Owns Home Computer

This seems to be everywhere at this point but I wanted to share anyway. Amazing. Might as well be 100 years ago. 

10 years later

Received the final Hawaii quarter as change today, and the collection is complete. I don't really have much of an interest in collecting coins, but I've stuck with this since starting it back in 1999. 

Is it a little dorky that I was really excited to get the Hawaii quarter today? Or that I have been eagerly awaiting it for weeks now? 

Just arrived...

...and i'll be starting from the beginning once again. 

Phishin'

I've always truly regretted that I never saw the Grateful Dead before Jerry Garcia died. I never quite embraced the whole Grateful Dead scene (as so many of my friends growing up did), but I've always been a huge fan. The Dead have endured my many musical phases: the classic rock years of middle school, the jamband years of high school and college, post college indie rock, and presently what I like to call the "potpourri years". Europe '72 will always be my soundtrack for the first warm days in Spring, and Reckoning remains one of my favorite albums in my collection. But I never made the trek out to Giants stadium or whatever seemingly far away place where the Dead would be playing, and I feel like I really missed out on something by never seeing them. Seeing any of the present iterations of the remaining members holds no interest for me. 

Unfortunately I didn't really learn a lesson from this, because I always had it in mind to make it to a Phish show, and never quite got around to that either. I came around to Phish relatively late- my friends were all listening to them in high school, but being a contrarian, I was focusing on other parts of that whole genre. I would travel hours to see God Street Wine, but didn't make the 20 minute drive to see Phish in a club in New Haven. Live and learn I guess. But by the time I really got into them they were playing huge venues, and I had started losing patience with the whole scene surrounding them. As time went on their shows apparently started to spiral in quality also (which I believe ran directly parallel with the increase in Trey's drug habit), and when they broke up "for good", I figured another opportunity was lost. 

But, not entirely surprisingly, Phish is back! And why not- they still have legions of fans. The leftover deadheads, the thirtysomethings ready to pull out the hackey sack for one last hurrah, and undoubtedly the younger kids who never got a chance to see Phish but have been smoking dope to them all the same. And, hopefully, me. They are playing the Comcast Center (previously Tweeter Center, and Great Woods before that) in June and tickets will be close to impossible to get. But I signed up for their pre-sale drawing today, so if I'm lucky enough to get randomly selected I can go to the venue I vowed never to return to for a last chance to see this band. 

Jimbama's house of antiques

At some point, I will get around to fully refurbishing all of this (only have fully done so with the Victrola in the back of the photo.)

2 newest additions- a Philco Cathedral from 1937, and a mid-50s RCA Victor short wave/AM radio. These were in an attic for a very, very long time, and I wasn't expecting much when I plugged them in. Sure enough the tubes in the Philco were glowing even if I couldn't tune anything in, and the RCA picked up AM stations and sounded lovely. 

Wonder if I'll be able to say the same for my iPod in 50 years... 

A for effort

After my last post, someone asked me what the other 2008 resolutions were. Here's most of them, along with the varying levels of success. 

1. Write something, anything. Also keep journal. The "something, anything" is this blog. Posting is a bit sporadic but it's still more writing than I have done in years. Never got around to keeping a journal depsite carrying around a forever blank notebook with me. 

2. Gym: three times per week, minimum; 4. More veggies. Less cheese. For me these go together under the Jimbama 2008 health initiative. Not unlike the futility of carrying around a blank journal, for years I paid for a gym membership that I never used. Finally frustrated with that, I joined the swanky gym across the street from my office. Cons: Triple the price of the gym I never went to, occasional awkward encounter with co-workers in locker room.  Pros: I go a lot (good), they have towel service and nice showers (awesome and not to be underestimated), and I can go during work (amazing). On the nutrition side, it became clear that I really needed to do something about my cheese consumption when I would walk home from the subway every night thinking about the Triscuits and block of sharp cheddar waiting for me. Sometimes when I went food shopping I would unload my cart to pay out and realize that I was buying 4 types of cheese- shredded mozzarella (for english muffin pizzas, of course), sliced deli cheese for sandwiches, sharp cheddar for the previously mentioned Triscuits, and a package of those little individually wrapped Babybel cheeses for snacks. It is important here to note that I live alone. It had to end. I'm not completely on the wagon but no more blocks of cheddar, no more Babybel, and less of the english muffin pizzas (I'm not willing to give up the deli cheese). Still could use some work on the veggie side but that one will carry over to 2009. 

All in all, resolutions 2 and 4 have resulted in losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 pounds, so I consider this one a success. 

3. Read: minimum of one book per month.  This is not a lofty goal at all but one I have not found success in. I blame my iPod. Reading time on the subway has now given way to podcasts- between Meet the Press, This American Life, Radiolab, and the Onion News Network, my commute time is almost completely filled up, and I never seem to find time to dedicate to reading otherwise. 

5. Invest money. Never got around to this, and not too disappointed considering the the way things have gone for the past few months (not to mention what I lost in my 401k last year). 

6. New job.  Put in a ton of effort on a few very good opportunities, but none worked out. If I need to be positive about it I could say it provided me with some character building experiences:
1) Having a surprised interviewer look at my resume and ask "what makes you think you would be at all qualified for this job?" To my credit, I suppose I came up with a good answer because I wasn't qualified, but I still got called back for a writing test and another round of interviews. The job went to someone who had something like 15 years experience at the Wall Street Journal. Clearly, I should have been the one asking what made them think I would be qualified in the first place.
2) Sitting at work in Texas and hitting "print" on the thank you note to the above mentioned interviewer, and immediately realizing that my printer was still set to Boston. Still don't know if I was able to cancel that in time or if someone in my office picked it up. 

Anyway, my company is laying off 1700 people in the next month, so depending on how that goes, this one may not technically be a resolution anymore anyway. 

All in all, not too bad- this was the first year I put detailed resolutions on paper and came back to them throughout the year, and I'm happy with the result. As for 2009, the resolutions are a bit bolder and more specific, and I've followed my friend Steve's advice and added benchmark dates for each one. We'll see how it goes. 

Here we go again

I'm sensing a pattern here. 

Sporadic posts, often many in one week, then nothing. Sometimes for entire months. Like December. 

Resolution number one last year was "Write something. Anything." So despite being somewhat successful in that regard here, I'm keeping it as number one this year. I should add that out of my seven resolutions last year, 4 were successful, which I must say is quite satisfying for someone like myself who notoriously ignores such things. I should also add that that number 5 was "Invest money"- not too disappointed about missing out on that one. 

Anyway I'm trying to dress up the blog a bit. Will continue to add some more links, and will be rotating photos on the top (credit goes to my good friend Sharon on the current photo of my dusty Victrola by the way).

More to come soon.