Observations from Habitat

Yesterday, three half way houses donated twenty six couches to the Habitat ReStore. Twenty. Six. Couches. Some on the third floor.

26. Couches. Third floor.

Oh, did I mention that they were in Schenectady?

26. Couches. Third floor. Schenectady.

I have to admit that I have spent very little time in Schenectady for the better part of a decade.

Is it possible that it got worse?

Let me talk about fashion, Schenectady style?

Yes, that is Lord Humongous.

While I am not saying that the denizens of Schenectady are leather clad survivors of an apocalypse, I am saying that a fashion choice like that may have been a better choice.

Sweat pants are rarely appropriate in the house, they definitively are not acceptable for wearing outside of the house.

Painted on jeans are difficult enough to pull off if you are in splendid shape, if you are not, please refrain from wearing them. Scary.

Yesterday was a nice day, and most of the sidewalks were quite clear, but you wacky scamps in Schenectady made the choice to walk in the middle of the fracking street. What the heck were you thinking? Oh, you weren't. You were ambling around without a care in the world while a big truck was trying to make it down the street. I hate you.

One final thing, and this is a class based observation (not race based) but I find it difficult to determine when certain people (inter-city and tremendous institutional poverty) greet each other if they are happy to see each other or very angry with each other. This is a bit disturbing.

To sum up:

I hate couches and Schenectady. Good luck soon-to-be-Mayor Hull.

The Hall of Game

There are a lot of baseball players who do not deserve to be in Cooperstown, but they do deserve to have something of theirs memorialized.




Think about this for a minute, events like Todd Pratt's non-home run home run to put the Mets into the playoffs should be immortalized forever.





Or this event...



He talks about what happened here:


Jeter is going to be in the Hall of Fame, and probably on the first ballot, but what about people like Todd Pratt who is never going to be, and does not deserve to be.

The Hall of Game.

Who do you think deserves it and why?

The only condition is that they cannot have a plaque in Cooperstown. Not that this discriminates against someone like Jeter, because he is not in the Hall...yet.

I will try to post one a week and I am asking anyone who wants to contribute to please do. What is your favorite Hall of Game moment?

Loving a Lotus Flower

The new Radiohead came out yesterday (it was supposed to come out today, but...you know how quirky Radiohead is.) and I have listened to it constantly on a loop since 8:30 or so thing morning.



It is...odd. I am not saying that I love it yet (regardless of the title of the post) but I could see myself loving it, and I mean really love it, like a fat kid and fried cheese.

We All Want Someone To Shout For liveblogged their first listen and I find myself agreeing with him but...I want to give this album another thirty listens before I declare it my new music overlord.

And, of course, someecards has something to say:

Confronting Muslim Stereotypes, Cosby Style

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One Reason to Smoke

The best thing that ever happened to New York was its bar and restaurant smoking ban. I cannot tell you how many unbearable conversations I have been able to cut short by having to go outside for a smoke.

In Defense of Smoking Bans

Presented without comment

Image via Cracked

Random Questions

• Is anyone using Hashable?  Is it worth it if you are?
• Has anyone supplemented their normal routine with Wii Fit Plus?  What were your experiences?
• While I love Firefly, does anyone really care that it is returning to the Science Channel?
• Do you think he would take back this Facebook status if he had the chance?
• If there are extraterrestrials, have they been redeemed through Christ's Sacrifice?
• Who are the people you follow on Twitter that I should follow?
• If I have dreamed (quite often) about having chickenpox as an adult, what does it mean?
• I love this jacket, but is it worth it?

Ken Jennings on competing against Watson

Indeed, playing against Watson turned out to be a lot like any other Jeopardy! game, though out of the corner of my eye I could see that the middle player had a plasma screen for a face. Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It's very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.

Via Slate

What would you do?

On a recent episode of Castle, the question was tossed back and forth about what you would do if you won the lottery.

So, what would you do?

I have had this conversation a couple of times with friends and family about what I would do if I won a big lottery jackpot (and by big, I mean $40 million or more) and how I would spend the money.

(For the record, I do not play the lottery, so this is meaningless speculation on my part. Or...more superficial douchery.)

