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Eyesore of the month — you can thank me

About three weeks ago I came across a photo essay for “The Standard Hotel” in New York City. While the so-called experts were praising the structure for being some innovative step forward in Modernist Architecture, I found it to be pretty god-awful.

I immediately thought of my favorite polemicist, James Howard Kunstler, and sent him a link, suggesting the building for the next “Eyesore of the Month,” his monthly highlight of man made ugliness.

While I was not credited for the find, I feel particularly honored to have contributed to the canon.

It’s cool to…

Something I’ve noticed in the past few years is that prevailing trends in style and fashion seem to support activities that are beneficial to adapting to changing conditions. The three things that pop into my mind are utilitarian bicycling, the demise of the conspicuous SUV, and gardening. The evidence I’m about to present is by no means scientifically gathered — these are just observations.

First, bicycling. We saw this take off a few years ago — I was just as caught up in it as anyone. It seemed as gasoline started its steady rise through the $2 a gallon range, young people decided there was a better way around, and it was even cool. Especially as gas marched up to $4 a gallon. Enter the retro hipster bike, and its most hardcore incarnation, the fixed gear. Now biking to work has become almost mainstream when it’s realistic. There was a period where it was simply cool to do it, and that changed everyone’s attitude. The people who ridiculed the idea were cast retrograde. Perceptions had changed.

Enter the demise of Hummer, the harbinger of the end of the oil age. Hummer will be a consumer brand for less than a decade. Production of the H2 began in 2003. With the onset of the Iraq War these things were uber popular as a brash symbol of patriotism and support for the troops. The best part, they drove the liberals crazy. It wasn’t long before fuh2.com was created, and the tide turned against Hummer. Look at them now. The Hummer brand will likely be sold by GM, or simply scuttled.

Finally, gardening. With the rise of farmers’ markets, organics, and just an overall heightened awareness of what we eat and how it makes it to our plate, gardening is becoming cool. Community gardens are very popular (at least in my neck of the woods), and the First Lady commissioned a vegetable garden at the White House this year, the first one since the Victory Gardens of the 40’s. I’ll point to the 2009 inaugural post of the Strib’s Garden Blog — I’m going to follow the comments today. It looks to me like more people are becoming interested in what my friend last night called “the biggest FU thing you can do.” Who needs Super Target when you can just step out into the backyard?

What about seasonality you ask? Well, here’s the best sign I have that things are changing: My 13 year old nephew did his science fair project on canning this year. He made it to the State Science and Engineering Fair, and walked away with the Silver Medal for the 7th and 8th grade competition.

There’s a stalking horse in our midst… The times they are a’changing.

Laptop Angst

I’m suffering from a little from the “don’t have a cool laptop blues.” I own 3 laptops. One is a Compaq, circa late 2007, which is my best performing laptop. The problem with it is that it’s just a little too heavy to be comfortable to carry around. It mostly stays in one place.

I have a Sony laptop that’s much lighter and easier to carry, but it was new in 2003 — and at this point isn’t powerful enough to even keep up with my typing when I’m trying to write a post like this one.

And then I have a 700 Mhz G3 Apple iBook, which belonged to my dad. I’m writing this post on it now. It was new in mid-2002, about as old as the Sony. It’s interesting that it performs better than the Sony for the simple task of writing to a blog like this.

I like the Sony and the iBook as far as physical characteristics. I like the Compaq for performance. So what do I do? I’d like to reduce the number of unused computers sitting around. I could put some things on eBay and probably get a couple of hundred bucks towards a laptop fund. Maybe sell the Compaq and use the proceeds to buy memory for the iBook?

This is what happens when a person doesn’t have to make any serious effort to feed himself. He comes up with petty problems like this to grapple with. Woe is me.

I turn to Twitter for high culture

It seems listening to classical music and twittering about it is the thing to do on a Sunday night!

A classic moment on my Twitter feed

Free Dry Cleaning for Job Seekers

A local business, Elite Cleaners, is doing the right thing to help people looking for work during this recession. It’s a great story.

I have a bunch of shirts and sweaters that need to be cleaned which I’m going to take in tomorrow (to show my support) — hopefully the press they got will more than cover the cost of the free services.

Draining the Swamp

This is the time of year that we learn what Buddy’s been up to in the backyard over the winter, and this year was worse than usual because there were no complete thaws to give me any opportunity for intermediate cleanups.

So as the temperature increased the backyard turned into an awful cesspool of standing water. I looked at it with dread, wondering how long it would take the sun to dry things up enough so I could get out there, wrapped in plastic, for cleanup duty.

But then I had an idea. I considered my inventory — a hose, a drill, a drill powered pump, and just enough intelligence to moderate the extremes of nature. I devised a plan. This was the perfect job for a siphon.

I ran the garden hose from the puddle in the backyard to the gutter in the street, which is about 2 feet lower in elevation, but climbing about 1 foot up in elevation as it traveled past the house. Using the drill powered pump (a great tool), I managed to start a steady flow of water. Once the water started flowing, I disconnected the pump and let gravity take over.

It was just a matter of time — about 2 hours or so, before the entire puddle in the backyard had drained. Looking out there this morning there isn’t any standing water at all.

Watching a siphon work is almost eerie. Checking each end of the hose, it doesn’t seem like water should continue flowing, but it does. If only I had caught it on film…

Bonuses at AIG

It boggles the mind what some individuals are paid for doing their jobs, especially considering they seem to have been doing them very poorly.

This post at Talking Points Memo ponders the situation with AIG and the Obama Administration’s difficulty handling it.

I guess if I were Geithner (assuming he’s the one who could do this), and I held an 80% stake in a company, and the CEO gave as blithe a response as this, my words would be: “You’re fired.”

Seriously, why are we letting these people keep their jobs? I’m sure we’d be able to find plenty of qualified people willing to do the work at half the pay!

It is March 12

And it should not be 0 degrees outside.

I am ready for warmer weather.

Rebooting Linux in an Emergency

My partner in crime managed to lock up his Linux box just now, so we looked up the secret trick for safely rebooting a frozen system.

You can reboot a frozen Linux box by holding down Alt+SysRq, and then typing ‘reisub’. This will safely stop all processes, unmount the disks, and reboot the system.

Found this tip here.

Northern Lights Express

If I could buy a ticket today, I would.