Month: August 2002

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Marilyn Maye

You know what provides perfect music for coding? Sirius satellite radio. Just click on “play now” – and bam – 100 commercial free streaming radio stations. The “Pure Jazz” station is awesome! It’s all free for now and Sirius seems to have financial difficulties.. I hope they survive. I am even considering subscribing.

Just heard an absolutely amazing singer I didn’t know about, Marilyn Maye. Just for the song “Washington Square” I am going to buy a whole cd of her music, “Meet Marvelous Marilyn Maye”. Mmmm.

By the way, at least two of my coworkers did not know what “Sirius” meant and why their logo is a dog. Strange..

Ok, break over, back to coding.

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Righty -Tighty, Lefty -Loosey

Reading a book about NYC subway.

Interesting fact: old subway cars used regular light bulbs for normal lighting and special left-handed screw threaded bulbs in emergency lighting. The regular bulbs were always on, and because of that nobody could steal them easily (they were too hot). The emergency lights were threaded incorrectly, so the potential thieves would have to figure out how to unscrew them first, and even if they succeeded, they would not be able to use the bulb at home. This is kind of like special coat hangers and non-standard linens in hotels. Hmm, I can’t remember any other uses of non-standard equipment for theft prevention.

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Computer Desk Manifesto

I need new computer desks. Two of them. I’ve spent enough time working with computers, and here is my computer desk manifesto:

1) All desks created specifically as computer workstations suck.
2) Keyboard drawers are evil. You don’t need them.
3) Telescoping keyboard platforms are evil as well.
4) You don’t need a section in a desk to hold the computer case. It will make it hard to get to the computer, plug in devices, change video cards. You computer will overheat.
5) Little shelves and enclosures on top of the desk suck. They will fill in with worthless junk, like old disquettes and cds, paperclips and other garbage. You won’t be able to fit in a large monitor, and the monitor will overheat.
6) There is no need for a special monitor stand.
7) There is no need for a printer stand under the desk. In fact, you don’t need anything under the desk except space for your legs, computer case and the cat.

So what an ideal computer desk is like?

1) It’s a regular sturdy table. 4 legs and a tabletop. Very sturdy.
2) Height should be easily adjustable.
3) It should be fairly large.
4) If there are rollers on the legs, you should be able to lock them.
That’s it!

I like Overkill Design’s Jack Kidney table. They make other stuff as well. One thing I’ll say for themBlue Jesus is cool. (sung to JCS music)

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Stupid Real Estate Tricks II

How many questions does it take to make a real estate agent to disclose a sewage treatment plant 10 blocks away?
Let’s see:
1) Are there any facilities in the neighborhood that I should know about?
nope.
2) How is the air quality around here?
nope.
3) How far is the fecy processing plant?
bingo.

Damn weasels.

The plant, officially called “Coney Island Water Pollution Control Plant” but universally known as “The Stinky” is located on Knapp Street between Ave X and ave Y, across from “Funtime USA” arcade. The arcade is there partly because the zoning laws for coin operated businesses are very tough. Mayor La Guardia banned all coin op machines, especially pinballs, claiming that they are controlled by mafia and rot the minds of young people. Now pinball is legal, but the zoning laws are still tough.

Anyways, the plant has this distinctive fence. A quote from the fence designer’s page: "... Wavewall in Green was designed to soften and landscape this industrial complex situated in a residential area. The problems of a large sewage treatment plant in a residential area are obvious. "

So, the fence even has a name, “Wavewall in Green”. Hmm, I can see that.

The fence is really well designed, actually. It’s cheap, very hard to climb, graffiti repellent and not bad looking at all. To bad it doesn’t neutralize the smell.

The quote "Directly influenced by the function of this site" made me laugh though.

Anyways, this is why I am afraid of looking for a house in New Jersey or Staten Island. If you don’t know the neighborhood, you can get reeeally screwed.

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Stupid real estate tricks

Learned a new stupid made-up acronym name of a neighborhood, this time in Brooklyn. NOFA – North of Flatbush Avenue. So it works like this: take a landmark, add NO or SO and whammo – a name for a neighborhood. Sound cool, like SOHO and NOHO. So, I live on Nostrand Avenue – neighborhoods around here should be NONA and SONA. Sounds expensive, right? I should mention that to my real estate agent (I don’t have a regular one yet though).

Real estate slang is so damn confusing. Just recently I learned what a “junior four” is. It’s a one bedroom apartment with an extra tiny room, making it a 4 room apartment, but not really a two bedroom. I actually live in an apartment like that. I still don’t know what a “Pullman Kitchen” is. I suspect it’s a narrow kitchen, kind of like one in a Pullman car.

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From I bet you didn’t know this department

Ctrl-alt-del, the three finger salute has an official name. It’s SAS or “Secure Attention Sequence”.
I learned that from Microsoft’s Tablet PC site.

C1. A Tablet PC without an attached keyboard must support a single, dedicated, non-overloaded hardware mechanism for generating the Secure Attention Sequence (SAS), also known as "CTRL+ALT+DEL" or "CAD."
C2. If the SAS button is implemented as a Human Interface Device (HID), the HID-compliant button driver must provide a keyboard collection to report the SAS event.