Feeling lucky?
Notice, only prime numbers in the picture.
Passing By A Bar
Kings Highway Mural
Here is the thing from Kings Highway station that I mentioned before
I searched on the Net a bit, and now I know what it’s called: “Kings Highway Hieroglyphics” by Rhoda Yohai Andors, installed in 1987.
I was reading “The Non-Designers Design Book” today. It had a relevant passage in the introduction:
Many years ago I received a tree identification book for Christmas. I was at my parents’ home, and after all the gifts had been opened I decided to go out and identify the trees in the neighborhood. Before I went out, I read through part of the book. The first tree in the book was the Joshua tree because it only took two clues to identify it. Now the Joshua tree is a really weird-looking tree and I looked at that picture and said to my- self “Oh, we don’t have that kind of tree in Northern California. That is a weird-looking tree. I would know if I saw that tree, and I’ve never seen one before.” So I took my book and went outside. My parents lived in a cul-de-sac of six homes. Four of those homes had Joshua trees in the front yard. I had lived in that house for thirteen years, and I had never seen a Joshua tree. I took a walk around the block, and there must have been a sale at the nursery when everyone was landscaping their new homes -at least 80 percent of the homes had Joshua trees in the front yards. And I had never seen one before! Once I was conscious of the tree, once I could name it, I saw it everywhere. Which is exactly my point. Once you can name something, you’re conscious of it. You have power over it. You own it. You’re in control.
Where is one when you need it..
Sargasso Sea Eels
Ah, there is not much mystique in the Sargasso Sea. No stuck ships, no monsters. I have one connection to it though – the humble sand eel, that is used as a bait for striped bass, goes to the Sargasso Sea to spawn. The fry spend about a year getting back to the coast, just to be eaten by the bass.
View From the “Office” of Deadprogrammer
One thing that I see daily from the scratched window of my mobile “office” is the Clock Tower Building. Basically it’s a building in a neighborhood called DUMBO (a cutesy acronym for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”). Many recently formed New York neighborhoods have cutsy acronym names. Like SoHo copycats NoLita (North of Little Italy) and NoHo (North of Houston). They remind me of dying internet consulting companies Scient, Viant and Sapient and probably already dead members of Politburo Zaikov, Slunkov and Vorotnikov (they were always mentioned together).
Clock Tower or Clocktower building used to be called “Gair Building No. 7” after Robert Gair, inventor of the corrugated cardboard box.
The building has a unique feature – a penthouse apartment with windows in a form of a clock. Which actually shows time.
The view from there is amazing. I think it’s a bargain at 4 million bucks.
I’ve rented my apartment sight unseen after the asshole real-estate agent showed me another apartment in the same building which had an OK view of Brooklyn. What I didn’t realize was that my apartment was facing another building. Yeah, I am a sucker for views.
Juice!
My electric bill last month was $148.95 . It says there that I’ve used up 797 KWH. That’s 26.6 KWH per day. That means that on the average I consume 1.1 KW. That’s 1100 W every hour, 24 hours a day. It’s like having 36 light bulbs on at the same time. All the time.
The only things that work full time are refrigerator (84 W on the average, lets say 200W while it’s hot), TIVO (40W), aquarium pump (30 W) . One AC was on during the night most of the time, another for a couple of hours in the evening.
I have a suspicion that:
a) my KWH meter is connected to something of my neighbor’s.
b) the old 220V AC is eating an enormous amount of electricity
c) all of the power supplies for cell phones, hubs, router, a/v components are leaching a shitload of juice
I really wish there was a portable KWH meter that I could hook up to any device and calculate the _actual_ energy consumption. But looks like there is no such thing.
Ok, this is pretty idiotic.
I really got to do something about this. Maybe I can get a better rate then 15 -16 c per KWH. Maybe I can find the mooching device that eats all my juice. I need to try and check the readings on my meter myself. Here is how. Neat.
Now, this is pretty idiotic. If not, more idiocy can be found on the other end of the spectrum.
Also, I don’t think I have good surge protection for my stuff, and the wiring quality is pretty dodgy. Which reminds me, my renter’s insurance ran out and I really need to renew it. Crap.
Well, at least this post helped me to get my thoughts in order.
Tilde the Cat Likes You
In The Rain
What are you looking at?