• I would provide for TEA in a trust that he has limited access to so that he would want for nothing.
• I would buy homes for my mother and sister.
• I would pay off my ex-wife's mortgage.
• I would pay of my friends' various grad school and undergrad debts.
• I would endow a named chair at Union College, named for my grandfather.
• I would create a scholarship program at Union for geeky students who like the Humanities.
• I would create a scholarship program at LaSalle Institute so that those who wanted to go to a private liberal arts college could afford it.
• I would buy my father a thirty foot sail boat and a berth in the Caribbean.
• I would make two trips: to see every great art museum in the world and to see all the Man-made Wonders of the world.
• Breakfast in Manhattan, Lunch in Chicago, Dinner in Seattle, all in one day.(Which I suppose I could do now, but...only with airport food in Chicago.)
• I would create endowments for Albany's Habitat for Humanity and Albany's Boys & Girls Club.
• I would see Radiohead on every stop of a tour.
• I would vigorously support political causes that I support (GLBT issues, reproductive rights, & sustainable communities...including car free.) 

National Day of Unplugging

Sabbath Manifesto presents an interesting challenge for March 4th into March 5th.

The National Day of Unplugging

To put it simply, what they want you to do is turn off your cell phone, sign out of e-mail, and refuse to go to Twitter or Facebook (or your social networking site of choice) between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday.

Now, I have done this for a twenty four hour period before and it was...interesting. (I mean by choice, not being stuck in airports and planes, et cetera, for a 24 hour period.)

Anyone willing to do it with me?

They do have a FAQ that shows that they aren't asking for a total abandonment of technology, especially if reconnecting with loved one's means a phone call to someone who is three thousand miles away, but they do list Ten Principles that the organization suggests following.

Edit: By the way, sundown on Friday is 5:48 pm. Just letting you know.

Who is Drake and Josh?

For Valentine's Day, TEA received a "manly" heart shaped box of chocolates. (I am failing to remember if it was the skull and crossbones one or the one with various sports images on it. It was just manly.) He also received the "Hunger Games" books (yes, it may be a little old for him, but I am sure that he can handle it and if he is anything like me, he will reread these books, as he has done with the Wimpy Kid series.) and an iTunes gift card.

Last night he gave me a call regarding his iTunes account (he needs to ask when buying things so we avoid some of the issues that we had around the holidays with TEA not understanding that buying things within games still means that his father's credit card is charged.) and I asked what he was getting.

He told me that he was getting the first season of Drake and Josh because it was $5.99 and not the fourth season which was $14.99. I applauded his frugality and then he wanted to get off the phone because...Drake and Josh and who wants to talk to dad, right?

After getting off the phone with TEA, I thought about it for a couple of seconds and then realized something.

I have no clue who Drake and Josh are.

To Teh Interwebs!

Apparently, Drake & Josh is a sitcom that ran on Nick for a while and launched the career of Miranda Cosgrove of iCarly. (Off-topic: I like iCarly. I don't go out of my way to watch it, but when TEA wants to, I am willing. It is cute and well written and there are very legitimate reasons for the lack of parents. Carly is being raised by her older brother after a family tragedy...it is sort of like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius...but in Seattle...in an apartment that "I" could never afford...oh, television, why do you skimp on these details?) It seems to be fairly innocuous and there is a very Saved by the Bell quality to it (from the one episode that I was able to find on-line and watch) and I was happy that TEA had found media that he enjoyed without any prompting from his media obsessed father.

Which brings me to my issue...

TEA is finding and enjoying his own media. He is developing his own tastes and flavors when it comes to media. He is becoming his own person. While part of me finds this depressing, the rest of me finds this completely thrilling.

So much of what makes us...well...us...is our media choices. They influence us, and our choices of behavior, our fashion, and our general outlook on life. (Seriously, I know that my choices regarding what I love to listen to influences my mood, and without Liz Phair, I wouldn't be attracted to certain types of women.)

TEA is growing up and it is awesome.

My hope is that he continues the path that he is on, making his own decisions and becoming the wonderful person that he already is in a larger body.

