2009 In Cities

Ok, a little late on this (again). I realize this blog has become neglected, but hope to start posting a bit more again soon, but in the meantime, I need to repeat last year’s tradition, totally ripped off from Dennis about my “year in cities,” highlighting every city where I spent at least one night… So, here we go, in order of attendance:

San Carlos, CA (home, so multiple times)
Washington, DC (multiple times)
Lorton, VA
Many thousands of feet over the Atlantic ocean (multiple times)
Juan-les-Pins, France
Edinburgh, Scotland
Nashville, TN
Toronto, Canada
Huntington, NY (multiple times)
New York, NY (multiple times)
San Diego, CA
Stavanger, Norway
Wheaton, IL

Hmm. A fair bit of travel, and definitely a bunch of international travel. Shorter than last year’s list, but that’s because last year included a nice road trip. This year has already started off with a bang, but is going to be a much lighter travel year overall (very much on purpose).

On Being Thankful and Saying Goodbye

Five years ago, one of my college roommates was getting married in Miami, and with my grandparents (at the time) living just a bit north of there, it became an opportunity to visit them and (more importantly) to introduce them to Sunnia for the first time. She was nervous, and even I was a bit nervous, though I knew my grandparents would make her feel right at home. They did much more than that. My grandmother and my (future) wife bonded immediately. Despite there being nearly 60 years difference in age, being born on different continents, having different native languages and cultural backgrounds, the two of them bonded as if they had known each other forever (much to my own detriment at times). The two of them both have a mischievous joking side, and they would kid each other — and (more frequently) team up to make fun of me together.

Two and half years ago, I was thrilled that my Grandma Rose (with Grandpa Sid) was able to fly out to California for our wedding. You could see how thrilled (of course) she was to share that experience with us.

Two and half weeks ago, my travels took me to New York on my way to Europe for work, and I was able to stop by and visit them (since they had moved back to New York from Florida a few years ago). My friend Yuval picked me up from the airport and we drove up to Queens. Grandma was (as always) happy to see me, and thrilled to play host. She caught us up on family stuff and then spent time showing Yuval around the apartment, including scrapbooks of all my grandfather’s crafts and her own needlepoints. Then she gave us a tour of “the museum” as she called it — having put up a bunch of her old photos — including photos of her own (and my grandfather’s) grandparents.

She was her usual self, and what I remember most was her laughing and joking about the way Sunnia had informed Grandma of her pregnancy — doing a pitch-perfect mimic of Sunnia’s joking phone call and then roaring with laughter about how amusing it was.

Later my sister Amy and my cousins Jenny and Jason along with their kids came by and we had a really wonderful time.

Two days ago my Grandma Rose passed away.

It was her 69th wedding anniversary.

I’m typing this at 33,000 feet flying over Utah on my way to New York, having just returned from there a week ago. What had been planned as a quiet four day weekend with Sunnia has now turned into an unfortunate rushed return to New York for a funeral. Amazingly, despite the Thanksgiving weekend, we were able to get flights (and not even middle seats — though Sunnia’s sitting 13 rows behind me right now, and we’re returning on different flights).

A year and a half ago, for her 90th birthday, the six cousins who made up Grandma Rose’s grandchildren all told stories about her. I posted mine here. What became clear (even though we all knew it already) was that the biggest thing that came through in every story, was about her love of her family and her ability to keep us all together and as a close knit group, even as we all lived our own lives in different places around the country.

Seeing as it’s Thanksgiving, it seems only appropriate to give thanks for everything that Grandma Rose gave to us as a family over the years, through mostly good times and the occasional bad times. From being able to raise her three daughters, including my mom and her twin sister while my Grandfather was off fighting a war to passing on (not always wanted or appreciated) advice and wisdom to all her children, children-in-law, grandchildren and now great grandchildren, Grandma was always at her best being the glue that held the family together.

Grandma taught us all a lot about love and the importance of family — and while there’s plenty to be sad about today, there’s so much to be thankful for as well, for all that she gave to her family and shared with us over the years.

Wanted: A Better Twitter Client

Well over a year ago, I wrote about just how useful Twitter can be, and over time that’s only increased. I have to admit that until about a month ago, I mostly just used Twitter in the web interface. I did install Digsby as a client, but I basically just used that to notify me when new Twitter messages were showing up. But then I kept hearing about neat things (such as groups) that TweetDeck allowed, and I started playing with that. It took some getting used to, but there were definite advantages. Being able to set up groups/columns/persistent searches and laying it out in a nice format actually made Twitter that much more useful. It became, as I noted in a Tweet sort of a “personal Bloomerg” for me.

