Thanksgiving Day

I went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Hadn't planned to. Just one of those things. Tom emailed me asking what I was doing for Thanksgiving. My reply: nothing. He said he had no plans and was wondering if I could think of anything interesting to do. I suggested the parade. Shortly thereafter Adam calls to say he's coming into NYC and wants to go to the parade with me. So 8:05 am I was standing on the corner of 66th St and Braodway waiting to meet up with Adam to watch the parade. His dad came along with him. Late, as usual. However, we were still early enough to find a good viewing space on 65th and Broadway. I've watched the parade from that corner almost my entire life.

It was nice being with Adam for a few hours. After the parade we strolled back to Broadway and settled in at a cafe with tables outside. This meant we could smoke with our coffees, so of course we lingered. The weather was quite warm, in the mid-60's at least. Adam gave me a new cell phone and switched my sim card into it. I'm in the process of rebuilding my phone addressbook so anyone I know who is reading this, please send me your preferred contact phone number to add to it.

It was early on a warm summer's evening in the 1970s, as I stood in a palm plantation high on a green hillside in western Java, that I saw for the first time, silhouetted against the faint blue hills of faraway Sumatra, the small gathering of islands that is all that remains of what was once a mountain called Krakatoa.

-Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester

Two interesting web sites recommended to me by a friend.

The Pilgrims of Russian-town 70 Years Later, Stephen Scott

Linguaphiles' Journal

Two product warnings -

The US post office. Don't be mislead by their fraudulent so-called Priority mail. There's nothing priority about it except the name. Mail sent this way costs 20 times First class and doesn't get there any faster. In fact, it often gets there slower.

Second warning is Firefox. I'm very sad to say that while I tried Firefox and really liked it when it was in Beta, when they recently released the final official version 1.0 what they released was complete CRAP. I have no idea what happened but the nice program that did what I wanted it to and was fairly stable has turned into a complete and utter pice of crap. Of course, like most open source software, they think they are doing you a favor and therefore can be arrogant and rude and not supply any documentation. They can also not supply any help or tech support or explanations.

On a nice note, Andrew's in Vienna. I hope he has a fantastic time. I have 5 days off from work and plan to catch up on sleep. I've been suffering from major fatigue due to too little sleep and the disruption of my entire day/night activity cycle. I had intended to walk a bit today but it's raining so that's a great excuse to slob around the house instead.

Andrew is off to Vienna today. I hope he has a wonderful time there, takes loads of photos. I loaned him my digital camera. I was very excited about that camera when I first got it but it's amazinghow fast things change and now what I want is a really small thin one.

I'm listening to the Dresden Dolls, "Coin Operated Boy". I need to get more of their music and see if it's as good as this song.

Night work is still messing up my energy/sleep cycles. I'm off for 5 days for Thanksgiving. I'll be working on my resume and looking for a new job. I really need to get back to a normal day job.

I can see I'm babbling. I had something I wanted to blog about but I've forgotten.

Awesome, awesome solar video website!

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/spaceweather/lenticular/96_01seq_new.mov

You MUST see this! Simply must. 'Nuff said.