Category Archives: Pals

Lets all go to the drive in

Art, NYC, Pals

Hey, NYC friends,
Grand opening drive in.

Lets pick a night and go see a drive in movie at grand opening. This car seats six -maybe a triple date?

From their website:

Cruise downtown and park yourself at DRV-IN—Manhattan’s only drive-in cinema. Seven days a week, twice a night, passengers are transported
to another time and place. Under starry skies and the foliage of a potted oak tree, guests watch classic films in a one-of-a-kind 1965 Ford Falcon convertible. With seating for six and a full concession stand, this unique theater setting is one of the Lower East Side’s most intimate experiences. Starting with films from 1960 and progressing chronologically each night, DRV-IN speeds through four decades of cinematic achievement.

Any takers?

pV=nRT

Hacks, NYC, Pals

The Ideal Gas Law.
Pressure and volume are inversely related. Temperature is related to both. This means that the more stuff you have, you either are putting it in a bigger space or putting it under greater pressure. This is why rockets, guns, cars and jets work. If you increase the pressure on your stuff but don’t change the volume, you are going to see an increase in temperature. This is why pressure cookers work.

I really enjoy Manhattan Special. It is carbonated, sweetened coffee and it tastes heavenly. Though it is called Manhattan Special, it’s very hard to find in Manhattan and very easy to find in Brooklyn. I recommend it highly, except for one caveat. When you buy a warm bottle of Manhattan Special, do not, however much you want to, drink it. Stick it in the fridge. Let it cool. Because the Ideal Gas Law applies very heavily to Manhattan Special. If you try to open it warm, the bottle will fizz and spit and shoot everywhere quickly. This is not because you shook it up or because this one bottle was extra fizzy. This will happen every time you try to open a warm bottle of Manhattan Special.

A chilled bottle will behave nicely and will not overflow. Chilled, temperature T is much lower, and correspondingly, there is less pressure p in the bottle of constant volume V. Opening the bottle, the delicious beverage will not try to expand to occupy as much space and you will not be covered in brown liquid, cleaning up your kitchen. This fact is brought to you by me paying attention in physics class.

This week in review

Pals, Week.In.Review

I’m trying to get in the habit of doing a weekly review now.  This should help me focus more on getting the things done that I care about.

I’ve started a few self-improvement projects recently and I’m sort of sticking to them.

  • Start learning a new programming language.  I’m picking up Ruby and specifically Ruby on Rails as my language of choice.  It seems to be perfect for very quickly creating small project websites, which is the sort of thing I enjoy.  This week I finished reading and coding along to Agile Web Development with Rails and I think I’m going to put up a simple dive log application on the web.  Hopefully my friends and I can log our dives there.
  • Start learning a new language.  Since I live in NYC, I’m trying to pick up Espanol. Sam’s better than I am, she’s listened to a lot of tapes.  I’m mainly reading the Easy Spanish Reader on the subway occasionally.
  • Eat less Meat.  Everyone yells at me when I say I’m a crappy vegetarian in a way they never did when I said I was a crappy pacifist.  The past week has only involved a little seafood and no red meat.  The rest was veggies.

Both Sam and I have been doing well on career development stuff.  She’s doing a new design of her website and it seems to be coming along.  I’ve gotten comfortable enough with Ruby on Rails that I’ll be trying a small project on my own and offering some help to the Downtown Bar and Grill down the road.  I think alot of what I have done is just repeating the magic incantations without knowing what they mean though.  I’m going to try to storm through Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby to get a better idea on what the language is.

At work, our big project is still steaming along.  We’ve gotten the features done, now we are working out bugfixing and deployment stories.  VSTO deployment is definitely where you get the feeling Microsoft didn’t finish the work before shipping their product.  I’ve also been learning all the crappiness that is nant scripting for our CruiseControl build server.  The documentation seems complete but only on the surface.

Last weekend Sam and I got to hang out in Maine on a houseboat with Jaymie v.V.  Her Aunt Karen was a great host.  She lives on a wooden houseboat built in the 20’s with a couple of cats.  She was one of the first women ever in the Merchant Marines and told us some chilling stories about it.   Portland was an awesome town to hang out in.  Sam and I are both definitely up for going back…

Things to do next week:

  • Hang out with Jaime while she is in town.
  • Finish build and deployment stuff at work.
  • Work on my dive log website.
  • Book tickets and hotel for Jonad’s Wedding.   I’m way overdue on this and I don’t know why.

On a personal note, Sam and I think our cat Magic has some sort of cancer.  He isn’t eating and is throwing up.  Hopefully he’ll make it, but if you are a fan of Magic Man you may want to come by and say hi.