could be cool

hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about our new hdtv comes news of a possible new mac mini-based home theater center from apple coming in january.

do i have good timing or what?

of course, several problems remain, not the least of which is that, even if the thing is relatively cheap, we won’t have the money right away. and it doesn’t matter anyway, because my rule is to never buy first generation anything–electronics, computers, cars, whatever. they always need time to really work the kinks out based on real-world product usage.

that just gives me time to save for the second-generation implementation of the thing, which i’m sure will be around in time for christmas 2006.

in the meantime, i’ll be happy with my hd-dvr.

hdtv time

kirk and i decided to get a new hdtv for christmas. it’s our present to each other, except for stocking stuffers and such and i think one other present for kirk since he had already gotten me one thing before we decided to get the new hdtv.

i’m getting kirk a pony. don’t tell him.

and the new hdtv will be delivered tomorrow.
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ripping off apple

lots of news stories recently about various people “stealing” apple software, like front row or the apple operating system running on generic intel computers instead of apple hardware.

is this stealing? technically, of course, yes. kirk is an artist, so we have a vested interest in understanding the concept of intellectual property. and my machine doesn’t have a byte of bootlegged software. heck, i’ve even paid for a lot of my shareware. bottom line, don’t steal software!

that said, my sense is that apple knows exactly what they are doing with this software and, to a degree, even encourages its “theft”.
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food network thanksgiving

kirk and i love to cook, so thanksgiving is just about our favorite holiday. here are the links to some of what’s for dinner at the howard-lawrence or, if you will, lawrence-howard household.

green beans with apple cider

good eats roast turkey

cranberry conserve

good old country stuffing

apple butter pumpkin pie

we’re also having cope’s corn and potato filling, which is a secret recipe from kirk’s mom and you can’t have it.

happy thanksgiving to all my readers!

today’s mta gripe

the mta, or metropolitan transit authority, is the outfit that runs new york subways and regional rail service, among other things. and it’s the most poorly run excuse for a bureaucracy i have ever seen, and having worked in quite a few bureaucracies, that’s saying something.

a few months ago all we heard was that they are going broke. and now we hear that they have a surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars, and that they are going to share the wealth by giving everyone a break on the cost of their december holiday travel.

let’s take a look, shall we?
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men dating me

i have two ways to search this site. one is using the greymatter blog search box located at the top right of the main page. it searches the blog only. the other is the “search entire site” page which uses atomz.com to perform the search.

by the way, that’s the only place you’ll see ads on this site. i gotta fix that sometime. i hate ads.

and greymatter keeps a record of what people search for, and atomz.com sends me a weekly email summary, so i know what people are looking for. not surprisingly, 95% of searches are for some variation on “naked” and “men”.

sorry to disappoint you.

this week’s summary email brought an interesting search , though. so now, in the spirit of satisfying my public, since apparently someone is interested in this, i will discuss the phrase “men dating me”.
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bauhaus was fantastic

if you have a chance to see bauhaus on this tour, don’t miss them. peter murphy and daniel ash have lost none of their onstage presence, they sound amazing, they do all the songs you want to hear.

amazing evening.

the nokia theatre, not so great. bad acoustics. plus there’s something odd about walking around with a cocktail in your hand listening to chamber music while awaiting the start of a bauhaus concert.

the crowd was very very odd.
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not going to texas

well, add texas to the list which i know includes virginia and ohio.

texas yesterday passed their version of a gay marriage ban. its wording prohibits the state from “creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

which means that kirk and i, who have legal papers to approximate the legal rights of married couples, cannot go to texas because our papers have been invalidated. read all about it yourself.

one more state added to the list of states in my own country where i, as a taxpaying american citizen, cannot risk going.

aaargh.
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getting rid of quicken

i’ve used quicken, the personal money management software package, for years and years. before there was quicken, i used check free software to pay bills online.

i haven’t written a check for a bill since about 1989.

so i have some expertise in this area. and my one gripe about switching to a mac was quicken.

it’s not apple’s fault. intuit, the publisher of quicken, just does a lousy job with the mac version of the program. it’s completely inferior to the pc version. i’ve adjusted, but i’m doing a lot of things manually that used to be automated.

here’s why i’m so gripey about quicken.

it’s greed.
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radio city blues

actually not blues. actually very very irritated. pissed off.

actually first a quick mention of souvenir, the new play about florence foster jenkins. it’s the funniest, most-touching, and best-written piece i’ve seen in ages. do yourself a favor and see it immediately if not sooner.

and now, on to my complete disgust about the radio city christmas show.

i’ve blogged before about how much i love the radio city christmas show and why, so i won’t repeat myself here. you’ll just have to read the prior piece, or trust me.

and this year, like nearly every other year i’ve been in new york, kirk and i got tickets. there are always great deals floating around, and we got buy-one-get-one-free tickets for an off-peak performance, so the total out-of-pocket wasn’t too bad. our tickets are for a december performance.

