ם Andrew Cuomo Says…

From the Office of the New York State Attorney General, with regards to my ordeal this morning:

In emergencies, tenants may make necessary repairs and deduct reasonable repair costs from the rent. For example, when a landlord has been notified that a door lock is broken and willfully neglects to repair it, the tenant may hire a locksmith and deduct the cost from the rent. Tenants should keep receipts for such repairs.

—From the New York Tenant’s Rights Guide.

ם Highway Robbery

Sunday morning. Needed to buy groceries for the week. Strapped on bag, grabbed bike. Tried to leave apartment. Door won’t open. Lock jammed.

Call super. No answer. Call building manager. No answer. Call landlord. No answer. Call landlord’s emergency number. No answer. Leave voicemail. Call locksmith. Finally, an answer.

Locksmith comes. $55 just to show up.

Locksmith drills out my lock. $285.

Locksmith replaces my lock. $400.

Locksmith does… something else? Something locksmithy? $95.

Ah, plus tax. $69.

$904 later, I still don’t have any groceries. Hmph.

ם Print Media Inefficiency

Derek Powazek:

Did you know the average sell-through rate for a magazine is about 30%? The sell-through rate is the rate which a given issue of a magazine will sell from a store. That means 70% of all printed magazines are just stopping by the newsstand on their way to the garbage dump or recycling center. All that time, work, and energy, just to make trash.

ם Things I Saw Today…

I thought about trying to express this in words, and realized a picture would be far more effective.

At 23rd St. and 6th Ave.

That is all.

ם Things I Saw Today…

A topless, obese woman in a wheelchair being pulled down the street by an out-of-control German Shepherd.

ם Linkdump.

• I love Isabella Rossellini. For the Sundance Film Festival, she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a series of shorts called Green Porno. In each short, she dresses up like some bug, and then explains and simulates their reproduction. It is, in a word, fantastic. Potentially NSFW, if you work in an office full of insects.
• Like the Internet? Watch Weezer’s new video for their single “Pork and Beans” and see how many Internet memes/YouTube sensations you recognize to check your pop-nerd-cred.
• Side effect of the Weezer video: discovering the Daft Hands video and assorted spinoffs.
• Lastly, the geek in me must share this article about Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine, complete with this spectacular anecdote:
  

  We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when Richard walked in, saluted, and said, “Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what’s my assignment?” The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.

  After a hurried private discussion (”I don’t know, you hired him…”), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems.

  “That sounds like a bunch of baloney,” he said. “Give me something real to do.”
  

  So we sent him out to buy some office supplies.

That is all.

ם Things I Saw Today…

A guy with a gigantic Foghorn Leghorn chest tattoo.

ם Oh Hey.

At this point, multiple people have asked why I don’t write anything here anymore. Multiple people in real life, even. Like, at parties and stuff. Didn’t know so many people were following my comings-and-goings on here.

What’s my excuse? Don’t have one. So, I’ll try to start putting things here again. I’ve been Twittering a lot lately, so most of my little one-off things to say have gone there. I’m considering integrating my Tweets into this space, so maybe you’ll start seeing more here.

(Don’t know what Twitter is? Watch Twitter in Plain English, realize it’s awesome, then join and follow me. Or don’t. Choose your own adventure.)

I’ve got some things tucked away in my head to write up, so I’ll be back soon, I promise.

ם New Year’s Resolution

It’s the New Year. (Yeah, yeah, I’m 3 weeks late. So sue me.)

But this isn’t a post about resolutions for 2008. It’s a retrospective on my 2007 resolution.

I’ve always done fairly well academically, but during college I hadn’t ever had a perfect straight-A semester. Since I was going to graduate a semester early, 2007 perfectly contained the last two semesters of my college career, so I made my resolution on December 31st, 2006, that in 2007 I’d get a 4.0 one of those semesters.

Summer of 2007 rolled around, and I came close. Two A’s, two A–’s. 3.85 GPA. Close, but no cigar.

I was down to the wire with only one semester left. But I stuck the landing. Booyah.

2007 Resolution: Completed.

(2008 doesn’t have a traditional resolution, per se. It’s more of a curious project. More on that later.)

ם Breakfast of Champions

I’ve been having some unfortunate ear pain for the past, oh, two months, so I went to the doctor yesterday. This is now my breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime snack:

Gotta catch ‘em all.

(For scale, the blue one’s about the size of a nickel.)

And I was again told by a doctor that I have a surprisingly high tolerance for pain. Booyah.