I got a bunch of info from some friends via e-mail last night on OSX; Mike sent along some good links for reference on OSX, including this site: macoshints.com, which has a wealth of good information listed in a blog-style newsletter format. Thanks Mike. I’m going to print out the hint booklet today! (Plus, via his blog, I found this link to the ipodlounge, where I will read about them until I can afford one myself.)
My PowerBook wakes up from sleep under OSX in about 1/2 a second. Contrast this with the minute or so it took to wake under OS9, an empty screen, and the wait for anything to happen. iPhoto is real nice, and I know there are a million things I need to learn with it. I also know that my old method of organizing files is not going to fly in the OSX world, so we’re going to attempt to go with Apple’s UNIX/user method and see how good it is.
New lexicon Dept.:
The City Paper did their Best Of issue this week, and they named the annoying habit Baltimore drivers have of sitting in their car out in front of a house on your street and blowing the horn: The Baltimore Doorbell.
I watched a good article tonight on domain name squabbles, but it gives me heartburn: Nissan Vs. Nissan. One is a computer dealer, the other is the company that makes the Altima. Apparently the computer company lost a court battle and may lose the domain name- the auto company claimed it diluted their brand. I sure hope it doesn’t lose the fight- they registered in 1994, and in my opinion they should be allowed to keep it.
montgomery park, 8.23
Todd and I took a trip down to the Montgomery Park office complex yesterday afternoon to check out the building. It is a huge (1.3M square feet) ex-warehouse on a B&O spur, built in 1923 for Montgomery Ward. As you travel north from Washington DC and rise over the hill to Baltimore, it sits off to the left, alone in a blighted landscape of industrial parks and run-down neighborhoods. It’s been empty for years, but sometime last year they started lighting it up at night, and everybody soon realized where it was and just how big it was.
The sheer size of the place overwhelms you—each floor is a cavernous forest of high ceilings and thick, fat pillars lined up in rows. Some of the floors are totally renovated, and others are barely cleared. There is a courtyard with a building in the center, sporting a living roof, and the whole building catches runoff to be recycled into the wastewater system.
We were both very impressed with the space, and sort of overwhelmed with it all. There’s too much size to be comprehended there. But we were glad that the developers decided to retain a lot of the original details- the windows, the pillars, the cielings-instead of plastering over them.
I was looking through some old drives last night in preparation to donate a couple of old Macs, and I found a bunch of Cidera-era pictures on a storage drive. With those I also found a real interesting picture of the backyard before I started on the work, and a nice shot of the lake back in 2000. Along with these I have a bunch of staff and event photos from that time, about 8 months before the company imploded.
Lesson 362 on how not to run a website: Long and Foster has listings for houses in Baltimore; you plug in your information and do a search. They return a page with a small picture, a basic description, and no other information. No address, no lot information, no size info. I sent an email to the listed agent and got a bounceback to another agent, referring me to a phone number. Sorry, you lose. Make me jump through hoops, and withhold basic purchasing information from me? No thanks.
On another front, the house across from me that was rehabbed last year and is still on the market is listed for $214K.
It is so unbearably hot here in Baltimore, I want to kill myself. Tonight the heatwave will break, but I’m wondering why we ever left NY state and that beautiful, warm, clear lake. In the backyard, I got the support columns bought (decided not to deal with my other neighbor) and the anchors drilled, as well as the notches in the concrete caps cut, so all we have to do is cut some notches in the bottoms of the columns and install. Then we level each of them out and put the top plate on.
I had a very interesting chat this weekend about a possible part-time teaching position; even if it doesn’t happen, it was still a great meeting and could lead to exciting possibilities down the road. Plus, there’s a bunch of freelance work coming down the road in the next couple of weeks, and that should keep the money flowing into my bank accound and not out.
Todd said he saw Esther on the way to work this morning, so I know she isn’t a mirage.
I started doing a little research into some of the cameras I bought on my vacation; some of the super-8’s are pretty rare, and some of the Kodak Brownies I bought are common but beautiful examples of industrial design. I also have a really nice Agfa and a few lesser-known brands which all seem to take 620 or 120 variant film. Now to find a few 620 spools and order some film! I’m dying to try some of these cameras…! Luckily there’s a company in town that develops 120 film…
Life has been good. This weekend was really fun; We went to a great rooftop deck party on Saturday night with Jason and Shelly and drank and talked about non party-safe things. We also got the south planter filled and planted (temporarily) with flowers; lantana and another high-heat resistant breed I can’t pronounce.
