Nice companies

After my encounter with Orbitz, it's been refreshing to have companies care at least a bit more when something bad happens. Jetblue and Netflix both recently sent me small credits after some amazingly crappy service when I missed a flight and screwing up the order of my Battlestar Galactica DVD's multiple times, respectively. Yay, nice companies!

Luxury buildings

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with luxury buildings. On the one hand, they're soulless and overpriced, and stand for everything that's wrong with the new face of New York. On the other hand, they're incredibly convenient: doormen to take packages, elevator for bringing things up to your apartment, gym when it's too cold or late to leave the building, no broker wasting your time and then emptying your wallet, no unruly supers taking forever to do repairs, modern appliances.

The one frustrating thing about these buildings is that they're hard to find. A lot of them only list their prices in the paper New York Times. A lot of them want you to call or email for prices, a waste of time for all involved. Nearly identical buildings can vary greatly in price. As part of my apartment hunting, I collected my notes in a Google Notebook. But what I really wanted was a good list of luxury buildings and their prices. Nybits was okay, but slow to go through. Apartment ratings was promising, but had almost no data.

So, I broke down and made something myself, borrowing liberally from my friend and coworker Mihai's overplot mashup. The result is luxurny. It's a little clunky and could use some more coverage, so please send me additions. For now, I'm limiting it to Manhattan luxury buildings.

Wikipedia really does have everything

I always feel dumb when I don't post for a while and lots of exciting things happen in my life, and my next post is decidedly inconsequential. But, oh well. I was reading Glen's blog (and I finally got to meet Glen on my most recent trip to Mountain View!) and I decided to see if my high school was on Wikipedia. And Voila! It even mentions that our school was featured in "Bring It On," which is probably the most exciting thing about it, other than the fact that it had 3,000ish students the year I graduated, which freaks the hell out of East Coasters.