General
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Convention Updates
Well, the convention was definitely “in town” by Friday. It was obvious when I went into the bodegas on my corner and five midwestern women were in there and asked me if Ground Zero was within walking distance. I told them “yes, if you have a few hours”, then smiled and told them with five they might as well just hop in a cab over taking the subway (if they could find a cab who will let all five of them in).
Today Ninth Avenue had the parking lanes coned off and four police on every corner. A bit crazy for the distance we are to the convention.
Here’s a CNN article: Tens of thousands protest GOP convention
A few channels also have the protests airing live.
Friday, August 27, 2004
Not Looking Forward to the Convention
Protests and such started for the Republican National Convention today. Blah. It’s not that I hate when NY gets crowded, as it usually is crowded, but this is the type of thing where most people I know, including Republicans are saying “please go somewhere else”. The extra people are just extra people, you manage to get around them somehow. The extra police and security checkpoints aren’t horrible either. The protests are usually the worst. They completely block off streets and walkways, the people involved are usually after anyone not within their group, yelling at all who walk by as though you’re closely aligned with whoever they’re hating at that point. Cathy (my girlfriend, a nurse, for those who don’t know) heard about how one of the so-called protests is going to involve flooding hospitals with calls about chest pains when Bush is talking. What? That’s productive? Holding back a hospital from helping people who are actually sick and injured is easily one of the dumbest things I’ve heard yet.
What won’t be fun is my walk to work the next week as it’s generally right down Broadway through Times Square, stopping at 37th Street. Times Square will most likely be hell. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but any time they even close part of it for any reason - or even if it just rains - it’s hell. Cabs will be out of the question. The subway will not just be super crowded as well, but there will be few places you could probably feel less safe. That and because of the location of the stations, it’s only one or two stops anyway and I tend not to take it unless it’s pouring out. So walking it’ll stay, and there’s very little “out of the way” other then perhaps going up and down 6th Avenue or 9th Avenue, but that’ll add time to the commute and I sure know I’m not going to volunteer to do that.
Maybe things will be smooth and I’ll have little delay, doubt it, but I’ll try and play the opitimist until something crappy happens.
Perhaps I’ll carry my camera around and do some amateur photojournalism.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Matisyahu: Hasidic Reggae
From the “now I’ve seen it all” department I present to you: Matisyahu, Hasidic Reggae star. While I have no idea how much of a “star” he is, his name’s gotten around and I caught him on Jimmy Kimmel last night.
From his interview on the show after he performed it seems he was just a “normal” guy growing up, liked reggae as a teen and stuck with it. He became religious a few years ago and I can’t think of anything that would advance his career more then that. His performance on the show was pretty good too. Which then brings up the question - is it weird that he’s Hasidic and performing reggae or is it weirder that he actually didn’t sound bad on the show? I’ll admit, I’m not into reggae all that much, so what the hell do I know, but a lot of musical acts sound like crap on late night shows and his didn’t. In the end, I think he’ll get at least part of his 15 minutes from this, good or bad.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
The Palm
So tonight was good, shared a six-pound lobster with my girlfriend at The Palm. An early birthday dinner from my parents. Fewer dinners are better then huge lobsters cooked well and this one was pretty damn good.
Not sure about the rest of the night, it’s still fairly early, we didn’t go out until a little after midnight last night and I’m still waiting for a few people to call, but I think tonight may be a movie night anyway… nothing exciting, but hey, the lobster was good.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
And so it starts
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. In fact, it’s something I semi-started a while back and put on hold, deleted and then restarted it again.
So why blog? Right now it’s to simply share a voice. Pretty much the same reason anyone else does.
I think we all want to set topics when we first start. Most just want to throw out an opinion or link to cool things they find and I’m not far off from that.
Subjects should be technology, sports (heavy on the hockey I’m sure), movies, television, video games for when I find the time, along with anything else that crosses my path that I deem worthy. I’ll also throw in a run-on sentence or two.
A design will be coming here eventually, but until then I’m just going to have a very simple design. Easy on the eyes and easy on the loading time - for now.
One of my main issues was which domain to use. vodkafish.com? VodkaFish has been a name I’ve been using online for almost 10 years. It’s not exactly the most professional thing in the world, but it’s not like it’s on my business cards. So what to do? Use it? Use another generic name? I’d love to get a variation of my real name, but all those domains have been taken for quite some time. I asked a few people and they all said “vodkafish.com” - of course, they already know me as VodkaFish and what I’m about is already also known to them. But in the end this is the logical choice. A name I use on a slew of sites, it’s here to use and hell, it somehow already has a Google PR of 2 to build upon.
And so it begins… I step into the blogsphere or whatever catchphrase they’re using today…