Driving through beautiful Highlandtown this weekend, I was interested to see a pile of burned-out drum equipment laying outside the pawn shop on the corner. Seems the whole second floor started burning and when the firemen showed up, they pitched all the burning debris out the window. The owners took the time to board up all the second-floor windows, but left all the crap on the sidewalk.
I am shocked, amazed, and happy to find a website with my old amigo Pat Finlay online; it’s through his old art collective SimpArch (and the contact information is very old.) I have to get some kind of contact info for him that is newer and better (he’s at a boatbuilding school in Berkeley right now, and I don’t have current contact information.)
I’m not going to post any new photos online yet, but I got the gravel into the planters this weekend, the PVC cut and installed for the lighting, and the brick over the outflow pipe by the back gate put in. I also have a plan for the pergola roof, but I need to get permission from Dick, my neighbor, to drill into his wall in order to install the bases. It will be a much easier solution than digging holes, leveling posts, pouring concrete, and topping them from there… I hope he’s cool with it.
As perfect a two and a half-minute long song could be: a shimmering, beautiful, melancholy paean to growing older: Mermaid Smiled, by XTC.
Some new pictures of the backyard, from 6.11.
On my way to work this morning, I had the windows down (it was about 60 degrees this morning, but due to rise into the 90’s by noon) and took my customary route out of Canton to get to I-83 north. On my drive, I had the pleasure of smelling, in sequence, the salty air blowing off the harbor, fresh bread from the H&H bakery in Fell’s Point, followed closely by bacon, waffles and syrup from a restaurant with its doors open. When I got to the onramp, I smelled freshly cut, damp grass from the wide median downtown. I got onto 83 and all the smells blended together as I got up to speed.
Found out that we’re getting paid ½ our paycheck this month. Yay.
I found a great utility called snapGallery for posting online pics; it’s a free VBS script (boo- no Mac support) but it works very well, and obviously was designed by somebody who posts pictures frequently. I think we will use this from now on.
Jen and I got a bunch more Christmas shopping yesterday after doing the Jingle Bell Run; 5 miles from the mighty Bohagers Party Shack, around past my block and back again, dressed in a Santa hat, red sweatshirt, bike tights and Gap carpenter shorts. What a fashion plate I am these days.
Happy Fun Things To Do Department: We visited Dave at his tree stand last night, and found him in Carhart bib overalls and lumberjack shirt, smoking a pipe and handling the merchandise. Pulling in we found Clifford the Big Red Truck, a Ford F-350 Super Duty extra cab, a year old with 30K on the odometer. Dave let me take her for a spin, and I loved it. What a beautiful truck. The three of us went over to the Forest Diner and had some dinner, and I wish to god I had brought my camera, because we sat and ate yummy hamburgers in a true 50’s silver-car diner listening to X-mas music, decorated well, and almost empty. Dave looks good and sounds like he’s doing well, and he was happy to get a tin of gaulettes (sp?) from Jen.
Today is the day of jackhammers and heavy machinery. I woke up this morning to the sweet, gentle strains of a backhoe-mounted reciprocal pick chipping out the concrete in the back alley behind my house; both cats looked at me wide-eyed like I was, perhaps, calling the apocalypse unto them. I got ready for work and left the house, and upon arrival at work found another backhoe lifting great sheets of the pavement in the parking lot into a dump truck. Now the seat under my butt vibrates like Joey Buttafuoco’s pager ringing a ‘007’ from Amy Fisher.
Oh, Martha, I have found a gorgeous, sad, wonderful song: Trouble by Coldplay.
Hmm. What’s new in the boring world of Bill this friday? My basement is really coming along; with the exception of the shelf in front of the window and the area around the top of the closet, all the woodwork is done, stained and installed. I’m going to be refinishing the stairs this weekend, as well as getting rid of all the garbage down there and in the backyard; hopefully then I’ll be able to move around enough to add the valves on the water supply and then move the washer to the back. Once that’s done (and some general cleaning is complete) I’ll be able to move the junk upstairs back down the the back of the basement. I’d really like to get all that done.
In the news, here’s a good story about the Can Company building, formerly home of the Bibelot by my house. I’ll be happy to be able to walk down there from the house and grab a cup of coffee and sit to read for a few hours- I miss that. I won’t miss Bibelot’s high prices, either. And there will be a One World Cafe there instead of Donna’s, which seems to be waning too. I also heard that there are lawyers trying to sue Osama for damages related to the WTC bombings; there are other lawyers fighting these lawyers for first position- the guys who are ‘representing’ the folks hurt and killed in the embassy bombings back in 98. Lawyers…
This is a fantastic article that makes one stop and consider our current action-and responsibility-in Afghanistan.