Weekend catchup

mystery photo--leave your guesses in the comments

In addition to the pumpkin patch yesterday, the weekend was pretty good. On Friday afternoon I got a chance to catch up in person with Chris Reeder and his lovely fiancée Barb at Mr. Dooley’s. We talked for quite a while and discovered it is indeed a small town: she used to work at Robertson Stephens, where my friend and Sloan classmate Charlie worked before business school. Chris and I got into a discussion about business school programs that culminated in an invitation to sit in on a case discussion of Linux and the software industry at Boston College, where Chris is doing an MBA. Hopefully I can make it.

On Saturday it rained like crazy, but we got out and did a few errands. Among other treats, I picked up a set of photos at Costco that I had transferred to CD. Sometime in 1999 I started getting all our photos on PhotoCD, but prior to that we had several photogenic trips that missed being digitized, including our honeymoon to Italy. Since that was the first time I had been out of the country, I took acres of photographs, including the teaser to the right. (I will be publishing more of those photos online soon once I figure out a technical challenge—more details shortly.) Bonus points to readers who can identify the location of the teaser photo. It is of course in Italy, but where? Leave your answer in the comments.

Today Lisa’s parents and I will be catching up on some work around the house while Lisa’s out of town on business—and we’ll be trying to keep the dogs from destroying the house too. Wish me luck…

The great glass pumpkin

glass pumpkin

Lisa’s parents are in town, and today we partook of a unique MIT tradition that I never experienced before: the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. The glassblowing labs at MIT sell the pumpkins every year to raise money for their facilities. We got there at the right time: any earlier and we would have been waiting in line with the crowd, which stretched from the Kresge Oval into the Infinite Corridor; any later and the pumpkins would all be gone. As it was, we got a very nice six-inch glass pumpkin and I got some decent photos around campus. (I noticed while putting some of my photos in order this weekend that I had never taken any of the MIT campus. Shame, shame.)

Brimful of Asha

A flood of “just addeds” in the iTunes Music Store this week that … well, I could describe them, but better to let Cornershop do it!

when i was born for the seventh time

Cornershop
When I Was Born for the Seventh Time
Warner Bros., 1997

There’s dancing
Behind movie scenes
Behind the movie scenes
Sadi Rani
She’s the one that keeps the dream alive
from the morning
past the evening
to the end of the light

Brimful of Asha on the 45
Well it’s a brimful of Asha on the 45

And dancing
Behind movie scenes
Behind those movie scenes
Asha Bhosle
She’s the one that keeps the dream alive
from the morning
past the evening
to the end of the light

Brimful of Asha on the 45
Well it’s a brimful of Asha on the 45

And singing
illuminate the main streets
And the cinema aisles
We don’t care bout no
Gov’t warnings,
’bout their promotion of a simple life
And the dams they’re building

Brimful of Asha on the 45
Well it’s a brimful of Asha on the 45

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow
Everybody needs a bosom
Mine’s on the 45

Mohamed Rufhi-45
Lata Mangeshkar-45
Solid state radio-45
Fer-guh-son mono-45
Bonn publeek-45
Jacques Dutronc and the Bolan Boogie, the Heavy
Hitters and the Chichi music
All India Radio-45
Two in ones-45
Argo Records-45
Trojan Records-45
Brimful of Asha on the 45
77,000-piece
Orchestra set
Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow
Mine’s on the RPM!!

Crossing paths

Dave has moved to Seattle just as I moved back to Boston. Come on, man, cut it out! This is twice now we’ve crossed paths…

He asks for advice today about places to eat in the market. Here’s my comment, reposted from his blog and annotated with past experiences from mine:

I like the Pike Place Brewery—their beers are outstanding and the pub cuisine is good. For fish, honestly just go to the Market Grill and get a salmon sandwich—spicy. It’s hot sitting at the grill and you have to wait a while but it’s outstanding.

For the best sunset and happy hour appetizers, Maximilien’s has a great view of the sound and an assortment of fantastic $2.50 plates, including really excellent mussels and pate.