if you don’t live in new york you may not know this, but the union representing the christmas show musicians recently went on strike. actually there’s some dispute about even that. the musicians say that they accepted the offer from management but have been locked out. the management (cablevision, certainly not any new yorker’s favorite company) says that the musicians must sign the contract before they can come back to work, or something like that. it’s all very confusing and contradictory.

and some accountant at cablevision, with a clear eye to the bottom line, decided that the show must go on, except without any live music. so the rockettes are rocketing, and the dancing santas are multiplying, and the tin soldiers are falling down, and the camels are hopefully not crapping on the stage as they walk across.

all to a tape. recorded music.

i do not pay any money to a broadway musical, which is what this is if you ask me, to sit and listen to fucking memorex. i want to hear living musicians live. and at the christmas show, this is a particular problem, because the musicians are an integral part of the show. the orchestra pit moves up onto the stage and back down in front of the stage while they are playing, and it’s tremendously cool. and the two organists play the dueling pipe organs before the show, and it’s thrilling in an old-school way that can’t be duplicated.

and the press is giving me fits. they keep asking these dumb tourists from bumfuck egypt if they missed the live music. and what do you think the uniform answer is? “oh no, not a bit, the show was wonderful, the music was fabulous, blah blah blah.” and then they waddle off to times square making spandex shorts noises. and i have yet to see or hear the first quote supporting the musicians, although you know that there are plenty of people who do. wonder why not? cablevision is a big advertiser in all these newspapers and on all these tv stations, you know. money talks. doubt me? when’s the last time you saw a newspaper run an article about how car dealers rip you off?

but i digress.

i guarantee you that, if i had known that i was going to hear all the songs played back on an ipod or whatever, that i would not have bought tickets in the first place. i bought those tickets with an expectation of a certain show, a reasonable expectation based on the show that’s been playing since, what, 1930-something?

so this morning i strolled across the street (i work across the street. very cool, huh?) to ask a hypothetical question. if i purchased my tickets before the strike, expecting to see live music, and there is still no live music in december when it’s show time for me, can i get a refund?

the very apologetic box office person, who is, i must add, a union member herself, politely told me that there are no refunds.

i didn’t cause a scene. this was a quick reconaissance mission, and it’s not her fault, and i asked as nicely as i could and left immediately after getting my answer, and you could tell from the look on her face that she knew exactly where i was coming from and hated like hell telling me what she had to tell me. except that, of course, if she was a union member with a clue or with any self-respect, she and all her co-workers would not be at work in the first place.

it must be said that i am a big hardline supporter of unions. i belonged to a union in every job i ever had when the option was available. and it must also be said that the musician’s union ain’t exactly steelworkers out of a job in the rust belt. they make outrageous money, and have benefits out the wazoo, and cushy working conditions, and all that.

i don’t care. a union is a union, and i can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone associated with the show who belongs to any union is showing up for work. that includes stagehands, box office, rockettes, the whole schmear. they ought to be shutting the whole ball of wax down. whatever happened to union solidarity?

i bet you that utah phillips wouldn’t be seeing the christmas show under these conditions. and i bet he’d have a thing or two to say to those lousy caving non-supportive rockettes.

it’s my fervent hope that this is a non-issue by december. i hope that, whatever it takes, i see live music in my christmas show. but i have a feeling that this may be cablevision’s way of getting the live music out permanently, so that they can make that much more money.

and if that’s the case, and there’s no live music come my december showtime, i’m going to have a decision to make. i may go to the show, and i may not. probably not, but i’m not sure. i haven’t thought that through logically yet. i’m not as ideologically pure as utah. i may just go and ask every damn employee in sight where the orchestra is and what they think of its absence. kirk will love that.

but this i do promise you. i can be quite an irritant to a corporation when i choose to be.

and if i indeed feel i deserve a refund prior to showtime, i guarantee you that i will, very sweetly and efficiently, use their own corporate system to use up a huge amount of the available time of their employees in my attempts to obtain that refund.

and that the dollar value of their employees’ time will exceed many, many times over the face value of my tickets.

don’t believe me? ask at&t wireless. ask american airlines. it’s a real talent of mine, and one that i choose to exercise on a limited basis, only when necessary. but i always get results and satisfaction, one way or another.

in this particular hypothetical case, i’d be satisfied with a refund from cablevision. i’d also be satisfied if i use up hundreds or thousands of dollars in employee time and still don’t get a refund.

i hope it doesn’t come to that.

the spontaneous giggle test

lunch yesterday was one of those quintessential new york experiences, one that i feel extremely lucky to have had.

it was lunch in the basement speakeasy wine cellar room of the “21” club, the secret room hidden behind a brick wall accessible only by pushing a thin wire into just the right hole. click on the link if you don’t know anything about this–it’s fascinating.

and the food was surprisingly solid and good–nothing that passed the spontaneous giggle test, but really enjoyable nevertheless.
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