But still… Tweetdeck had limitations. While you could edit the colors (useful! white text on black background is awful for eye strain), there were limitations. Then, I noticed that Tweetdeck was dropping a bunch of messages. I’d only noticed because people would tweet something in reference to an earlier tweet… but that earlier tweet wouldn’t be there. In the past few days it’s only gotten worse. I asked for some suggestions for other apps and have now tested out both Seesmic Desktop and Destroy Twitter. Both have some nice features… and others that are quite annoying. People recommended both Tweetie and Nambu… but both are only available on Macs, so I couldn’t test them out.

Not that anyone actually reads this blog, but I thought I’d try to put together a feature list of what would make me happy on the Twitter client front (I’m leaving out the stuff that’s already pretty standard, such as URL shortener support, easy retweets, etc.). If anyone develops a client with these features, please, please, please let me know:

• Customization! Let me choose colors/fonts/sizes. Tiny white text on a black background? Sorry. Unusable.
• Let me manage how many columns/groups I want. When you limit what I can do, it just makes me want to look for other apps. Tweetdeck seems to limit you to 10 columns. Not sure about Seesmic. Destroy Twitter has 6 total columns (home/replies/direct messages/groups/search/saved tweets), and only displays three at a time (first three or last three). You can do multiple groups/searches, but you can only see one at a time. That gets annoying. My screen can show more, so let me see more. And making me manually switch between groups or searches? Why? Just show them all.
• Also, we don’t necessarily need the full column metaphor. Why not set it up as a canvas and let me organize each option as I see fit? Then I can set it up exactly as I want. My full stream can be a full column, but I don’t get many direct messages. So maybe I only want direct messages to be a small box in the corner, and then I can put a lower volume persistent search beneath it. Let me organize how I see everything on an open canvas and I’d be much happier.
• Make it easy to set up groups — which means setting up multiple ways to manage groups. Tweetdeck gives you a list of everyone you follow. That works well until you have a ton of users you follow. Seesmic only lets you add if you see people in your home timeline. That’s awful. I purposely set up groups so I make sure I can see important messages from people who don’t tweet often, but I don’t want to miss (like my mom or my wife). Destroy Twitter shows you the first 4 (alphabetical) people you follow and then offers a search box. Showing those first four users is useless and if I don’t remember the usernames, the search is useless. Why not set up a combo of all of these? Show the list. Let people add from their stream. And offer search.
• Notifications: Tweetdeck and Seesmic just tell me I have new messages (and in what buckets) but don’t display the messages themselves. Destroy Twitter and Digsby at least show actual text in the notification… except both just show the latest message (Digsby lets you scroll to the “next” message if you get your mouse over the notification fast enough). I would kind of like to see all the incoming messages displayed briefly. That helps with the whole “ambient information” concept.
• Facebook integration is definitely nice — props to Tweetdeck and Seesmic for doing that… but why won’t either let me clear out those messages once seen? I can clear out Twitter messages, but not Facebook messages.
• Server integration. If I run the client on multiple machines, it should know what I’ve read/not read.
• Better handling of read/unread messages: make it easy to mark stuff as read and clear it out…. and then if I *do* want to go back, make that easy too. Tweetdeck lets me clear out read messages, but if I shut it down and reopen… they’re back. But if I don’t shut it down and reopen, there appears to be no way to get my “cleared” messages back. If I want to see them again, I have to either shut down/reopen or go to the web interface. Maybe just do what Gmail does and have an “archived” box/column that can be opened.
• Show me all my messages. Not sure if this is an API limitation or what… but if I shut down for the night and open up Tweetdeck in the morning, it only shows me a few hours worth of messages. I’d like to see everything since I last logged in. At the very least, make this a user option… (related to this: Tweetdeck, STOP dropping messages).
• Memory management. Stop being a memory hog! All of you. :)

I think that’s it for now… though I may have some other thoughts later. What other features would be good?

I should note, by the way, that none of this is to disparage the work done on these apps. They’ve all made Twitter much more useful — so I’m not trying to pull a Louis CK “everything’s great and I’m still pissed off” sorta thing. I’m just finding that in making Twitter much better, they’re also exposing their limitations. All of these apps are in early versions, so I’m hopeful that they’ll all get there eventually. Hopefully this post helps someone get there faster. :)

Getting Back To That Podcasting Thing…

So, last year I tried doing two separate ska/reggae podcasts that I posted to this blog… and I’d been meaning to do another one, but really wanted to try one with a co-host, because I think it sounds a lot better. This weekend, I went up to Dennis’ place and we set up and recorded another one. I’m pretty happy with the results (though, yes, there were quite a few mistakes if you listen closely enough… but you won’t… right?):