Outside the market I like Etta’s—next block over, great seafood creatively done—and Anthony’s Pier 66, down on the waterfront.

Heh. I thought I had more links than that. I never once wrote about Pike Place Brewery or Maximilien’s… To make up for it, here are bits about some restaurants I didn’t mention in the comments: Zoë and Wasabi Bistro.

Catching a breath

One of the best things about our neighborhood is the park just on the other side of the street. Part of it is that it gives the dogs a place to romp. Part of it is that we meet other dog owners, neighbors, and friends. Part is that we can look straight down the hill into Boston—on a clear day, you can catch the glint of the sunlight on the gilded dome of the State House.

And part of it is the activities that happen there. There’s a baseball diamond abutted by a soccer field—right now, the boys’ and girls’ leagues are alternating timeslots on the field. Further down the hill is a playground that brings all the neighborhood toddlers and their parents during the day.

yes, this is a parasail. In a park in Arlington, Mass.

And the other day, there was something else entirely:

Yes, Virginia, that’s a parasail. There’s a gentle slope from that hill down to the sports fields, and there was enough wind that the sail operator got about ten to twenty feet of glide at a time.

As I brought our dogs around that afternoon, I took them to the benches that overlooked the city, sat there, and watched the late summer sky deepen its blue.

Linkolalia

It’s been a while. Here’s a quick collection of things going on across my narrow part of the blogosphere:

Bascom Deaver wins Distinguished Professor award

I saw this in my alumni magazine: Bascom Deaver, my first year physics instructor, major advisor, and the Associate Chairman for Undergraduate Studies of the University of Virginia Physics Department, has won the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Professor Award for teaching. Any man who could help to convince me, or let me convince myself, that I didn’t want to continue in academics after finishing my undergrad degree in physics, certainly deserves some kind of award for managing bullheaded undergrads. Thanks, Mr. Deaver, for the help eleven years ago, and congratulations on a well deserved award.

ArlingtonList

Almost forgot: Adam pointed me to ArlingtonList, a community mailing list for residents of Arlington, MA. The site has instructions on joining the list, member bios, password-protected archives, and a wiki (which has since been turned off as it was underused and getting defaced). The site also features a reprint of a 2002 Boston Globe article about the list. It’s interesting. I may have to rethink some assumptions about the role of geography in building online communities.

And the Globe this morning had an article about CraigsList and Boston. I didn’t realize that this was the first place CraigsList went after its original San Francisco location.

Overprotective SonicWall

Hmm. Apparently Panera’s content filter blocks Chris Baldwin’s Bruno comic strip as being in the forbidden category “cult/occult.” Um, huh? Blocking Bruno and not, say, Sluggy Freelance for that category seems a bit odd.

Also odd: the comic strip Questionable Content and Scary Go Round (“adult/mature content”) are blocked and Least I Could Do and Diesel Sweeties are not. Errant Story is blocked as “pornography” (better cool it with the naked elf stuff!). And Achewood is passed through scot-free.

Their filter is SonicWALL. I haven’t heard of them before but it’s the same old story. Do I need to point out the obvious? Content filters are brain dead. They don’t work. They end up blocking legitimate sites and harming their reputations. And there’s no appeal.

Neighborhood connection

I finally connected with Adam Medros (of JennyAndAdam.com) this morning. He is, it turns out, in our neighborhood, just over the top of the hill. We caught up about work and the neighborhood and traded home improvement notes. It’s good to know someone so close by.

Now I’m taking advantage of the free wi-fi in Panera to get a little work done before I go back to the dogs. It’s kind of nice to have a little breathing room in a place where there are other people around.

UVA 56, UNC 24; marching band 1, Pep Band 0

And orange t-shirts 1, coat and tie 0, according to the Washington Post (thanks to Craig for the pointer).

I’m all for school spirit. But I don’t think it should come at the expense of ensuring that there’s at least one occasion for which a UVa student dresses up (not counting Foxfield).

It’s nice to see other traditions survive, such as pulling the quarterback during the fourth quarter (see third paragraph) when you’re already beating the opposing team by an embarrassing amount. George Welsh used to do that during the 1990 season.