One last thing on Arcade Fire and the Grammys

This, I think, is part of the beauty of Who Is Arcade Fire. The blog doesn’t actually make its motives clear. I’m sure some of the band’s fans look at it as an opportunity to laugh at the alleged cluelessness of the featured tweets. Others might just be fascinated by the heated reactions people can have to the revelation that there are successful young musicians they’ve never heard of. (I say “young” because the Grammys routinely give big awards to records by older artists who aren’t exactly dominating the top 40.) But of course there’s also the fact that, for a whole lot of listeners, Arcade Fire is the kind of band that’s too ubiquitous — the band backed by a huge, boring critical consensus, the middlebrow-crossover NPR darlings, the bland and tiresome more-of-the-same act that already plays Madison Square Garden and shows up on Saturday Night Live. Given that Who Is Arcade Fire appears on Tumblr, you assume that whoever put it together comes from something like that world, the online post-collegiate indie sphere where Arcade Fire might be one of the least interesting bands you could know about.

Via Vulture

That being said (and I am tempted to agree with it) just watch part of their KROQ session from this past weekend and tell me that they aren't wonderful.

Union Hockey is Happiness

I forgot to post about this yesterday afternoon, but did anyone else see the USCHO.com Division One Men's Hockey Poll?

Union Hockey is #7!

The little program that could is still plugging along. Last year, I was just happy that we made the ECAC Championships, but now...I may be disappointed if they don't win.

What a difference a couple of years makes.

Go U!

Books and Beer Part 2

Thank you to those who came out for Books and Beer last week at McGeary's.

I am thinking of putting another one together but, I am asking all of you where you would like to go and what you would like to read.

I am looking March 17th for the date of the next event.

If you are willing to make any suggestions, please comment here or e-mail your suggestions to books@afutilemistake.com

UnCorporate Indie Rock Rules

On Sunday, unsurprisingly (to me at least) Arcade Fire won the Grammy award for Album of the Year which was a shock to some. (Insert snark here about how it was a surprise to those who did not listen to the album or only listened to the Eminem album and fail to appreciate how different genres of music can be compared, or that they are so myopic about their own choices, the fail to recognize brilliance when they see it.)

This is not to say that those who do not like Arcade Fire do not appreciate them as brilliant. (Yes, if you think I am talking about you, I am talking about you.)

But the shock and consternation from some about this album being the Album of the Year is amazing and it would have been something to rant about if a larger announcement about another band that I have an autistic devotion to had not taken up my attention.

Radiohead is releasing a new album, The King of Limbs, and it will be available on the 19th of February. (Yes, I realize that my perspective is skewed. Arcade Fire winning the Album of the Year Grammy is huge while Radiohead announcing another album with an odd distribution method may be fairly banal.)


It has been a good week for me, in terms of music, and I am looking forward to Saturday morning when I can give The King of Limbs several dedicated listens.

Edit at 11:00: Speaking of shock and consternation regarding Arcade Fire: Who is Arcade Fire? (H/T to @jonathanrnash)

That cute girl at the coffee shop

Have you ever been sitting in a coffee shop and have noticed that cute girl sipping on her coffee, and bopping her head to some music and you want to know what she is listening to because maybe it will "change your life." In some fictional world, Summer Finn or Sam will tell you that your music is awesome and it may be the start of a beautiful relationship.

But because real life does not work that way, and because you still want to know what the cute girl with the fun glasses and the quirky shoes is listening to, may I suggest a new smartphone app that shares your music with the world via Twitter and the interface (and soon there will be full Foursquare integration) with your music and location.

That app is PopToo. It is easy to use and very fun. I am looking forward to more and more people using it just so...well...that cute girl at the coffee shop can know that I am listening to awesome music as well.

In praise of...Sheena Easton

Yes, I said Sheena Easton. For very explicable reasons, I love Sheena Easton. She was always cute and somewhat approachable (at least to my seven year old mind) and she seemed so tiny, you could put her in your pocket. I do not know why this popped into my head, but professing my love (unironically) for Sheena Easton seemed this thing to do, especially today.

I give you some of my favorite Sheena moments below.



We fell in love with her to Morning Train (9 to 5).


Then we wanted to be James Bond...just so "For Your Eyes Only"


Then...she was Caitlin Davies on Miami Vice.

After getting through those, are you telling me that you aren't in love with her?

Sheena Easton set a pattern for me, apparently, and I am glad that she did.

And the Grammy Goes To

A couple of months ago, I made some picks as to the winners at the Grammys.

Yes, my selections were...not right.

But, I feel validated by selecting Album of the Year.

You can see all the winners here.