Author: deadprogrammer

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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.

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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.

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Backwash

This morning I remembered a funny idiom that an Australian friend taught me – “backwash”. It the remainder of a soft drink left in a bottle or a can, presumably mixed with original drinker’s saliva. Used in a sentence: “I don’t want the rest of your soda, that’s just backwash.” There is no idiom like that in Russian, probably because sodas were not commonly sold in cans or individual sized bottles in USSR.

So, I decided to take a look on the web and see if that was a strictly Australian expression or not. What I found instead was “Backwash Magazine“. And there I found a link to a very cool book – “Found on Ebay“. Schweet.

I always wondered if Ebay preserves all the logs for their auctions. I wish they gave them all to Google – it would be a catalogue for everything. From a shuttle to raccoon penis bones.

By the way, I’ve read somewhere that Ebay used to be an abbreviation for “Echo Bay” (now it’s explained as “Electronic Bay”).

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The Boldest

Ok, so last morning I was sitting in my window office. The guy next to me opened an exam preparation book and started reading. He was studying to become a member of New York’s Boldest. One of the questions caught my eye:

What is the most important quality in a corrections officer:

a) Physical strength
b) Not being afraid of anything
c) Quick reaction time
d) Intelligence

and another one:

What should the correction officer’s attitude towards inmates be?

a) Suspicious
b) Fraternal
c) Impartial
d) Indifferent

The official correct answers are probably d and c, but I think it’s actually c and a in real life.

Here is what I found on the Net:


Preview a typical Correction Officer training program.
-Interpersonal Communication
-Hostage Survival
-Special Inmates
-Objective Observation and Report Writing
-Security Skills
-Transportation of Inmates
-Fire Prevention
-Crime Scene Preservation

Cool.
I bet this sort of training is even more relevant in corporate culture. Just replace “inmates” with “coworkers”.
I think there is a decent store of psych warfare knowledge in these training books, I should get some for my library.

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Untitled

Holy crap!
I just realized: Livejournal is basically a “push” technology!

Quote from CNN: “The push era was ushered in by PointCast, a screensaver that also delivered news and advertising and which somehow managed to be even less useful than the World Wide Web. “

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Untitled


Don’t you hate people who rip off Escher? This is from a mosaic on Sheepshead Bay subway station. Made by a no talent, unoriginal hack.

There used to be a nice mosaic on Kings Highway station, in Egyptian drawing style, but depicting people with tokens in hand going through subway turnstiles.

Mosaics are probably the only decorative elements in NYC subway. Look at them. How Spartan are the walls. The tiles on the walls are in shape worse than in many public restrooms.

Oooh, found a great site.

Anyways, what was I rambling about? Oh, right, subway mosaics. Looks like new ones are being added. They look so ugly surrounded by that white tile :(

Nevins street has a cool mosaic medallion – a letter “N” which looks just like Netscape “N”. Can’t find a picture, gotta take one.

Need to visit NYC Transit Museum.

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Sex, Lies and Higher Education

On Sunday I finished reading an awesome book about college pranks, “If at all Possible, Involve a Cow”. Even though it was published in 1992, it’s currently out of print and somewhat hard to find. At abebooks.com prices range from $26.50 to $42.50 and there are only 5 books listed. Luckily, I was able to find a copy for $7 thanks to abebooks wishlist service.

I think that the rarity of the books is due to some influence of embarrassed college brass. The book tells stories about students making fun of narrow mindedness and idiocy of administrators and professors in some very prestigious colleges and universities.

Here is an example. If you’ve been to Harvard, you probably have seen the statue of John Harvard. You were also probably told a touching story about students, who rub his boot for luck on the exams (they really don’t, the boot is shined by hordes of visitors). Well, what the guide probably didn’t tell you, is that the statue is commonly known as “Statue of Three Lies”. Why? Because there is an inscription on the pedestal that says:

“John Harvard

Founder

1638”

Lie #1 : John Harvard was a financial contributor, not the founder.
Lie #2 : Foundation date was 1636, not 1638
Lie #3 : Depicted is not John Harvard, of whom no pictures exist, but a friend of the sculptor. To add insult to injury, both the sculptor and his friend graduated from .. You guessed it – MIT!

This makes one of the pranks in the book especially ironic: MIT students created a huge bronze copy of MIT class ring and epoxied it to John Harvard statue’s finger!

Other notable pranks: Harvard Lampoon’s editors hoisting Soviet flag on a flagpole in front of the Supreme Court during McCarthy era, Caltech Rose Bowl hack.