Other stuff

A few odds and ends that have cluttered my desktop for too long:

Labor Day

This is my month to stop taking things for granted, starting with today’s holiday. Labor Day, if it means anything to most Americans, probably means the last cookout, back-to-school shopping, and time to watch out for drunk drivers. It’s all too easy to forget that the holiday, which originated as an annual march by the Knights of Labor, reflects both workers’ efforts to secure saner working conditions from management and the government’s attempts to appease them while avoiding an official celebration of May Day. The benefits secured by the workers include the establishment of the eight-hour work day and 40 hour work week, overtime pay, and the ability to organize to improve working conditions—which sound awfully nostalgic to this tech worker who’s never seen any of them.. See also the Department of Labor’s official page on the holiday.

Incidentally, out of my 250 news feeds, I only found 26 mentions of “Labor Day”, including:

Cooling it

Here’s a quick catch-up houseblog: Esta and I finished painting the dining room this week, covering the inside of the built-in corner cabinet with the same dark blue paint (Behr’s “Bayou,” in case anyone is curious) that Lisa and I used for the walls below the chair rail. The overall effect is striking, with the room looking much brighter in comparison to the cream and tan it was before. I loaded in the cabinet, using the plate rails and pulling our barware out of the kitchen cabinets (we now have a glasses shelf—I’m so pleased).

Yesterday’s trip to the Cape was just the ticket. It was also a merciful interregnum in an ongoing problem we’ve had with the dogs. Both of them have had awkward digestive difficulties over the last week, and it hasn’t gotten better. Fortunately a highly competent vet in Belmont found the problem—some kind of nasty bacterial infection—and aside from a few highly dramatic reactions to the medicine this afternoon they’ve responded well. Both are sleeping soundly on the couches; they didn’t even bat an eye when we ate dinner next to them.

This house continues to feel more and more like a home. I found our photos and another bunch of our cookbooks today; there hasn’t been anything requiring professional intervention, knock wood, going wrong with the house in more than a week; the changing weather has lowered the temperature here to something more than comfortable, in fact cold enough for me to take some concern about the HouseInProgress article about the radiators. Makes me think we ought to fire up the system just to see what happens.

In the meantime, I’m grateful that I can still grill. Garage door open, I sit on a folding chair gifted by my in-laws, keeping an eye on the smoke and flames creeping out from under the lid of Old Faithful, our cheapo Char-Broil gas grill, watching the chicken slowly come to perfection, with a beer bottle beside me sweating condensation into the evening and a book in my hand; I wait for the meat to get just tight enough under my prodding finger (since, without a light on the back of the house, I can’t actually see what I’m cooking even with the garage light on). I drop the chicken piece by piece into the ceramic dish filled with marinade, getting the smell of garlic, lime, cilantro, mint, and fish sauce wafting over me each time I raise the lid.

The Cape

Lisa and I took the dogs, hopped in the car, and drove to Cape Cod today. It took a while to get going, and ended up taking about three hours from the time we left the house until we got to the Cape Cod National Seashore. We had a good time romping with the dogs—Joy ended up getting closet to the surf of any of us, getting soaked with a sudden wave, but everyone had a great time. We’re looking forward to just soaking in the relaxation this weekend. I think.

On two wheels with Chris Reeder

I got an out of the blue email from Chris Reeder, who was one of the editors of the Yellow Journal (the scurrilous humor mag at the University of Virginia) when I was a young first year too timid and serious to contribute much but a little paste-up. (Aside: I use the term “editor” advisedly. In my yellowing copies from that year, he is varyingly credited as “First Mate” and “Voice of the Hamster.” So who the hell knows?) As coincidence goes, this was a pretty big one: turns out he’s in Boston, finishing up his MBA at Boston College.

I’m looking forward to meeting him again—I haven’t seen in in a baker’s dozen of years—and also to finishing his travel narrative, which is published online (semi-conveniently) in 101 RTF files as “My Life on Two Wheels” at his personal site. I’m currently up to chapter 24 and already feeling confirmed in my own personal journey.

MSN Music launches; online music now officially commodity

The beta of MSN Music, the online music service from Microsoft (my former employer), launched yesterday. And unless I’m missing something, it looks very much like the same content being offered by all the other for-pay music download sites. No Beatles, no Radiohead, no Connells, light on the old school 80s rap.

In fact, it looks a lot like the other services, but requires Passport, a recent flavor of Windows, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player.

If I were a business developer for MSN music, I would be pushing hard to get exclusive artists and content. As a customer (note: I did not say, nor will I ever say, consumer), I’m actually kind of glad to see another storefront open up presenting the same goods in a slightly different format. It means that online music is becoming a commodity just as online CD purchases did, and we as customers can look forward to more and more benefits as retailers try to differentiate themselves, and as artists and labels realize that the online stores, not the Towers and HMVs, is where they should be concentrating their efforts.

MFA photos

Some pix from the MFA yesterday. I think that camphone photos of the permanent exhibition qualify as “personal, non-commercial photography without flash or tripod.” I experimented a little with camera placement, and did some post-processing on the last two shots. I took a series of increasingly closer shots of a couple of works, and composited them together into a single frame. I’m not entirely satisfied with the results but I think I’m going to try it again another time.

Randomness

Esta and I were at the MFA today (pictures to come). On the way home, we were discussing “Long Distance Salvation,” which Esta has yet to receive (once I design the CD label, we’ll be in business). I was giving her a track-by-track breakdown, and said,“I am living liner notes.”

She said, “Huh?”

I said, “There are no liner notes for this mix, so I’m giving you your living liner notes.”

She said, “Ah. I thought you said you were living liner notes.”

We were silent for a second. I said, “I’ve been living liner notes. But it’s been for a John Cage album. And I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

—Hey, it was funny at the time.

Distributed census records

I periodically get email questions from people who have come to my site by searching Google for their ancestors and have found my genealogical records. (In fact, I’m currently working through a backlog of six questions, some of which have sat in my inbox for six months…the shame.) Anyway, in looking up some information about a distant cousin, I found out that there’s a regional repository of census microfilm in the Boston area at the Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center in Waltham. Since driving to Waltham is cheaper than paying $20 a month for access to the records, I may have to make a little field trip…

What are my parents going to do for a tailgate?

Just peeked at University of Virginia’s football schedule for 2004. And lo and behold, there is no game against N.C. State scheduled this year!

This is a problem for my parents. For the past umpty years—at least 15, I think—my parents’ gourmet group, which included three N.C. State alums and one UVA alum, would meet at the UVA–NC State game for a tailgate party and a great game of ACC football. Except this year.

But it’s too good a tradition to let die. So shall it be Duke? or (gasp) Carolina? Sadly, no games in the Boston vicinity…

Catching up

I caught up with two old Virginia friends last night at the All Asia in Cambridge. Daria graduated with me at Sloan, so it had only been two years since I saw her; I hadn’t seen Adam Olenn since I graduated ten years ago. As I mentioned a while back, he’s stayed involved with the Berklee School of Music since finishing his masters, and now plays with a few combos around the area, including both the Homesteaders and a duo with Lindsey Grey. Sadly I missed the latter last night, as I got to the café too late; maybe another time.

Adam and I had a hard time finding each other, as the last time we met we both had goatees (take a look at the photos on the Lindsey and Adam site to see why I was confused). That was a long time ago.