(via urbaniak)
Pay it Forward
Last year, at Matt & Casey’s anniversary extravaganza, we had a little car accident due to some really wet ice. Nobody was hurt, and there was only a little bumper scraping which occurred, but the person driving the car on the receiving end of our car was very nice and didn’t even want to exchange insurance information. We were quite grateful.
Last night, after leaving the CfA, Howard and I were trying to pass the Sheraton Commander hotel in Harvard Square, but there was some Fire/Ambulance activity in front. Because of the emergency vehicles, a MBTA bus, which runs on overhead catenary wires couldn’t continue down the road. We got a green light but after crossing the intersection approaching the hotel we were stopped. The cars behind us ended up "blocking the box" and were jockeying to get out of the way of the cross traffic. The car behind me tried to pull up along side me on the right to get out of the way, but ended up tapping my bumper. I could tell it was a fairly non-event impact, and seeing the terrified eyes of the woman who hit us in the rear-view, I decided to let it slide and just continued on my way. When I parked the car I assessed the damage, and it was a small amount of paint removed from my bumper, which is already very battle scarred from years of parking in Brighton.
Do unto others, or something…
Democracy @ Work
A few weeks before the 2000 presidential election, I voted via absentee ballot while attending RIT. My hometown of Hopatcong sent me a punch-card ballot with instructions to punch the card using a pen. After completing the ballot, I noticed a collection of little paper dots on my desk. It would be a few weeks before I learned that these were known as ‘chads’.
I thought it would be fun to tape all of these dots to a piece of paper reading ‘Democracy @ Work’ and place it on my dorm room door at CSH. Fast-forwarding a few weeks to election day, and the drama in Florida which followed, this would go from being a sign of my pride and participation to a disappointing reminder of the inefficiency in our voting system.
Check your Address Book
I just turned off my @livejournal.com email address, as it had just turned into a spam pit… My extensive email archive tells me that only two people have ever used it to contact me, and both of those now know my real address…
If you need my email address, just leave a comment to any post and I’ll receive it.. Even if you don’t have an LJ account, leave an anonymous comment, and I’ll be notified to approve it…
Goodbye Twitter (Syndication)!
In a discussion with Howard today, I mentioned how I hated when people post an update to Twitter to mention that they made a new post to their blog. This caused me to rethink about the opposite scenario: my use of LoudTwitter to most those "Daily Twitter Profundity" posts.. At first I liked them, but after thinking about it, and seeing how it seemingly completely floods out my Journal here, I’m ending that process.
In the future, if you want to see little quippy updates on how my day is going, keep an eye on my Twitter page. If RSS is your thing, you can even add my Twitter RSS feed to your favorite news reader.
Now, as evidenced by the 10:1 (100:1) ratio of the "Daily Twitter Profundity" posts to actual journal posts, it should be clear that I have been posting to my journal less. I guess this is because Twitter has become the place where I post little dumb updates and observations (which used to get their own post to the journal). This means that you’ll see the number of posts here at LiveJournal go down a bit, but the posts that I do make should have a bit more signal and a bit less noise (hopefully).
Please feel free to thank me or tell me I’m an idiot in the comments, but I’m pretty sure this decision is final.
The Movies I Saw in 2008
Here’s the list of the movies I saw in 2008… I was a little lazier about keeping this list up to date this year, so it’s possible I missed one or two movies. I saw 150 movies this year, which is a handful less than last year, but still fairly ridiculous. This year was very polarized, with some completely amazing movies and some complete stinkers. I’m going to wait a few weeks (until before the Oscar ceremony) to compile my "Best Of 2008" list, which should hopefully give me some time to catch up on some of the ones I missed this year.
Also, I am coming to the point, with my HDTV and surround sound system, that the distinction between "Theatre" and "Video" viewing is becoming rather academic. I do still prefer to watch movies in the "art house" theaters in Boston, because the audiences are usually quite respectful. But the downsides of going to one of the multiplexes easily match (and probably surpass) any downsides of watching a movie in your living room. So it’s possible in the future I may not keep track of the distinction, but I haven’t decided yet.
The list is mostly in the order I viewed them, and I tried to italicize any films I had already seen.
Daily twitter profundity
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Daily twitter profundity
- 15:57 The snowpocalypse has begun in full force. Hopefully it won’t screw with our train travel schedule tomorrow too much… #
- 16:07 Omg they are playing “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey” on the radio.. Coco didn’t believe me when I said people outside of NJ knew it #
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Daily twitter profundity
- 09:18 Mmmmm. Harvard University Library Xmas party tonight means Faculty Club bread pudding!! #
- 14:44 Rochestarians: Go see Timecrimes at the Dryden on Jan 24th! #
- 23:26 John Henry: “After hearing about [Teixeira’s] other offers, however, it seems clear that we are not going to be a factor.” #
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Daily twitter profundity
- 09:32 Another benefit of getting rid of your microwave: Less temptation to eat shitty pre-made frozen foods.. #
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