Fortune Favors The Bold

About six months ago, I rented a storage unit downtown and put a lot of closet-storage stuff in there… because I was moving in with Carolyn, into our studio apartment, and I wouldn’t be having a closet. At the time, to make our lives easier, I offered to move some of her things in as well. This included her A/C unit. She has a portable floor unit because one of her last apartments couldn’t have a window A/C, which sucks for daily summertime living in a tiny apartment (*BUMP* *KICK* *TRIP*) but makes the moving & setup process easier than with a window unit.

This year we plug it in, and we find that it’s constantly leaking everywhere. Didn’t think this was a big deal… I put an old t-shirt in front of it to sop up some of it. Except I underestimated the unit’s power, and that t-shirt was of little use in hot weather. WATER EVERYWHERE. It gushes as if it were connected to the sink. Ruined an underbed storage box, soaked our stored bedsheets, and came close to causing serious damage otherwise. 

So I look at the unit and find a hose outlet at the back. It’s literally pouring water out. Funny, I don’t remember having a hose hookup on her A/C. I find the manual — in 2010, you don’t need to stumble for it because you can just Google the make/model and read a PDF — and I find that the hose attachment is optional. If you want to plug in an exhaust hose, you just remove the rubber plug and connect it.

Plug?

Back in November, I found a small rubber plug in the storage unit on the floor. Had no idea what it was for. Most people would have tossed it.

I am completely anal retentive and obsessed about such things, though, and I anguished about finding the source of that plug. Hence the item that would stop the A/C from leaking everywhere was sitting on my dresser the whole time.

Plug’s in, floor’s dry, and finding the source of only one of many misplaced items or memories is not going to bring me any peace. Blargh.

@ my cousin’s wedding, rehearsal dinner: someone in the groom’s party just got “iced”.

Ok, it seems that the last movie on Dennis Hopper’s resume which I have seen is “Waterworld”. Unbelievably, all that follows is worse. So he must have had the kind of inoperable cancer that makes you pick terrible scripts.

It was either that or a joke about “Super Mario Brothers”

Are 5,001 Friends One Too Many? By AIMEE LEE BALL

Some Facebook users have reached the social networking site’s limit of 5,000 friends. So then what do you do?

PRO TIP: No one has 5,000 friends. If you think you have 5,000 friends, your idea of “friend” is wrong.

(And that totally counts on Facebook. Stop adding everyone you meet! They’re not all your friends! Build a mailing list if you want to maintain healthy business relationships with people.)

Your Money - Another Debt Crisis Is Brewing, This One in Student Loans - NYTimes.com

Then there’s a branding problem. Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni. Nobody wants to admit that. And once a university starts encouraging middle-class students to go elsewhere, it must fill its classes with more children of the wealthy and a much smaller number of low-income students to whom it can afford to offer enormous scholarships. That’s hardly an ideal outcome either.

I love how this article leaves that statement hanging like that. Why is that “hardly ideal” if you’re NYU or any other expensive private college? Private elementary and high schools seem to think that’s a perfectly ideal outcome!

But that is an oversimplification. Indeed, if private universities became a pay-what-you-ACTUALLY-can sort of experience without a federally-supported debt bubble behind it, and if tuition costs didn’t drop 30%-50% the way real estate did after its own bubble, and if that added up to mostly rich people in most of the well-known private universities in the US… it would ignite a new class war unlike any we’ve ever seen, and the entire non-profit humanitarian concept of higher education would be undermined. After all, most private universities are floating high on the bubble, and most public ones are getting fiscally strangled to death by the government entities that support them. It would be a shot to the heart of the American dream, and I’m not sure so many of the gypped middle class workers who are grinding their lives out for their CHILDREN (never underestimate that motive) would take that lying down the way that we have accepted environmental disasters, endless military expenses, incompetent governance, financial market explosions, massive trade deficits, and anything else that has (more) incrementally eroded the public prosperity. The universities don’t want to be in those crosshairs. They’d much rather stand by idly — or in some cases assist — as other faceless semi-governmental entities continue to fuel that debt bubble that essentially amounts to the same result but leaves less obvious people to blame. Just like any good fraud job!

Come on, I’ve been waiting all week for a good opportunity to use “TOP KILL” in a forum thread. (Like, in the same context as SHOTS. FIRED.) Someone do something.

BOOM! That was a long time coming, really. I never did stop back in as promised, mostly because of the food quality - the review I wrote was far kinder than it needed to be. (Lots of heavy American fare)

It wasn’t BAD, but not nearly as good as the hype/aggressive PR would have suggested, and certainly people figured that out after a while. They had that “Top Chef Nikki” sign out for all of the 4 1/2 years they were open. But if anyone asked where to eat in Nolita, it never entered the conversation. Gotta do better than that!

ARTEST PUNCHES IT IN

You know, I plead guilty to “disorderly conduct” last November, but that doesn’t mean I actually did $500 worth of damage to a subway car with a Wiffle bat.

(I say that with confidence because 99% of people have a vague idea that soft, toy-safe plastic is not capable of shattering steel, aluminum, or hardened Plexiglas.)

The reason why I did that was because it was the safest legal option available. It was a violation, my criminal record stays clear, and the prosecutors dropped the requirement that I pay for damages. The other option was a likely acquittal of a misdemeanor… it would have cost me a couple thousand extra and at least a few more days in court. And it took the risk of ending up in some Brooklyn kangaroo court where a single cranky judge decides that one eyewitness “had no reason to lie”, as the prosecutors insisted. (Said eyewitness was not actually present where the supposed crime took place until after I was arrested)

I’m assuming this is the equation that presented itself for Blakeley, because the prosecutors would not have allowed a violent offender to plea out to a non-violent offense unless the evidence was thin. (or if the evidence contradicted the charge)

That’s all that one can reasonably say about what happened. At worst, he was willfully “threatening”. (given the range of possibilities here, I even doubt that)

I’m starting to see all these snide comments against Blakeley come back out again today, as if people know for a fact that he’s a violent offender. I thought I’d remind everyone that our legal system is an imperfect system, and can be very unfriendly unless you’re rich. Even so, he’s had his day in court and he has come out… not being a convicted violent offender. It’s wrong to assert otherwise.

Hopefully, this is the last time anyone has to deal with this, and everyone moves on.

Folks, I am very ill today. The only reason why I’m not in an ER is because I don’t have any sharp pains; this morning, I was uncomfortable as a man could be without actually having a failing organ, fracture, or deep wound. I have a doc appointment next week to sort it all out. My best guess is that my digestive tract, after years of thoughtless abuse at the hands of my diet, decided to pull a Dolores Claiborne and put me in a world of hurt. A cup of coffee sent me under, but a bowl of chicken soup + Gatorade + bananas pulled me back out. 

Even while off the grid, I get messages like this:

Dear Brian Van Nieuwenhoven,

 IMPORTANT NOTICE: On July 1, 2010, Verisign will increase prices for .COM and .NET domains. 
 Beat the increase. Renew now for multiple years and save BIG!† 

The following domain name(s) are set to automatically renew on the expiration date(s) listed:

SALTY-SLUTS.COM - Aug. 25, 2010

clientsfromhell:

In December of 2009, Clients From Hell exploded as a cult phenomena of the design industry.  Compiled in book form for the first time, this collection brings together the original and hilarious posts that made the blog a hit. On sale this summer. More details to come.

I’m just mad I didn’t think of this tag first.