have been comdemned. sadly, i never followed through with my desire to go in and check out the artistic 'happenings' that went on there, now that they have closed.
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check out your building
looking for an apt, i just found a wicked tool which allows you get all the pertinent stats on any bldg in the 5 boroughs.
i couldn't believe when i typed in my address and my landlady's name came up! it's kind of slow but it's all there: http://www.myciti.org/
*update*
i also learned that if you have the original bathroom, you can look under the lid covering the watertank on your toilet and find the date the house was built, at least sometimes...
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