And the playlist…

• The Skatalites — Devil’s Triangle (opening…)
• The Impalers — Holding On To You
• Kutiman — Dubox
• Orobians — Napoleon Solo (background)
• Plenty Enuff — Didn’t We Succeed
• The Insteps — Free Advice
• Red Soul Community — Hey Hey Uh!
• Color Blind — SuperSoul (background)
• The Upsessions — Hooligans ‘69
• Two Tone Club — True & Big Love
• The Caroloregians — Another Saturday Night
• Ed Rome — Non-Relationship Rant
• The Lions — Hot No Ho (background)
• The Upstemmians — One, Two, Three
• The Adjusters — Freedom
• The Aggrolites — Time To Get Tough
• The Pietasters — Mellow Mood
• USCB All-Stars — Heartattack
• Firebug — The Quest (background)
• The Slackers — Come Back Baby

It definitely is a lot more fun with a “co-host” and the sound quality is definitely better than on my previous attempts, because Dennis has better recording equipment (as in, real professional microphones and a sound board and such). Don’t know if we’ll get to do the co-host thing all that often, but hopefully…

You Can Go Home Again… But They Might Build Yankee Stadium There…

So… I actually wrote most of this post in July of 2008, while I was traveling somewhere on a plane. It sat in a text file for all this time, because I was too lazy/busy to get the images. I figured, however, now that it’s spring training (whoo hoo!!), I might as well finally get it posted. I did some editing on what I originally wrote so that it makes sense now — i.e., saying “last year” instead of “this year.”)

As some of you probably know, I’m a pretty big Yankee fan from a pretty young age. I have no idea how/when it happened. I first started to become aware of baseball in the mid-1980s, at which point the Yankees were really bad. The Mets, on the other hand were at their best. But I just could never get into the Mets. I went to plenty of games at either stadium (more at Shea, because it was easier to get to), but definitely remember going to Yankee games as a kid.

Nowadays, I tend to see the Yankees when they’re in Oakland (or on the rare occasion that they’re in San Francisco to play the Giants). But last year was the final year that the “old” Yankee Stadium would exist, so when I realized I was going to be in New York in June, I figured it would be great to get one last game at the Stadium. I mentioned it to my Dad, and he bought some tickets for a nice father-son night at the game.

While the game was fun, perhaps even cooler was getting a chance to check out the neighborhood where my Dad grew up. I’d always known he grew up in the Bronx not far from Yankee stadium. I remember one time going to the game as a kid, as we were walking up the stairs beyond the left field bleachers he pointed out exactly where his apartment building was — but he also told us that his old neighborhood was “too dangerous” now to visit again, so I never thought I’d get to see it.

However, a few days before the game, he suggested we head to the game early and check out the old neighborhood, so that’s what we did. We drove up to the Bronx nice and early, and I got a nice look at “the old neighborhood” he hadn’t been to in 35 years. As with any childhood memory, he noted that everything was “a lot smaller” than he remembered. What amazed me was how close it really was to Yankee Stadium. It really is just blocks from the Stadium.

The little red box/arrow is where he lived. The stadium at the bottom is the “old” Yankee Stadium. The construction zone above it is where the “new” Yankee Stadium is today.

Perhaps the best moment, though, was as we drove down Jerome Ave., and my Dad pointed out the park where he used to play in, and said “and up here is where I used to play baseball in the sandlots…” and paused as he realized his old sandlot field is the new Yankee Stadium. While the new Stadium looks beautiful, I don’t think my Dad is all that happy that his old sandlots have been replaced.

“Oh, this is awful.”

“But, Dad, that means you’ve played baseball at Yankee Stadium.”

He didn’t seem to take much consolation in that fact.

Either way, it was a great experience getting to see his old neighborhood, and learn a little bit about his life growing up, from moving two doors down from one apartment to another, to the fact that his apartment had previously been a doctor’s office (my Dad’s bedroom was the former examination room).

If I remember correctly — and I’m doing this 8 months later — I think this is the one they moved to, and the one down the street is where he lived before. Dad, if this is wrong, let me know… :)

Then we got to walk around the Stadium a bit, and he pointed out where the players’ entrance used to be (and the hotel where the players all used to live, back before they were all multi-millionaires). He said that as kids, all his friends would line up and get autographs, but that he was too shy. So… no Joe DiMaggio autographs to hand down…

And, oh yeah, the game was pretty fun as well. We had pretty good seats out towards right field. We got to see an A-Rod homerun, two Giambi homeruns, a nicely pitched game by Pettite, and a good old-fashioned blowout against the hapless San Diego Padres. All in all a fun father-son bonding experience. (later added: though, now as we enter the spring training of A-Roid, I’m realizing all three players I mentioned are now connected to performance enhancing drugs. Yay, baseball.)

I look forward to doing it again later this year at the new Yankee Stadium, so I can see where my Dad played baseball as a kid. And this time around, it looks like we’ll be bringing a whole bunch of relatives along as well. Should be fun.